India Day 8-12: Nongrim Hills and Mowkyndeng

I did more exploring of Shillong recently, and I'll be posting a few photos in subsequent blogs to try and capture what I think are great views of the city. I'm staying with some friends in Lower Nongrim Hills and I often cross through Nongrim Hills to get to Laitumkrah where I meet friends for lunch/dinner or language research. The quickest (and least crowded) way to get there by walking is to climb the hill where people live in houses stacked on top of each other, pretty similar to what I saw in Norway. Here's a view looking back down the hill toward Lower Nongrim after climbing past a bunch of houses.

I took that photo before I went to work on the Pnar language spoken in Mowkyndeng village, a few hours away, where another friend was going home for holiday. I went with him for a week to learn what I could about this dialect and begin to document the language. I stayed with a wonderful family of vegetarians who kindly gave me fish and chicken, though secretly I loved their rice and vegetable dishes. Here's a picture of me and the family, along with all the children boarding at their house while they attend the mission school.

Mowkyndeng is probably best known as a mission station for the Catholic church in that area. When Catholic missionaries came to these hills they came directly to Raliang and were given land at Mowkyndeng to build their mission and start schools. Here's a picture of the church at Mowkyndeng, which has a lot of ties to the work of Don Bosco and the Salesians, a Catholic society that he founded. Early in June the relic of Don Bosco's body will be coming to the northeast of India and staying at the church in Mowkyndeng for a bit. I don't know if I'll make it to the viewing, but people from all over the area will be there.

India Day 7: Shillong

Ok, it's been a few days since the last post, partly because I didn't always have internet access, and partly because I didn't do much except meet people and get to know the town a bit better. Also I forgot to bring my camera places, so I didn't have much in the way of visuals to offer. But now I'm back.

Shillong is a pretty town perched on a series of hills in the centre of Meghalaya. The streets are narrow, winding, and the buildings are perched precariously on the hills, squeezed tightly together and sometimes built almost on top of each other. In many ways it reminds me of a village in Europe. Taxis, trucks, cars, motorcycles and little buses negotiate their way along the streets along with pedestrians - there aren't very many bikes around here.

I've been spending some of my time with Mary, a local resident who is from Jiantia Hills where they speak Pnar. I'm learning some Pnar from her and she is helping me connect with some other speakers, and hopefully I'll be going to Jowai and the Jiantia Hills district this week. It's been fun, and we've been meeting at Swish, a local cafe. It takes about 15 minutes to get there by car, going in a bit of a circle. I discovered that there's a shorter way to go, cutting the angle, along a much less busy path that is only about a 15 minute walk (and more picturesque). I should really get a map of Shillong.

India Day 2: Meghalaya

I woke up this morning after a good night's sleep at Hotel Jagannath (apparently this hotel is named after a Hindu sun god) and headed to the Calcutta airport to catch the plane for Shillong. We got off around the time listed on the itinerary and had a quick 1.5 hr flight to the airport which is actually 1 hour away from Shillong by car. Meghalaya is a beautiful part of India, in the highlands just north of Bangladesh, and below is a picture I took in front of the airport just after it rained.

It's pretty incredible how God works - I sat next to an elderly nun from Calcutta who was traveling to spend a month of the leave she gets every 3 years with her niece and nephews who live in Shillong. I talked with her on the flight and learned a lot from her about the area, and then helped her with her luggage and disembarking from the plane. She introduced me to her nephew when he arrived and they offered me a lift to Shillong, which I gladly accepted.

Along the way, her nephew John filled me in on some historical and political details of the area. It turns out that he is a local political figure very interested in the intersection of tribal and constitutional policy, and he knows a few of the people that I was hoping to get in touch with in the Khasi and Pnar communities. It was a great discussion and amazing to meet someone so well-connected in just my first hour in Meghalaya. Wow! I'll be getting in touch with him again once I get a SIM card for my phone.

I'm staying with my advisor's sister-in-law's family here in Shillong, and hope to connect with some Pnar speakers in the coming days, then head to Jowai and the Jiantia Hills at the end of the week to make more contacts. Today I also went to one of the local hot-spots, Cafe Shillong, which has great food and atmosphere. I'll be posting more about the town this week. It's been raining quite a bit for the last month, but is cool and peaceful - did I mention the northeast of India is beautiful?

India Day 1

Alright, I have internet access! I'm sitting in my hotel about 1km from the airport here in Calcutta (Kolkata) and thought I'd post a quick not before I crash. I didn't sleep much last night, what with the late flight to Delhi and then spending most of my layover trying to figure out where to go after I went through customs and was trying to re-check my luggage. I did have a whole row to myself on the Delhi-Calcutta leg, though, so I curled up and went to sleep as soon as we were airborne.

The Delhi airport is actually really nice. I think they've done a lot since my friends were through there last. The Calcutta airport is a little bit more like the airports of my childhood. Here's a shot of me standing at the one baggage claim in the terminal we flew into. What's funny about that is - see that fake grass? Just after I took that shot all us passengers watched as a cat jumped onto the turf, felt around and then took a dump right on the 'grass' before jumping off and going about its other business. Everyone around that saw it chuckled.

I then took a cab from the airport to my hotel. Here's the view from inside the cab. They use these really classic diesels, painted yellow - they look more like English cabs of the 1920s or so. And they feel about that old too. As usual, lane changes are frequent (lines are more of a suggestion) and the road gets shared by everyone. My cabbie took a few minutes for chai just after starting the engine, and then we took a slight detour on the side of the road so he could yell at someone - maybe for directions, it's hard to tell.

And finally, here's a picture of me in my bathroom at Jagganath hotel. It's not a very big hotel, but things are clean and after resetting the router we got some internet working. Gotta love it. You can see I (mostly) look none the worse for having slept so little. BUT I think I'll take a nap or something... tomorrow's another big day.

Getting Ready for India

The last week or so has been busy with getting ready to go to India. After talking things over with some of the other profs, my advisor suggested that instead of trying to confirm in May, I should plan on going through confirmation in the first week of August. This works for me, especially with my sister's wedding in July, back in the US. So I'm heading to India today for about 6 weeks, to learn as much about the language as I can and hopefully have something to present by August.

I moved out of my apartment on Friday, and my friend Nick is kindly letting me spend the weekend with him and storing my stuff at his place while I'm gone. Tonight my flight leaves at 11pm for Delhi, and today I'm just packing and printing off receipts and other things like my traveler's insurance. You never know what could happen, but I'm pretty positive it will be a grand adventure with no mishaps. If you think of me you can send up a prayer.

I'll try to update this space with photos and information about my trip, depending on what the internet connection is like. Of course, with today's internet-connected world, I might even be able to update when I'm in remote villages ('remote' here being defined as "physically hard to get to"). Unfortunately, friends of mine have been through the Delhi airport and said it wasn't a great experience - I have something like a 6 hour layover there... ah well.

May Day

Here in Singapore there is an observed Labour Day holiday today, since May Day officially happened on Sunday, May 1st. Labour Day also happens to be the day when the government begins distributing its "Grow and Share", package - much like the tax breaks those in the USA received last year under the economic incentives package. While the package itself benefits individual Singaporeans (who wouldn't want $800-$100 in extra money?), some Singaporeans have wondered if this isn't just an incentive to vote for the current ruling party, since general elections are happening May 7th. The timing of the payout is a bit suspicious, reminiscent of the recent payouts that citizens of Bahrain received from their rulers.

Politics in Singapore

Singapore has a unique political system: it is a representative democracy in which the same party has been in power since 1959 (51 years!). Either that means everyone likes the current government, or the ruling party has taken pains to write the rules in their favor. Perhaps a bit of both. Some people point to the Group Representation Constituencies as a re-drawing of boundaries to consolidate constituencies which the current ruling party, the People's Action Party, believes it might otherwise lose. Sounds like the age-old battle between Republicans and Democrats on voting lines, eh? Except in Singapore there is no clear opposition - just one party that runs the government.

Don't get me wrong - the PAP has done wonderful things for Singapore, as increases in immigrants to Singapore indicate. But many Singaporeans view the current party as complacent, pointing to increasing pay raises that officials voted for themselves - many times higher than the average salary. With an average of around $2 million, according to IMF and The Economist, political leaders in Singapore get paid the same as many CEOs or sports stars.

What makes this year's general elections slightly different than previous ones is that many more seats are being contested and quality candidates are being put forward by other parties. Response has been quite good for many of these candidates despite the rule that limits campaigning to the 9 days before voters cast their vote (a policy that seems to favor the incumbents) - choosing not to vote is against the law here. Of the 84 seats available, in fact, on May 7th all 84 are open to contest. While most Singaporeans believe the current party will stay in power, many also want Singapore to have a decent opposition party that will bring true democratic debate to the country's decision-making process. In this they hold the sentiment of the middle-aged Chinese Singaporean I talked to:

"I want the PAP to win, but not by too large a margin. We want to give them enough opposition so that they're no longer complacent and start paying attention to the needs of Singaporeans rather than their own interest."

We'll find out what happens when Singaporeans go to the polls on May 7th.

New Music Video

I recently decided I needed software for video editing that was a bit more powerful, so I invested in Final Cut Express, which has quite a few more options for video editing than iMovie 08 or the FlipShare software that came with my MinoHD camera. For example, I couldn't previously fast-forward clips or reverse them, and I had no easy way to line them up and cut between them, or to color-correct and filter. It also means that I'll hopefully be planning my videos a bit better - not just shooting from the hip - and maybe getting a few more people involved in shots.

I am still learning the software, but here's my first project: a music video of one of the new songs I've been working on recording with SoundFarm here in Singapore. It's called "Hold Me" and I wrote it awhile back (I began writing it in 2006 and probably finished it in 2010) but haven't played it a whole lot. So you may have heard it live, but maybe not. In any case, here it is below - hope you enjoy it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-aeIj6VLpQ

Bob Dylan and Imogen Heap

This past weekend I went to Rock and Roots, a festival put on by Timbre, the same group that had me play shows in late January. It was a pretty fabulous concert. The two performers I most wanted to see were Bob Dylan and Imogen Heap.

Bob Dylan played all his well-known songs and had a fabulous band. Seeing him at this age made me wish I had seen him when he was younger - he could barely sing, and his speaking voice was actually more comprehensible. When he spoke verses instead of trying to sing them, I could here the words and tell which song he was singing. And then I could sing along. Fortunately his backing band really did support him (such as when he coudn't quite play that guitar solo). He just went from one song to the next - no chitchat, no interaction.

Imogen Heap, on the other hand, was much more interactive. You could tell she was working the crowd and we all loved it. From the beginning she made it clear that we were part of the show, not just spectators but people who were there because we liked her music, and she respected that. And she talked to us as such.

In a way, you could say that these two performers represented different generations. Bob Dylan more an older generation for whom there was a pretty clear divide between the performer and the audience, and Imogen Heap the younger generation which acknowledges the similarities between performer and audience. But maybe good performers have always been the latter - maybe Bob Dylan was more like that 20 years ago. I wish I had seen him then.

Here's some video of the shows: http://youtu.be/_1L4gT9YZVo

Long Time no See

It's been a long time since I updated this blog. We took a break from school for a week, I had my birthday and then life got crazy. That's why.

So here's a picture of me eating Chili Crab on my birthday at the restaurant 'Big Eater' (see the sign behind me) which is a 5 minute walk from my room in the HDB (a blockof flats constructed by the Housing Development Board here in Singapore). Chili Crab is pretty famous for being a particular Singapore specialty, and let me tell you in was awesome! I don't know what they put in that sauce, but it is really flavorful. and spicy - if you don't like spicy try another specialty.

As for the craziness, it has to do a bit with my program. In this PhD program they usually give you 2 years in which to confirm. That is, you have to give a presentation on your research to show that you are capable of completing the program. After the presentation you begin your official research and get a slight boost in pay.

Well, I mentioned that usually you have 2 years to confirm. I've been here for nearly 6 months and my advisor asked me to confirm this May. It's cool that they think I can do it, and I don't see any real difficulties, but it just means a lot more work. So I haven't had much time or energy to blog. BUT, as my friend Yolanda mentioned, people read these things - so that gives me more encouragement to write. =) I'll do my best.

Lunar New Year and Chingay Parade

A few weeks ago I went down to Chinatown with my friend Nick and we wandered around. It was pretty crowded, mostly because the night was New Year's Eve - the lunar new year, that is. You can watch this short video as we shuffled along with the crowds and listened to the sellers marketing their products to the masses.

Last weekend we went to watch Chingay 2011 near the Esplanade. We didn't get tickets, but could see a lot from the parade route. Chingay is a celebration of ethnic heritage begun centuries ago by the Chinese overseas (those who migrated from China to many different parts of Asia). While traditionally a celebration of Chinese heritage, the event has since expanded to include multinational and mutliethnic groups from all over the world - at least in Singapore. Here's a bit longer video of the event, which was a lot of fun! My favorite part was the incredible energy of 2,000 youth putting on the same moves to the music as they danced past.

Thoughts on Learning

As a PhD student here at NTU, part of my scholarship is to teach or TA once I've completed my coursework and passed confirmation. NTU is beginning to focus on training teachers more, and particularly in ways that encourage students to learn. One recommended course I'm taking now is part of that initiative, and we had our first session yesterday, taught by Peter Looker.

One of the best parts of the class was when Dr. Looker asked us to think about and define what learning is. I had a bit of a brain-wave and came up with this definition, definitely guided and influenced by my experiences. Here it is, and I'll unpack it a bit more below.

learn (v.) : To discover something new about reality. (Hiram's Definitions)

Part 1: Discovery

Learning, to me, is primarily about discovery. When you learn how to use your phone, when you learn how to drive a car or how to use a phrase properly in language or how to do a math problem, you are discovering it. Discovery also implies a self-driven process, the involvement of the person who is learning. Learning in this sense is not a passive, osmotic process, but one which requires engagement on the part of the learner. People who truly learn are in some sense pursuing the object in question, seeking the boundaries that flesh out the subject of study.

Part 2: Newness

When we discover something, by the act of discovery it is new to us. It may have been there all along, but until we discover it for ourselves it is as if it didn't really exist. The act of discovery focuses our attention on it and brings it into our field of vision, making it salient to our experience. A good example Dr. Looker gave was when he bought a new car - a white Fiat. When he was driving it home he began to notice all the other white Fiats on the road, something he had not noticed earlier in the day.

Part 3: Reality

The new thing that we discover is always grounded in reality, particularly the reality that we experience personally. The discovery is not about someone else's experience, but how that information connects with us and our frame of reference. We do not live in someone else's shoes, therefore we cannot experience both what their reality is and our own reality. We may be able to imagine someone's experience, but ultimately we cannot know it, we can only share a similar experience. The learning process is one in which our discoveries are integrated into our complete frame of reference and worldview (or multiple frames and worldviews) in a conceptual map. We work primarily with this conceptual map or network to interpret the information we receive - learning is the process of linking, re-linking, and creating new links in this network.

The question in our session then became: how do we teach in such a way that students are able to engage with the information presented and are able to discover it for themselves? I'm really looking forward to dealing with this question over the coming weeks, and gaining some tools to help others learn.

Shows at Timbre

This week my friend Nii and I have been playing music at Timbre music spots around Singapore, and really enjoying the collaboration. It has really been a fantastic week - seeing old friends and making new ones, and having a blast on stage. Here's some footage (thanks Ben Low!) of 'Play Switch', performed on Tuesday at Timbre's Substation venue. Nii really brings the African percussion to this performance - so sweet!

Timbre Music Academy

This week I'm playing a few shows at Timbre, a music venue with a few different locations around Singapore. Timbre books artists (they organized the Rock and Roots festival which will be bringing such great artists as Bob Dylan, John Legend, and Imogen Heap here in April), does some management and promotion, and also instructs students in the finer points of music and performance. Here I take a tour of the academy with Mung - you can find out more about them at the academy website.

A New Song from the upcoming Album

I had a great time at home for the holidays, getting to see lots of friends and family and spending some relaxing days on the couch. Speaking of the couch, I recorded a video while I was relaxing, of a song that will be on the new album. It's called 'This Lamp' and is the story of an old abandoned house, told from the house's point of view.

One of my favorite parts of the video is how you can watch the sunlight disappear as the sun sets outside the window. Check it out below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p56yfUSEd00

Christmas Sampler Download

I'm heading back to the US in a couple days, and wanted to let people know about the Christmas Sampler of two of my songs that you can now download on NoiseTrade: http://noisetrade.com/hiramring - spread the love with your friends! All you do is put in your email address and you will be sent an email with a link to download the two songs.

New Albums

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W51IrxP-_bM

I've been in the throes of paper-writing for two of my classes, and the papers are due next Friday, December 10th. However, I did want to give an update on the extra-curricular activities I've been involved in, most notably recording songs for another album or two. You can watch the video above for a preview.

My main project is a new solo album of 12 songs which will tentatively be titled 'Home' as many of the songs deal with this theme. I've had some really crazy experiences over the last year and a half (some of which are on this blog) with touring to promote my first album, trying to figure out direction, experiencing intimacy and loss, and traveling half-way around the world, which have really made me ponder the meaning of home. What is it and how do I get there? In this album I suppose I continue one of the themes from the first album, 'Breathe Deep'.

The second set of songs are more worship-oriented prayers and psalms that I've written mostly over the course of the last year as I've struggled with the theme of 'home'. They're directly or indirectly influenced by the time I've spent alone with God, fellowship with friends, and particularly encouraged by the album of sacred songs, '12 Gates', that I worked on with Matthew Monticchio and others. There's two kinds of these tunes - new hymns (some of which we've done in church) and general worship songs (some of which could be congregational). So I'm not sure if that'll turn into two EPs or if I'll just release a full-length album. I welcome your feedback!

It's been really great to record guitar and vocals with the guys at SoundFarm here in Singapore, and later this week I'll be doing another session to get vocals. I'll be taking the tracks back with me to the US for Christmas, where I'm hoping my friend Ross can lay down some drums while I'm there, and maybe I can get some other musicians to contribute as well. I'll try to upload some samples as the arrangements get finalized.

Karaoke!

Some of my friends recently had a birthday party celebration at K-Box, which is a local karaoke shop. They provide a full buffet with pretty good food and plenty of it, all you can eat desserts and ice-cream. It was really good. They also had a large selection of songs to choose from so I was able to sing songs in English (Hotel California, I Will Always Love You, etc..) and try to follow along as my friends sang in Mandarin and Cantonese. It was pretty cool - by the end I had learned some new Chinese characters. Here's a short video of the room we rented.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fPhMxM5PBc

Pulau Ubin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PeNM_LkBVk

NTU's Graduate Student Club organized an outing to the local island Pulau Ubin, which is just off the coast of Singapore. We took a 10-minute ferry ride (after a 45-minute bus ride) to get to this island, where granite is still quarried, and rented bikes for the day. It was good clean fun and we even saw some wildlife. Some monkeys, a wild pig, lizards, birds - the usual, I suppose. As you can tell from the video, I got the best bike.

Afterwards we got ice cream at a local vendor's stall and talked about life, culture, philosophy, and politics (among other things). As one of my twitter friends (@veve4heart) commented after seeing the video, "Ok...two things, A. It looks HOT over there...and B. Any country with Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream can't be all bad." Right on both counts! Ice cream is one of many reasons to come to Singapore.

Jiao Zi - Chinese Dumplings

The other day, some friends invited me to where they were staying for Chinese dumplings. Having experienced the dumplings before, but not having made any myself, it was quite the experience. First they made me knead the dough (with all my baking and clay-kneading experience I was happy to oblige) and then we rolled out the dough and filled it with meat filling before cooking the dumplings. It reminded me a bit of the meat pies that I would help my mom with in Ghana - though instead of wheat-based flour we used rice flour, and instead of baking them we boiled/steamed them.

Cambodian Dance (among others)

A couple weeks ago I went with some friends to Singapore's Esplanade, a theatre and arts complex in center city, by the river. They were just finishing up a festival of dance (called 'Da:ns') and were particularly highlighting cultural dances from across Asia. We weren't able to go for all the dance events (click on the link above to visit the page that describes everything that was going on), but you can see we got to watch Japanese and Cambodian dancing. And true to Singaporean form, also got to participate in the western pastime of line-dancing.

The Japanese dance was very formal and structured, and we got to see three different dances - one with the fan that is the story of a beautiful maiden expressing her love for a visiting general with her precision and graceful movement. Then the men's dance which tells the story of men preparing themselves for war. The last one we saw is the story of a high-class woman who hardly ever has the chance to go out of the house - when at last she is allowed to go for a walk, she makes the most of it, playing and having fun.

The Cambodian dance was also quite formal but in a different way. The proper posture for these classically trained dancers is a curved back while they make precise, sculptural movements. It takes incredible control to keep those postures as they move slowly and carefully. They performed the story of Machhanup, which is unique to the Khmer version of the Ramayana and has been performed for over 1,000 years. I was reminded again how ancient some Asian cultures are.

Macchanup is the story of a great warrior who is the son of the monkey king and the mermaid queen. The monkeys built a stone bridge to the island of the giants so they could make war on them, but the mermaid queen didn't want the bridge across her land, so had her servants remove the stones. The monkeys were angry and jumped in to fight the servants, followed by their king who fell in love with the mermaid queen, resulting in Machhanup.

The rest of the story talks about how Machhanup grew up not knowing his father and became a great warrior, trained by a mighty giant. He ends up fighting his father until the mermaid queen tells them the truth of their relationship. The dance was performed by Apsara Arts Association, and I look forward to seeing more performances from them if I can make it to Cambodia or if they come back to Singapore.