Not-so-Politically-Correct

A page from history, originally uploaded by dfb.

My son’s copy of Richard Scarry’s Best Word Book Ever is pretty much destroyed (my fault – long story). In an attempt to make it up to him I bought a used copy. My son’s original copy was printed in the last few years. The new-used copy is from a 1979 printing (the original copyright for both say 1963).
It seemed like a good idea until we noticed that the editors had removed certain pages and images — for good reason — from more recent editions. For example, this is one such page that was not included in my son’s copy. The small text says: “Indian is coming to town to buy a horse for his squaw to ride. Why do you think it would be nice for her to have a horse to ride?”
I’m glad the editors made the choice to remove this page and certain other pictures from more recent editions – this book is intended for babies and preschoolers after all.

For the dogs

We have been adopted by James, pictured here with Sprout. He is now our escort around the village, sentry, and play mate all rolled up into one fuzzy ball.
Cas and James

His former family is leaving the island for Hawai’i and need to leave him behind. It is extremely expensive to take an animal from Saipan to Hawai’i. Costs easily exceed $2,000. Regardless, we’re happy that he adopted us. And when we leave for California, James will adopt another family in the compound. Sadly, this is part of what it means to be a boonie dog on Saipan.

Update: I wish to clarify one point. James will remain on Saipan when we leave because it would be extremely unfair to move him to a city. He has grown up on a farm where he can explore to his heart’s delight, has never worn a leash, and rarely deals with crowds of people or cars. I did buy and put a collar on him last week, but that’s so we can take him to the beach on a long rope and tie him in the back of a pick-up truck.

Saipanda to the Rescue (part 1)

**Note: I published this post around the new year; a bug kept it from your viewing pleasure — until now **

Happy new year! We hope 2012 is your best year yet!

I’m sure you’re wondering by now what Saipan is like. Luckily, you do not need to pick up the family and move to Saipan to find out. Since we’re already here, I can provide you with a nifty-handy-dandy quick guide to living on Saipan.

First, you should meet Saipanda, the local mascot. It is a panda with a rhino horn. “Saipanda” is a play on words in Japanese and, perhaps, Chinese.* An American who lived in Japan wrote (edited for clarity):

In Japanese “rhino” is Sai. Panda, is panda
Saipan-da means “It’s Saipan!”

Saipanda likes ong choy!

* Brett says that Japanese writing must be based on Chinese. It uses some Chinese characters. Other characters look like remnants of Chinese characters, as if a three year old used an eraser to remove part of characters. Here, some of the signs in Chinese make absolutely no sense to Brett and leave her laughing. In the same way, the pun makes even less sense in Chinese.  Sai means west and panda means panda. Perhaps it would be a joke about “go west, young man!”

Small town
CNMI is the smallest autonomous jurisdiction in the United States. It is equivalent to a state in many laws. At the 2010 Census it had approximately 53,000 people. Of those people, 90% live on Saipan. In other words, Saipan is similar to an small, isolated city in the middle of rural America. For comparison’s sake, there are more people in Turlock, CA and Kalamazoo, MI than all of CNMI, and their metropolitan areas have even more. Battle Creek, MI has just about the same population as Saipan.

Green Acres is the Place to be

We live upstairs in a two unit apartment. Our neighbors live downstairs. We have a two bedroom/one bath place. Our front door opens out to a large, enclosed, covered patio.

Our apartment

We live on a family compound — basically a bunch of houses set on a large clearing in the jungle. It’s an operating farm with various trees of tropical fruit and nuts, a bull, a couple of goats, chickens, and a deer. These animals live just outside our window. Currently, 5 dogs live here. It’s not your typical suburban setup: There are no sidewalks or streets, only rocky dirt paths. There is no lawn, just grass from the jungle that gets weedwhacked to keep it back. When it rains (that’s every day right now), it gets really muddy. It can be really dirty here. There are no enclosed yards for any animals except the goats.

Our neighbor

Jungle

The jungle is never that far away. I can never quite tell where the jungle begins and where it ends in much of the island. Many yards are junglish in nature and quality. So much so that some of the most populated areas look like they were carved out the jungle in places.
Rain Moving In

 

Words of Art

Boonie is inserted in front of a number of words. Mutts are referred to as boonie dogs (see below). Cats are boonie cats. Boonie means the same things as it does in the mainland – rural area (I live in the boonies).

People from the mainland United States are referred to interchangeably as mainlanders, haoles (how-lees), and Americans. I should note that many people seem to assume only white persons are “American.” Brett has many stories about being asked her ethnicity and then Sprout’s. The general response is, “so his Dad is American, then.”

People born and raised in the islands are referred to by a number of terms. Generically, they are locals or islanders. Depending on the context, local generally refers only to indigenous Chamorro and Carolinian persons.

Dogs

There are a lot of dogs on Saipan. They are everywhere. The official estimate is 20,000 to 25,000. I think that number likely is low. Regardless of the number, it is safe to say that there are a lot of dogs on this little speck of rock in the Pacific that is the size of San Francisco. Thanks to a lack of spaying and neutering, the population only continues to grow.

Many are descendants of dogs used during WWII by the US military to sniff out Japanese enemies hiding in the jungle, and as guard/sentry dogs. In my experience, the dogs on the island are intelligent, sociable, and instinctive hunters. Most dogs here are not any particular breed but an amalgamation of a variety of dog breeds used during the war. My guess is that there were a lot of hounds (good noses), german shepards (good all-around dogs), and rotweillers (intimidating). Case in point, one of the boonie dogs on the farm will point while hunting for rats and lizards just like the German short-haired pointer we had when I was a kid (“Sheba”).
James, the boonie dog

Dogs are everywhere — on the road lying about, on people’s property, in the jungle, in parking lots in town. Overwhelmingly, including dogs that are “owned” locally, dogs are left to their own devices when it comes to food. They stay outdoors and hunt for rats and whatnot. A lucky few gets table scraps if they happen to have owners. A significant number of dogs here do not have owners and simply roam about in packs looking for food. Many starve to death. This is an accepted part of life here, although they are proceeding slowly on a plan to round up and eradicate any dog not registered.

High-context society

The local culture largely is high context, meaning that the context of a statement means as much, if not more, than the words. Communication is often indirect, relying instead on context, often cultural, to convey a message.  The local native Chamorro culture is high context, as is the Filipino, Chinese, Korean, ethnic groups.In other words, about 95% of the island.

In contrast, modern American culture is considered a low context society. We expect people to be direct and tell us what they really mean. We often call those who use indirect communication passive-aggressive. The difference in communication styles is subtle if you don’t know to expect it but stark for those who have experienced it or havfe someone leading them through it (like Brett does for me), and often leads to miscommunication between the two groups. I think it also leads to a sense of superiority and entitlement I see in some of my fellow mainlanders.

Betel Nut

I will let the sign speak for itself. Most businesses, government offices, and any other place you can imagine has a sign like this.

Betel nut gives a little high when chewed. The locals chew it with a leaf and coral (limestone). The coral serves as an abrasive on the gums to improve absorption of the active ingredient and increase the high. Some will add chewing tobacco to increase the high and because the fiberglass in the chew helps the body absorb the betel nut ‘s active ingredient.

Like tobacco, betel nut chewers need to spit out their chew often. It is a nasty red goo. We can tell who chews because their teeth are red from the betel nut and often worn away by the coral. During our first week, we were shocked by the number of car doors that bizarrely opened while driving. Over time, we realized the car doors were opening so that passengers (or even the drivers) could spit out the betel nut juices without stopping the car. Nasty!

 

I hope this sheds some light for you on where we now live. I intend to post more when I get time.

Rainbow on Saipan

Now in Saipan

We moved to the island of Saipan a few weeks ago. I now work as a law clerk clerk for the territorial Supreme Court of the Northern Mariana Islands. More specifically, I am the law clerk to the Honorable Alexandro C. Castro, Associate Justice.

Politically, the Northern Mariana Islands, or CNMI, is a U.S. territory similar to Puerto Rico. It was part of the Trust Territory of the Pacific that was set up after World War II by the United Nations and administered by the U.S. In the 1970?s, CNMI chose to become part of the United States while other parts of the Trust Territory of the Pacific decided on independence. Saipan is the capital island of CNMI.

Geographically, Saipan and the rest of the islands that make up CNMI are part of the same archipelago as Guam (about 125 miles from Saipan) and classified as part of Micronesia. The archipelago is located 2/3?s of the way between Hawai’i and Manila, Philippines. Less than 100 miles east of Saipan is the Mariana Trench, which is the deepest known portion of the Pacific Ocean.

Catching up

I’ve been a bit too pre-occupied over the past few months to post anything. I am likely to post a few belated posts over the next few days and weeks to fill in the blanks and because they are still timely. 🙂

I finished up my last semester in December and now have a Juris Doctor degree. Or, at least that’s what my unofficial transcript says and the State Bar believes (it let me sit for the bar exam). 🙂

As much as I intended to enjoy myself for a few weeks after the bar exam, colds/flus/other have kept us all sick and miserably inside. This after promising the following to be our theme for the few weeks after the exam. 🙁

Regardless of what happens next, I intend to be the change I wish to see in the world. 🙂

Musical Coffee Shop Chairs

I find it amazing that everyone appears to have a favorite seat at coffee shops. This afternoon, I took a small table with a lone blue metal folding chair. I bypassed the blue chair. Instead, I got permission from a man at the next table to take a well worn but small, comfortable high back chair. Immediately after I sat down, but before I could get out my computer, another man came for that metal folding chair. He chose that blue chair over other closer empty chairs. And in the background, others swapped out the inferior (in their minds) for more desirable chairs.

My next move will be to claim the table from the man who let me take this chair. I think his chair is more comfortable, too. 😉

Sansa: Blue Ring of Death

My Sansa e280 player seemingly died a few weeks ago. It suffered from the dreaded “blue ring of death” – when the screen is black and the blue control ring is lit. I was mad. I still am mad. I was given no warning.

It took hours of head banging and research to troubleshoot, find the cause, and fix it. So if you find yourself with the blue ring of death then do the following:

  1. Get yourself on a computer running linux. It is free and its windows versions operate like a cross between Mac OSX (a linux distribution) and Microsoft Windows. I find it is just as stable as Windows but with a better price tag (free) and just as much software (also free). I currently use the Ubuntu flavor of linux -  http://www.ubuntu.com/ It is not hard to install yourself.
  2. Open a terminal and run these two commands:
    1. sudo lsusb
    2. sleep 10 && dmesg |tail
  3. If your computer recognizes your Sansa then you likely have a software problem. In which case, those commands will return lines that mention Sansa. A good place to start is http://fixmysansa.blogspot.com/ and the Rockbox forums (search for “blue ring death”). You will likely need to set the sansa to manufacturing mode.
  4. If your computer does not recognize your Sansa, those commands will not return a line that says ‘Sansa.’ In which case, unscrew the cover over the battery compartment and press down on the little black rubber nub just above the battery. Behind the rubber nub is the flash memory chip. For some reason or another, the flash memory module may disconnect itself from the Sansa. See: http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=21908.msg151537#msg151537
  5. If you don’t have either of those problems post your issue to the Rockbox forums. It seems people are always willing to help. Paste as much detail as you can including the output from the two linux commands above.

For me, pushing the little rubber nub fixed my sansa e280. Its memory chip apparently became dislodged.

BTW: It can get worse. I busted the lcd screen yesterday; now it is an expensive flash drive. 🙁

UPDATE: I spoke too soon. My player still works, even with a broken LCD screen. I installed the Rockbox voice file and presto, whamo, voila! It works again, albeit without any visual menus. The voice option is provided as an accessiblity feature so blind and other sight impaired users can use an MP3 player running Rockbox. Surprisingly, Sansa’s OEM firmware does not provide screen reader or voice capabilities thus shutting out a large, potential market. Next, I’ll need to take some time to disconnect the lcd so it stops draining power. Maybe I’ll even get another few off eBay for a few dollars apiece for backup and to give away.