Jessica Tempithak

Dear all, I think this is going to be my last post ever on edublogs. It comes to the point where I think I have blogged quite enough for this course in this semester. It has been sixteen consecutive weeks since the first week of class that I continually blogged without giving it any break even when we do not have class in some weeks, weel, that is because I don not count weeks off, I only count how long this course last and that is sixteen weeks. And from Ajarn Brett told us, we will not be required to blog anymore in the next courses with him. Personally, I think the blog assignment is one of my favorite though. It doesn’t require much efforts and isn’t that big pressure if you can do it regularly. I think blogging little by little every week is by far a lot better than concentrating on a single or two final projects which carry too much chuck of grades. That’s suicidal, but that’s what we are facing with the final project too for this course too.

Anyways, for the last topic I am going to blog today is still going to be on the same one as the last blog I just posted. It is about bodies and sex. However, even though the topic came from what we have learned in class, I will not use required readings from that week but my own reading, so that it counts as an external source. I will base my post on this week using two readings together. One is named “Gender-Fair Language” by Jenny Redfern, published in 2002 and another is named “The Psychology of the Generic Masculine” by Wendy Martyna, published in 1980. And as the title of today’s blog might have indicated the content already, today I am going to discuss how gender is represented sexist-ly in language use.

Language and gender are two subjects which are closely tied together

We all know that the two biological genders are always being judged politically in one way or another. Sexism is an issue which happens everywhere, even in language use. In language use, it is often a problem when gender is involved and identifying specific gender may result in further discrimination. Nonsexist Language or Gender-Fair Language may be your solution. Gender-Fair Language minimizes unnecessary concern about gender in your subject matter, allowing both you and your reader to focus on what people do rather than on which sex they happen to be (Redfern 2002).

One classic example of sexism in language is the practice of using he and man as “generic” terms (Redfern 2002). Many times in writing, we face a difficulty to choose a pronoun he or she to refer to a person we do not know the actual gender of. Solutions may be to use the word “they” to refer to the possibility of it happening to be of both sexes or to use a variety “he/she” or “he or she” to convey ambiguity, or the easiest way out would be to use the assumed pronoun “he”. Here, a male-dominant ideology is represented clearly. Rather than presenting a general picture of reality, he and man used generically can mislead the audience(Redfern 2002). By using either he, his, or him as a generic pronoun when the referent’s gender is unknown or irrelevant, the writer misrepresents the species as male (Martyna 1980). Research has shown that the average reader’s tendency is to imagine a male when reading he or man, even if the rest of the passage is gender-neutral (Martyna 1980).

Sometimes language can be very sexist

The same problem happens with the word “man”. Examples can be drawn from words with endings -man, -men as well as in the word “mankind”. To be fairer to gender in language use, try changing to say policeman or policewoman to police officer instead, say chair person instead of chairman, and say humankind instead of mankind. Even though this problem might sound not so bad in English, it really is even worse in German. In German, a word which is used to refer to people or persons in general is “man” which is a variation of the word “mann” that literally means “man”. For example, one of a famous German saying is “Man weisst es schon, aber man macht es einfach nicht.” This sentence, if translated into a less gendered language like English would become something like: “People know it already, but people just don’t do it.” If we look at this sentence in English, it would have been a good form of Gender-Fair Language Use because no gender is directly referred to, it is just a general statement which talks about any person and all persons in general. However, when we look at the German version of the sentence, even though the word “man” in this case is meant to refer to any person and all persons in general, not with any specification in gender, its audience will still imagine a pictures of visual ‘men’ characters who already knew things but just don’t do it.

Nevertheless, in many European languages gender is almost impossible to avoid in language use. Many languages, such as but not limited to, German, French, Spanish and Italian, contain gendered articles. This means that every single noun has specific sexed gender, either male or female, and sometimes like in German, it allows then to be a neutral sex to. This shows that in many cultures, genders are very important as so to identify and categorize basically everything to where they belong to. There is no outside of gender, not even in practical linguistics of everyday life.

Farewell ladies and gentlemen,

Jess.

Hello people, here I am back blogging again after quite a while. I hope you all had a great Songkran week. My, I have been wet and dried for at least a hundred times and even though the political situation is very hot right now, I still found the cool way out for happiness during Songkran. Anyways, today I decided to come back and create a new post for my blog. Apparently, there is only one topic left in the course syllabus that we were supposed to discuss in class that I have not yet blog about. It is the topic of bodies and sex.

Looking through one of the required readings for the week, one article actually stands out and caught my attention since we had a class tutorial presentation week where Parima mentioned about the bedroom as the space of intimacy. I am talking about the reading by Dana Wilson Kovacs called “Consumption and Sexual Intimacy: Towards an Understanding of Intimate Cultures in Everyday Life.” The article was cut from the book Gender and Consumption: Domestic Cultures and the Commercialization of Everyday Life, published in 2007.

Bedroom is perfect for relaxation

In this article, many aspects in relation to sexual intimacy are discussed. Among them, my attention is mostly attracted to the topic of the bedroom. Bedrooms are a major part of a house or a dwelling place that is often regarded as the most important. For homes are the most suitable location for staging intimate action in general, because it offers privacy, comfort and safety to the dwellers, bedrooms are probably the main site where the act of sexual closeness is most suitable to be performed at (Kovacs 2007). Bedrooms contain specific features that give out senses of high qualities a place ever need to be a perfect dwelling place. These qualities include high privacy: since it is the part of the house where many people spend their time at while in their house and also the place where most of each individual’s belongings are kept, high comfort: since it is the place where most people’s time is spent at then it better be the most comfortable and convenient space to relax and work too, and high safety: since it is also the place where one’s belongings are most kept at this means that a lot of memories and secrets are stored there as well.

Since bedrooms are the most perfect place where it is most private, comfortable and safe, it falls without any doubt under the title of being the best place where most private activities, such as sexual intercourse, should be performed. Symbolically, a bedroom stands for a material expression of intimacy and idealized erotic conduct (Kovacs 2007). Even though bedrooms are the most basic space in every person’s life, it can also be, from time to time, very special in certain occasions too. It is the place where many special things can happen, and that includes making love too. To keep bedrooms the best place for every thing, its decoration and arrangement is very important to as so to keep the dwellers most satisfy with the space at all times.

Bedroom is also perfect for romance

As already mentioned, decorations and arrangements of bedrooms are very important. For such privately owned space, being able to decorate and arrange the bedroom the way each individual wants would certainly makes one want to spend more time in there. It would create a lot more comfortable feeling with whatever the person is doing in there, and that obviously goes for sex too. Rearranging bedrooms periodically would serve as to change the atmosphere of the dwelling space. This is can also affect in changing ordinary occasions that occur in the particular banal space to result in extraordinary manifestations of passion too (Kovacs 2007). Personal choices of decoration and arrangement of bedrooms are very much implicit to the function and symbolic meaning one holds (Kovacs 2007). We can tell how each person imagine their love fantasy to be when looking at the way they their bedrooms are represent. Dim lights, candles, scented sticks, aroma oil, fresh flowers, romantic paintings, music, mirrors, lining curtains, cushy couch, thick rugs, fluffy beds, pillows for two and vice versa, are examples of features in the bedroom which, either are inspired by sexual fantasies, or can inspire more sexual action at the space itself (Kovacs 2007). These features will help one to be able to easily understand and tell a brief assumption of the place’s owner’s perfect sex tales.

At first I thought I would share personal matters on the topic just like I always do every time when analyzing or discussing a certain topic on my blog, however, I changed my mind and decided that it would be better for every party to refrain from sharing my intimate relations I have with or on my bedroom for the sake of my own privacy records and for you readers to not feel too awkward with my personal self. This is why I think this should be just the just the right time to conclude this topic and leave you all to think by yourselves about your own bedrooms and whether or not it would serve as your perfect love nest. Well, at least I think mine does.

Anyways, to sum up, the bedroom is considered to be one of the most private and important part of a dwelling place. It is a place where intimate feelings between the boundaries of fantasy and routine are conjured, and where the extraordinary and the ordinary are collectively blurred (Kovacs 2007). It is the place where most people’s time is spent at, therefore it has to be or at least should be the place where a person can feel most comfortable and safe for doing any private activity, including sex, at. To achieve that, decorations and arrangements can not be overlooked. They play very important roles in building several moods for dwellers and to keep them most satisfy at their own very spaces. They actually imply a lot about how one rank the importance of his or her matters in life as well as how they want their life to be played.

Take good care of your nests,

Jess.

For this week’s post, I decided to work on a topic of eating and food. After reading the four required readings for the week, I had to make a very difficult decision on what to blog since all four readings contain very minimum theories I can apply to what I have been thinking of blogging for the week of eating. But well, after all, I changed my mind from what I wanted to blog to what I can blog according to the articles. I chose the article from Leedom Lefferts on “Sticky rice, fermented fish and the course of a kingdom: The politics of food in Northeast Thailand”, cut from the book Asian Studies Review which was published in 2005, to be a model of my blog today.

Cheese Fondue

Applying the idea of how food can be political in societies, I am introducing you this week’s post, not on khaoniew and plaraa, but on something different, something from another world, yet still works under the same theory: the cheese fondue.

The cheese fondue I will be talking about today will be taken for granted as referring to the Swiss cheese fondue. Even though cheese fondue is traditional to many western countries, the analysis and interpretation in this post will be made related mainly to the Swiss culture since I have certain background knowledge on that which would help me interpret and analyze the politics behind it.

According to my own selection of reading on Swiss culture titled “Käsfondue” in a book called Hoi Zäme by Sergio Lievano and Nicole Egger, Cheese Fondue ranks number one on the Swiss Typical Dish List (Lievano and Egger 2006). It is a dish where you only need two main ingredients: bread slices and cheese. The Swiss culture, because it is situated in the Alps, is very dependant on dairy products, bakery and carbs, and a few winter vegetables such as potatoes and beats. This is because the nature there just does not provide a lot of food choices. In opposition to Thai culture where we have “rice in every field and fish in every pond,” it would be very lucky for them to have “milk in every cow and potatoes under every ground” (Lievano and Egger 2006). Traditionally, what they regularly have are the same winter vegetables all year round, cows to provide them meat and milk, and grains to provide them bakery and pastas. They cannot ask much in their location of the world where there is barely summer and neither is any connection to any sea but on the mountains where there is winter most of the time, just like cheese fondue that does not require many ingredients that would be impossible to find in the Alps.

Just cheese and bread are needed

Cheese fondue conveys simplicity as well as scarcity in ecology and economy of the traditional hill tribe Swiss mountaineers (Lievano and Egger 2006). All food is political, they imply social status in themselves (Lefferts 2005). Whether or not a dish belongs or refers to a high class confectionary culture, it will be judged by its processes of preparation and presentation (Lefferts 2005). In this case, cheese fondue conquers none. The preparation is very simple, you just need to slice the bread into small pieces and get you cheese ready melted. The presentation is also not very pretty. There is one pot to melt the cheese and one fork to dip the bread into the cheese, that is all it needs. In the old days, the mountaineers have to live their lives on fondue because of several reasons. Those reasons explain why cheese fondue is the perfect dish for their lifestyle.

It is because cheese fondue is, as above said, very simple. The preparation is easy and it can be preserved easily. If they could not finish it all in one meal then the cheese can be left until it is hard in chunk again and can be eaten in any form or with anything afterwards. The bread can also be kept for the next meal since it is common to eat a lot of breads all the time anyways. The location where they live also gives them very little chance of getting other import food from other places where more choices are available. To survive on their own, they would have to live with what they already have. Also, in the old times, the Swiss were not this rich, they were just farmers in the mountains who feed cows and yodel on the top of snowy mountains. They cannot waste so much money on food, as long as there is something to keep them away from starvation, that thing no matter what it is would be fine for them. Lastly, it is because of the cold weather and the farming occupation they have, they need a lot of energy. Cheese fondue is a perfect source of calories (Lievano and Egger 2006). The fat of cheese and carbohydrates will keep them warm throughout the winter.

Simple food can tell how self-sufficient the people who produced and ate these foods are (Lefferts 2005). Cheese fondue is one of the typical dishes in the world that is certainly very self-sufficient. Since ecology and economy are the key factors which will determine how food from each culture comes out like (Lefferts 2005), cheese fondue implies the facts that the traditional Swiss culture is nothing more than a simple mountain farming culture. They are happy with what they have and they do not need more than what they need. If there is milk in their cows and potatoes under their grounds then they are happy.

Say Cheese,

Jess.

“Music makes the people come together
Music mix the bourgeoisie and the rebel”

Music, Madonna 2000.

This song, especially these two phrases, has been running through my head since we had the lesson about Music some last week. I knew I would eventually have to blog about this topic and I kept thinking about thinking of it so I will not forget that I want to use it as an opening to my post once I really get to blog about it. For the quote from the song I put up there, it has already been clear in conveying two things about my post today, one is that it cannot be about anything else but music and two is that I am going to talk about how music relates people to together.

To further discuss about how music plays a role among people in the society, I chose to use a very useful article from the require reading list of this course under the topic of music in week 12. It is the work of Andy Bennett called “Music” which is cut from a book called Culture and Everyday Life, printed in 2005. If you readers have a chance to go through this article, it would be very nice. It is actually quite an easy reading and the author, Bennett, has made my reading much easier by stating main ideas and explains the key concepts very clearly without hiding it behind overcomplexed sentences unlike other academic articles we are used to.

In this article, it is stated that “styles of music are appropriated by groups of individuals and used as a means of collectively distinguishing themselves from other social groups” (Bennett 2005). Alike what we have discussed in class, music is one of the clear-cut mean which distinguishes and identifies groups and subgroups in the society. It brings people with the same interest together while exclude the others away. A renaissance concert hall with classic theater plays and full volume opera music would fill a crowd with a different taste of music appreciation than those in a modern concert hall which houses live shows of hardcore rock bands. Normally people of the same background would end up liking things that are similar, however, it does not mean that social background is the mean which judges what kind of music certain groups of people like or have to like. On the contrary, it is fully an individual decision. A stereotype of a black person from a ghetto might be judged as a rapper or hip-hop type, but evidently, many famous singers with such background can become representatives of other types of music such as blue, jazz and even opera as well.

Lukthung Farangs

Another example is even clearer, think about the two famous lukthung singers who are both purely farangs, with blond hair, blue eyes, but a heart more Thai than some Thais who are too westernized they forgot their actual land of birth. Here we are talking about Jonas and Christy. Of their backgrounds, they should be, or at least look like, a fan of western pop music rather than something of the lower class like lukthung. However, it is their own consent decision to represent themselves with the form of music they like and there is nothing wrong with it. As well as being conveyed in the lyric above quoted, music brings everyone together, the high and the low, it does not matter where they are from and what they do, only if they have the same interest and share the same sense of music, they can become one group, one community and unite together.

different music styles creat different music communions

Since anyone can join a group of music appreciation as they like and that there is no other requirements but the heart to love it, that music appreciation group can be viewed as another kind of “community” too. Quoting Bennett, he says that “Community has been applied to the study of music in two main ways. First, it is a mean of addressing the way in which locally produced musics become a means through which individuals identify with a particular city, town or region and their place within it. Second is that the significance of community is a symbolic construct, that is, as a means through which individuals who lack the commonality of shared local experience attempt to cast music itself as a ‘way of life’ and a basis for community” (Bennett 2005). To discuss and explain his concepts in length, it could be concluded, in my own words and hopefully the more understandable version, that music is related to community as community is related to music in two ways, one is that music can represent local community identity and two, is that music can create a new community identity.

music is racially steoreotyped

Let’s just start with the first idea. Music can represent local community identity (Bennett 2005). That is quite obvious in itself already. There are certain set ideologies and stereotypes made since long time ago. That people of certain groups represent certain types of music. That the white would enjoy classic music, the black with hip-hop, the brown with jazz and salsa, and the yellow with other exotic instruments. Just as I mentioned lukthung, it is a kind of music which really represents a certain type of local community. The Isan people owns the lukthung music, not the Bangkokians, for example. When we look through the styles of music, we can actually see or imagine the groups whom it belongs to quite vividly and the image sticks with it, always.

From that point, it brings us to the second idea. Music can create a new community, a new culture, a new “way of life,” by gathering together people who may lack other common interests in their own local society into another society where they are all the same, sharing the same interest for music (Bennett 2005). There are always black sheep among the white ones. It is impossible that everybody can enjoy the same music taste among the same cultural backgrounds. Say, a person in a Chinese traditional culture where everyone enjoys the same Chinese opera or “Ngiew” kind of music, can breaks the rules of the society and become a rocker when he joins the rock music world. It is a place where he can actually expresses his inner identity which cannot be shared or accepted among his own locality.

In conclusion, three points have been made in this post. One is that music appreciation has nothing to do with bound identities or representative stereotypes. Two is that music represents local identity of people whom the certain styles belong to, and three is that music can also create a new community for those who does not belong to their own expected identities. I hope this post give you a clearer view on how music is related to people and their communities. I think I would just leave it here.

Put the records on and sing out your soul,

Jess.

Considering how we spend money each day on buying necessary and unnecessary things in our lives. It can be very easily concluded that we, especially for the fact that we live in the big city which has already been much influenced by consumerism, spend so much time, so much money to shop. For Bangkok is known as one of the best place to shop, shopping places vary from gigantic supermalls to roadside stands. Every person, as shoppers, has their own decision to make what they want and where they want to purchase goods.

As I have observed the Balac people for almost two years now, I came to the conclusion, of which is a totally personal assumption and based on no research at all, that we prefer to shop in shopping malls more than on the streets. I’m not saying that we are all hiso and cannot stand walking on the concrete ground, yet I assume that if we can choose, we would probably prefer the indoor air-conditioned places more. People of middle class and upper middle class, like we or most of us are, tend to like shopping malls more than street vendors. Why? I came to many answers for this question and even more when I finished reading the required reading of week 10 about shopping. The article, which what will be discussed on this post is based on, is called “Shopping” written by Audrey Yue, cut from the book Interpreting Everyday Culture, published in 2003.

Take the example of shopping for food. My prior assumption would already make it obvious that we would probably prefer supermarkets and superstores more than fresh markets and roadside grocery stores, or the so called raan-kaii-kong-chum, in our soi and alleys. Of course, I bet we all or at least most of us like to go to fresh markets and such grocery stores too, but probably not all the time. The reasons we prefer to shop at other bigger and more convenient superstores are such as but not limited to the facts that: superstores are in a better location (Yue 2003), better indoor infrastructure, have a wide range of variety goods (Seth and Randall quoted in Yue 2003) , all their goods are branded and standardized (Yue 2003), the prices are reasonable and affordable(Seth and Randall quoted in Yue 2003), there are other services such as banks, salon and food court in one same place(Yue 2003), and they also provide better services including on and off sales, guarantees, convenient parking lots(Seth and Randall quoted in Yue 2003), long opening time (Yue 2003), and even give you chances of winning special prizes if you are lucky enough.

The familiar Tesco Lotus logo

To further illustrate this point, I would like to use Tesco Lotus, one of the local supermarket/superstore in my neighborhood I most often visit, as an textual example to analyze. Let’s just have a look at Tesco Lotus in three categories of how they win the shoppers’ hearts from one point to another, respectively because of their space, goods and services.

First of all, The Space is better. Tesco Lotus in my neighborhood of Onnut is located at a very nice location. It situates on the mainstreet of Sukhumvit road. It is also very close to one of today’s most popular public transportation, the BTS skytrain, they are so closed together they actually have a skywalk paveway connecting BTS and Tesco Lotus together. It is at the front of the mall, where the bus stop is, as well as the taxi stop. The area is in the center of the local community, surrounded by thousands of households and hundreds of resident and office buildings. Even though local shoppers can just walk to one of the grocery stores in front of their soi, if they go just a little bit further they will easily reach Tesco Lotus where everything is just better. Moreover, it also has a better indoor space than fresh markets or street vendors, that is clear. In a country with the weather like this, noone wants to walk in the heat. They all prefer air-conditioned and cooling roofed shopping space. The bright, light, clean and organized interior of Tesco Lotus is one of the main reasons it wins our hearts and makes us turn our backs against the local stores.

Fresh food for cheap price at Tesco Lotus

Secondly, The Goods are better. Tesco Lotus provides a wide range of variety goods. They sell a diverse range of food and non-food commodities (Yue 2003). Shoppers want to shop not only for their immediate requirements in fresh food and groceries but also for other articles – clothing, shoes, household items, toys, etc (Kingston 1996 quoted in Yue 2003). Once to get to Tesco Lotus, it is like you get to an all in one pit stop where you can get everything you need from apples to radio, from soap to cigarettes, and from beach wears to salad bar. Even though you might argue that the grocery store next to your house also provides you many variety goods, but still, do they provide you a wide range of choices for you to choose in one category? I believe it would be hard to say yes. All the goods in such superstores are standardized and have brands (Yue 2003), either a well known one or the less well known ones. Brands are commodities which lure consumers to buy their products and believe that their branded products are better than the non-branded ones. Advertising plays a big role here too. In addition, yet so convenient and so much provided at supermarkets, still the price is reasonable and affordable by the mainstream shoppers of the middle class (Seth and Randall quoted in Yue 2003). Even though it is definitely higher than from local shops, the other factors already stated would make it up to the shoppers and make them think it is worth it go to shop at superstores rather than at local shops.

Happy shopping at Tesco Lotus

Lastly, The Services are better. As I already said, once you get to Tesco Lotus, it is like you get to an all in one pit stop already. This also applies to the fact that, at supermarkets, they also provide you other services such as banking, dry cleaning and key cutting (Yue 2003). You don’t have to run around to too many places to get several things done for your household, just go to a supermarket and your problem is solved. Car parks are also provided (Seth and Randall quoted in Yue 2003), and you can come at anytime because they have longer opening hours than any other shops around (Yue 2003). Moreover, if you are lucky enough, you can get special discounts from seasons to seasons or win a prize when they have special events and you can even return your purchased products if they are not standardized. All of these examples are the special characteristics roadside shops cannot give you.

However, even though I have been illustrating how oh so good the supermarkets are, they are in fact only strategies they use to attract more customers. I can’t deny that I shop at Tesco Lotus a lot, but I have to admit that it is actually not the best idea, because all in all this good old supermarket franchise does not belong to a Thai company but of a foreign one. So in a way, we are transferring our money out of the country bit by bit by shopping at supermarkets like this. Still, we just can’t avoid being lured and subjected by their nice facades they tactically used to pull us to them.

I still shop in superstores anyway,

Jess.

In this post, I decided to go way back to the most basic, the very first reading of the very first topic of this course, the reading of week one. Amazingly, yes it is due to the fact that every other week contains at least three to four required readings, the first week only has one, what a wow. So, looking back at that one and only reading of week one which is the work of John Hartley under the title of “The Ordinary as a Sign of Itself: Culture and everyday Life,” being published in 2003, I found a topic in which I am interested in discussing since we have been discussing it in class for at least two times, as well as in another class namely Ajarn Suradech’s Theory of Cultural Studies class too. Since the topic is also nicely shown in the book we use in that class, I also choose to use the book “Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice” by Chris Barker, specifically third edition published in 2008, as another source of reference too.

The topic, if not already being figured out by you readers, I am happy to tell you it is the concept of the banal Flâneur. Wait a minute, does this sound any familiar to you? Hope it sure does because it really rang a loud bell to me. The concept of flâneur is explained in Barker’s book as “Strollers who walks the anonymous space of the modern city experiencing the complexity, disturbances and confusions of the streets with their shops, displays, images and variety of persons” (Barker 2008). I am sure we all have experiences in being flâneur before, at some point in our lives, especially when we live in town where we roll down the streets more than down the wood paths, we may have been in the flâneur situation for countless of times. At least this applies to me, I can honestly say I am fluent in being a flâneur.

People on the street: purposefully walking or purposelessly just walking?

Imagine ourselves being a flâneur, we see so many things happening around us and we are full of confusion. The world goes round and we are aimless on the streets. For the comtemporary version of flâneurie, shopping malls and theme parks, especially but not exclusively Disneyland and Disney World, become locations for the new flâneurs. The concept flâneur is full of ambiguity. It is still uncertain whether she or he is simply strolling, loitering and looking or actually doing these activities for some specific purposes (Wilson quoted in Hartley 2003). Basically the flâneurs are just trying to be as normal as they can when they are strolling aimlessly to a nowhere destination for no purpose. This also corresponds with Buck-Morss idea of “look but don’t touch” as also stated in the article (Buck-Morss quoted in Hartley 2003). Of course, if you are just trying to being as normal as you can then you do not want to be caught reading some lame gossip magazines or ask for the fancy shoes’ price when you already know you do not want or cannot afford one.

Zurich Main Street

This flâneur condition happened to me all the time when I was in Switzerland. And I didn’t even pay attention to it, nor did I know there is actually a study of the act I do and a special term for it. I spent a lot of time with myself when I was there. Sometimes I just don’t feel like going home just yet. So I caught a train to Zurich and without any idea of what to do, I just walk along the main shopping street among the crowd trying to look as normal and as purposeful as the others around me. I cannot even walk slowly, because Swiss people normally walk fast and since they are very punctual they have to hurry to everywhere they go so they can make sure they are not late for any event. But since I don’t have any event waiting for me, I do not need to walk in a fast pace, had I do not, I would look different. I would look like someone, even though in fact I am, who is just hanging around on the street having nowhere to go. The fact sounds just too crucial to accept.

Solution one: iPod, Solution two: Fags.

I often have to listen to my iPod at all times, just so that I have something to do. Sometimes I would just sit in park and light up my cigarettes, pretending I am just having a small cigarette break and then I will potentially carry on with my agenda, of which you know it, I have none. When I really run out of gags, I will find a café on the street and have a seat and enjoy my hot chocolate and become the flâneur observer instead. I like to watch people walking and then I would wonder if they actually walking for a purpose or just pretending like me. Exactly what I do is written in the article as well, so I will end it here with the quote.

“I love people watching. I might be sitting in a café and I’ll see an attractive girl who has something that makes her stand out – the way she walks or wears her clothes – and your imagination wanders. You think: ‘I wonder what she does for a living. I wonder if she has a boyfriend’. Then I might see an attractive man and my creative juices flow. I might put them together and build a life for them, a reason for meeting and some sort of conflict” (Bianchin quoted in Hartley 2003).

Purpose does not matter,

Jess.

Greetings, edubloggers. Here returns me and my dearly new post. Last week I wrote about leisure under the topic of pub as a home away from home, this week after calculating and finding the results of having no other clue about what to blog about, I came up with the idea to talk about the other side of the discussion topic of the same week, last week, about work. Looking through the materials given for the week, I found some interesting ideas I would like to further discuss in this post. Those ideas can are drawn from the reading of week nine, being written by Greg Noble, called “Everyday Work” (cut from the book “Interpreting Everyday Culture,” published in 2003).

Normally when we discuss about everyday life, we tend to focus more on the family life, the home and other entertainment gadgets around us when in fact work is probably the site where people in their working age spend most time at and for (Noble 2003). Everyday five days a week is spent for work. Work includes many activities and social interactions. You have to concentrate and use the things you learnt in schools and colleges to help you process your work, be able to accomplish it well and get good pay as a return. Until now, the most important key and target for dedicating oneself to work is the money aka capitalism.

Stress at work

Capitalism is undeniably the most important concept here. Bare in mind we have been forced to go to school, to study hard and get good grades, to fight against other competitors of the same age to get into better universities, to rise higher than anybody else in the business world, all in all just to reach one purpose: the biggest money gain. As I earlier discussed in my blog about home weeks ago, I made it clear that home is supposed to be the place where you can relax and feel most comfort at. In contrary, work place is the site where you are supposed to feel the stress and keep focusing on producing the largest number of benefit. Capitalism here plays a big role in separating people from their home and work (Noble 2003). Some people, and now more and more, even have to move residence just so that they can find a better job at a better place which can provide them a better wage. Capital cities around the world are now full of new immigrants moving in in hope to find a new dream job of their lives. Now, under the stressful capital potential every worker has set for themselves to achieve, I would like to link one thing to it, in a different view. Last week in tutorial class we have already discussed how we, as workers, can find leisure in work places. Now, let’s have a look at the employer’s view and the solution of how to provide leisure to workers and not making them too obsessed with it their works.

Salathai Bangkok Overview

To further illustrate this point, I will use examples from real life experience at the restaurants of my family, Thai restaurant “Salathai” of two branches, one in the heart of Bangkok by the Chao Phraya River and another in Bournemouth, England. So yea, I grew up with a family restaurant/ catering business. Both restaurants, as I observed, have quite good facilities and options for workers to help them relax and have more fun at work place. Let me tell you how. First of all, as Noble state in his article, aesthetic of the work place can help workers relax and joyful while still keeping them professional at work (Noble 2003), Salathai restaurants provide staff lounges, where staffs of all positions can enjoy themselves during break times and times before and after their shifts. In that room, they are allowed to do anything they like and decorate their own corner of shelf and locker as they wish. This way the decorations can help them ‘domesticate’ their working areas and feel at least a step closer to home (Noble 2003).All areas in the entire restaurant is kept clean and organized for less complication for workers. We also provide them convenience as much as we can, such as the case of chefs who have to stand in front of the cooking station all the time and have their clothes stink in the smell of food, as well as waiters and waitresses who walk around all day soaking their uniforms in wet and smelly sweat, we do laundry for them. This is one of the best think I think Salathai has. Imagine you go to work after a tiring night of yesterday and find your uniform fresh and clean, isn’t that a fresh start for the bright new day of service?

Salathai Waitor Staffs

As also already stated in the earlier part that work is the site where a lot of social contact and interactions happen (Noble 2003), relationships among workers in the same place should be encouraged too. For Salathai workers, we arrange what we call field trip every now and then. It’s a day where all the staff can go enjoy themselves together somewhere nice and without concerns of being professional at all time, higher and lower rank of workers can interact with each other freely and therefore can create tighter friendship and understanding between each other easier.

So far I have discussed basic ideas of how my family’s restaurants have provided our staffs for their leisure and relaxation in and out of work places. For those of you who read this and does not feel like working in a restaurant is bad at all if you have these things provided for you, believe me you are wrong. Restaurant workers have to work harder than you think to get those fancy food delivery to your table. I hope we can do more for them too, and as soon as we can and put more into staff privileges list then you will be posted for sure!

Work hard and play harder,

Jess.

Hello world, it’s been more than a week since I last updated my blog. Reason why? I think it’s obvious to all of us, for the sake that last week was a hell of a bad period of examination, I consider my last post great enough to have been able to make it during that period itself. However, despite the lost time spent for the exams, the results are still scary to know. That’s why I’d like to turn the focus of today’s post to something a little bit more fun and relaxing. It is also a part of Thursday’s class topic, yes, I’m talking about leisure.

My favorite pub “Ochsen” from outside, classic since 1476

If you read my blog title you can probably guess that I’m going to talk about pub, people and culture related to it. The title might sound very similar to an all-time notable movie, Pulp Fiction, but no, it has nothing to do with the movie. I just happen to very like the way it sounds haha. What will be discussed in this blog today may also include some, though not as fictional as indicated in the title, but my own real experience and observations as well as an excerpt from an external reading I picked up from the library, the article is called “Home from Home: the pub and everyday life” written by Diane Watson (cut from the book “Understanding Everyday Life” by Tony Bennett and Diane Watson, Black Well Publishing, 2002).

The article talks about how pubs play a role in our everyday lives. Pubs, as in public houses, are one of the most frequently visited of leisure venues, with sixty-nine percent of the entitled population stating that they visited pubs at some time as a part of their leisure activity (Watson 2002). This place is where people go to relax and a lot of relaxing activities are done there and consequently a lot of stories happened there too. It is analytically a site of everyday life and a key social institution (Watson 2002). Of course, pubs are somewhere activities running in our lives happen, thought overlooked and taken for granted in general.

Essential to the very word “pub” is the derivation from the word “public house” and idea of the notion of a public house is the idea of “home with a host” (Watson 2002). It is a house which is open to the public to socialize and relax as if they’re at their own home. For some people who are familiar with a specific pub, that place could be their home away from home. It could be somewhere where identities and bonding are made and therefore recreated a sense of belonging, security, comfort and other necessary concepts of making a place become homely, as discussed in the last blog.

Chief and landlord of Ochsen, Francois

I myself have had a personal experience with a certain pub before and I would like to share it with you readers too. So this pub I’m talking about is in Switzerland. During the time of my stay there, this place has been more or less like a third home of mine, after my real home and my school, the two places I spent most time at of course. Every Friday and Saturday night, if not for any special event or reason, me and my friends will be regularly meeting up at this pub which is five minutes away from my house. It’s the place where we all gather up, share drinks and conversations about how our lives had been the past week. The place is called “Gasthof zum goldenen Ochsen” or what we colloquially referred to as “The Oxx.” For us having been the regular clients of every weekend for a long time, we have pretty much created our sense of belonging their already. It’s like it’s “our place.” And when we see a rookie came in, we just can’t stop but to stare at them and wonder who they are or if they are of a younger generation then you can’t help but to imagine them coming more often and one day become a new generation of regular clients just like us too. So here, we created clear lines of “us” and “what belongs to us” in against to “them” and “what belongs to them.” It is evident that we create our own sense of belonging to pubs we go often, however, that is not all the reason people keep going to the same pub all the time. Not only because they want to go to their other  “home” but because the pub brings them into the inner circle of the society within their own comfortable space.

Typical Friday night with my friends at the Ochsen

Pubs are without doubts a place where social bonding is widely practiced. Suppose you go a pub alone, what do you do? You go to the bar, you order your drink, you exchange a few words with the bartender and sit at the bar stool until you see a group of people or a particular person you want to socialize with, then you go them and start a conversation. There you go, new social bonding made. Now think of a different situation. You go a pub with your friends, what do you do? You go take a seat and shout out to your friends at the bar to tell them what you want for your drink, you wait until they come back to you, once they are back, you raise a toast, then you start to talk to them about whatever the topic may be. There again, socialization founded. Social processes are easier to make in pubs, that’s clear. To put this idea into nicer words, pubs became a site where sociology made anthropologically strange events normal (Watson 2002).

Apart from the two discussed points that pubs illustrate, both as a homely space and a social space, pubs are undeniably a place where many other events occur too. These cover such as but not limited to gambling, drinking, gossiping, quarrels, crime, trades, and many others. Too bad there are not so many community pubs in Thailand since our culture is not very familiar with that. But for me, I had many memories about pubs, both good and bad. At least “The Ochsen” is the place where many memorable scenes of my life happened. It’s also a place I feel like I belong to and a place where I made so many friends and I would never feel alone there.

Cheers to The Ochsen and all Ochsners,

Jess.

This is going to be a very tiring week, don’t you think? We’re in the middle of the exams and all. Then why I’m I on Edublogs when I should be reading books for the upcoming crucial midterm exams later on this week then. Well, I guess it’s because if I don’t do it now then the haunting reminder in my head would never stop shouting “Update you blog, update your blog, update your blog” and might as well further effect my further study time for the evil Asian history class and the totally-cannot-wait after exam parties. For that reason, tonight seems like a good night to blog so I can get myself out of worry and start studying tomorrow for the not-so-bad Spanish exam. And well, considering that I don’t want to spend too much time doing this tonight, I would make it easy by blogging about what my group has just made a presentation about last week on the topic about home.

So for this post, I would like to draw all of your attention to one of the reading I most paid attention on (since I had to run the tutorial presentation about it, obviously). It’s the fifty-something-pages-long article under the name “Residence: House as Home.” Written by Alison Blunt and Robyn Dowling in 2006.

Houseless but Homeless?

So yea, the topic is home. Now, when we talk about home, we usually have the picture of a house in our mind. Yet the two words, house and home, are distinctively different and should be understood that way. Theoretically, a house is a materialistic constructed place for the purpose of a dwelling space. Home, on the other hand, is just a sense of privacy, comfort and domesticity formed by the dwellers and their relationship with the environment of the space. Now that the two ideas are understood to be detached from one another, it should also be clear that the idea of homeless is not the same as houseless. When talking about a homeless person, in general it means someone who does not have a house to live in. Yet, again, theoretically, it is possible to be homeless even while you are physically sheltered. For example, children in bad home environment can feel very homeless because of lack of love and care in their home, not because they are unaware of the roof over their head (Blunt and Dowling 2006). Of course, this theory has to be able to work the other way around too. Even though people who can scarcely say that they own a place where they can refer to as a house, they do not necessarily have to homeless. This is because they can build their own homeliness even without a material construction estate. They can build identity, roots, networks and other necessary conditions which attach them to the sense of home with themselves or their belongings or the places where they would be technically unable to be defined as a house.

However, in the real world, nobody wants to be homeless or houseless. Everybody wants to have a house where they can call home. But making a house become a home is not that simple. It requires quite a lot. From what can be drawn from the reading, the authors stressed out that to have a homely home, ideology must be achieved and economy would be a needed drive. In other words, if you want to have a homely home as ideology defined it, you need to have money to help you pursuit it.

Ideal Home

Money, in this case is needed because home is economy (Blunt and Dowling 2006). First of all, home is a money sucker, literally and metaphorically. Starting from the construction of a house, future dwellers will have to pay money for that. Interior furniture and products necessary for you home only come when money goes. Living expenses such as water, electricity, cleaning, dining, clothing, education, medicine and their fellow endless list of friends also pull out a lot of money from your wallet. Not only the owners need money to pay, the workers need money to work too. The construction workers and real estate business are other aspects of people who are associated with houses in exchange of money. Secondly, home is a capital judgment. People in the society are undeniably judged by the size of their houses. If you have a bigger house, you have a bigger chance to survive in a society where people are competitive and brag almost about everything and cannot effort to lose face for anything but nothing.  Thirdly and lastly, home is economy because it is a place where money is produced. Think about how many new independent business starters now turn their home into home offices. Independent workers of occupation such as artist, architect, private tutor and house doctor does not need an office downtown on the top floor of a skyscraper, their home perfectly works more than fine. While staying at home and make money, some people have to go to other people’s house to make money. Home service businesses such as cleaning maids, babysitters and gardeners are also making money from all of your homes.

Now that you have all the money needed, you just need to achieve what ideology set for the ideal homely home. Idealistically, a dream home is that of a middle class social ranking, built in suburban area with medium size garden, with dwellers of a hetero sexual family, with mummy, with daddy and with lively children (Costello and Hodge 1999). For some people, their dream home might not be the picture they think of when people talk about traditional ideal home, but nevertheless, having a homely home is not easy. For people who have a house, a lot of money and effort have to be put to create the homeliness sense for your house. For houseless people, not to mention the money, a lot more emotional condition has to be created in order to create an essential homeliness ideal.

How homely is your home then?

Jess.

Standing out from the crowd

The underlined notes on my paper were on the theory how fashion represents a balancing act between individualization and absorption into the collective. Fashion is very paradoxical since everyone in the society wants to stand out and be “someone”, but no one wants to be isolated from the norms and be “that one.” This concept expresses pretty much the same thing as what is being stated on the article of David Inglis under the topic “Revolt into Style.” In the article, he mentioned that people always wish to stand out from the crowd a little, not too much to make them look downright weird, but enough to make them look like something more than just a member of the common herd (Inglis 2005).

Of course we all want to be important and recognized in our society, but only in a good way, that’s obvious. However, do we want to be popular and talked about everywhere about how weird we are? I don’t think so. We would rather prefer being well-known for something with a better credit, such as how cool we are or how smart we are. In the world where billions of people are messing with their own businesses everyday, being “someone” that people look up to seems like a good wish. It would be understandable enough that in a situation characterized by the presence of vast amounts of people, the individual would have reasons for wishing both to be part of the crowd and to stand out from it on occasion too (Simmel quoted in Inglis 2005). If we don’t have to make a clear stand point on what we have to choose then choosing both choices can’t be too bad but most beneficial to us.

Unique or weird?

Individuals may want to differentiate themselves from others if they thought the response they would get from others, either other people in general, or specific people they might want to impress, would be a positive one. Very few people want to be different from everyone else if that leads to their being viewed by others in ways that are embarrassing or humiliating (Inglis 2005). This means that if you want to be judged, then better be judged with compliments. The easy way to be recognized which will follow by being judged is by the help of fashion and stylizing. Expressing yourself through style, whether it be in clothes, haircut, interior design, musical tastes, preferences in cars or movies, or whatever, is therefore a symbolically potent way in which you can express what you take to be your inviolable and ‘true’ inner core (Inglis 2005). One of the example I am sure many of you must have experienced already is when you go shopping, you want to look for something that suits your personality, that you like, you can effort, you think it is appropriate and that you may be able to get nice compliments from your friends when they are exposed to how extraordinary your newest possession is. Some people create their uniqueness through styles. If anyone has some specific style that is known for other people, then they are technically successful of shoring their identity, either intentionally or coincidentally. Like me, my best Balac buddy, Mint, always says that when she thinks of me, she thinks of the color black and gold. This is because most of the possessions I have, be it my bag, my necklaces, my bracelets, my rings, my earrings, my shoes, my manicure and vice versa, are mostly in the color of black and gold. This is unintentional, I didn’t want to create the identity or a style that would directly reflects my personnel, however the combination of two of my favorite colors seems to have stuck in the minds of people who are closely associated with me and thus became my unique style already. Of course, in this case I don’t stand out in the crowd for just wearing black and gold, yet when among friends and close companies who knows my favor and taste, seeing something in black and gold would lead their minds directly to the self of person right here, me. The colors became unique to me and so, it has made me more noticeable and referable.

To conclude, style plays a role in revolting the conformity of the society. Everyone wants to look slightly different from one another, yet not to different that they would become strange. People want to be known that they are themselves, that I am me, and not just anyone. I am me, I have a unique self and my self is a unique identity.

Be unique, be you.
Jess.