Map of Happiness

In looking for a map today to show some Canadians where the country of Burma, sometimes known as Myanmar, is located, I came across the Map of Happiness.





The map was made by Adrian White, an analytic social psychologist at Leicester University's School of Psychology in the UK and it attempts, according to him, to measure "subjective well-being."


It is unclear, and somewhat doubtful to me if he actually talked to anyone in any location in the world. But the map is apparently derived from data from the following sources: UNESCO, the CIA, the New Economics Foundation, the World Health Organisation, the Veenhoven Database, the Latinbarometer, the Afrobarometer and the UNHDR. Supposedly this information comes from 100 some studies interviewing over 80,000 people worldwide.

So, how does one statistically measure happiness? Well this guy proposes that the national level of joy is related to health predominately, followed by indicators of wealth and education. So it shouldn't come as any surprise that Denmark and Switzerland come out on top of the rankings. Or that beloved Burma is almost at the bottom.

Alternatively, this study could just be telling us that Denmark and Sweeden are rich and have great social services, whereas people in Burma are poor, with little access to health and education. But wait, we knew that already.

Its kind of crude, by my thought is to look at suicide rates to see who's happy. It's not an exact measure. A great many people live with unhappiness who would never kill themselves for a great many reasons. Anyways, the Map of Happiness tells us that Canada and the US are pretty happy. Yet I'm noticing that for countries where World Heath Organization statistics about suicide are available, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States are pulling in at positions 26, 27, 28 and 29 respectively in list of the top 81 countries where people comit sucide. (Australia:21.5 per 100,000 people; Canada: 21.5 per 100,000 people; New Zealand: 20.5 per 100,000 people; Sweden: 20 per 100,000 people; United States: 19.8 per 100,000 people)


It seems like although people may be less happy (according to the map) in Tajikistan (#63/81), they tend to kill themselves a lot less often there.

And then there are those poor people trapped in the distant north. They are always committing suicide. Why? Because they are unhappy? They tend to be unhappy because they don't get enough sunlight in their brains. I wonder if the Map of Happiness took that into account. What kind of equation is balancing out all these correllations: the relationship between happiness, health, wealth, education and access to sunlight?

What kind of person funded this research anyways? I can think of ways to make a lot of people happy that wouldn't take nearly so much money, I bet. Sheesh!

Muay Thai: Boxing on the Border

Someone very close to my heart, with whom I spent a great deal of my time during my first weeks back in Mae Sot, read my blog, Back in the Saddle and indignantly demanded to know just what was so dull about it all.
It’s true. I can’t believe I could have forgotten about the highlight of my first week back, of which my friend so kindly reminded me.

I had only been back in town a few days with my friend and former neighbor, an Australian journalist, gave me a call early one morning. "Jen," he said, sounding desperate. "I need your help."

Actually, he didn’t really need me that badly. He needed my Australian neighbor and wanted my help in convincing him to go along with his crazy escapade. When I heard the plan, I was highly enthusiastic. Given that I hadn’t even had a coffee and it wasn’t even 8am yet, that’s quite a feat.

When I lived next door to the Australian journalist, I often tagged along after him, like he was my big brother, or like I was some kind of caped side-kick. We had a lot of fun together, often sharing one last beer in the early hours of the morning as the monks in the monastery across from our house were beginning their day and we were ending ours.

I don’t remember how it was that he first got interested in Muay Thai, or Thai kickboxing, but there are lots of events in our area. Kickboxing on the border takes on a particular flavor, as there are often highly emotive fights between Thai fighters and fighters from across the border (in which, more often than not the Thais win) and also between Muslim and Buddhist fighters. I surprised myself by how much I enjoyed going to the fights. For one thing, it was a chance to see some of the Thai soul laid bare. It’s like looking into an animal’s mouth while it’s roaring, staring at the crowd at a fight. There are housewives in middle-class attire, with their children propped up against the ropes sweating in the heat and screaming their hearts out for one man to beat another man. It’s easy to lose yourself in the press of the crowd, let your sweat become your neighbor’s sweat, your voice become the voice of the crowd. It’s dark and the only light are the fluorescent lights strung up around the ring, all the people in the crowd like moths to the flame. As my neighbor went off to photograph, I never felt alone. It was too easy to get lost in the experience.

The more I went, the more I learned. My friend was following the story of certain boxers affiliated with a local school. At first we didn’t know their names. We called one "Pink Shorts," and another, "Ali." Sometimes we got right up close next to the ropes, other times we hung back on the fringe, betting beers on the fights and taking in the big picture. I got to recognize not only the fighters, but also the muscians who play the traditional music before the fight, and the announcers who wore huge aviator glasses and never hesitated to say annoying, embarrassing things about the white foreigners attending the match. One night, with a female friend, the announcer, who sounded quite drunk, made a point of calling the audience’s attention to the fact that I had left my seat and was proceeding to the bathroom. That’s right folks, the white girl is going to pee. "Good luck with that!" he called to me in Thai while I gritted my teeth and made my way through the seated crowd.

Someone from the boxing school called my journalist friend up early on my first Tuesday morning back in Mae Sot. What he understood from the conversation in Thai was that there was a big fight coming to Mae Sot and it was going to involve some foreign fighters from Canada and the Phillipines. There was some kind of press event going on and the white fighter wasn’t going to be able to make it, did he know anyone who could possibly put on a kit and stand it? He made it sound like some kind of photo shoot with my neighbour taking the photos. The problem was that he couldn’t think of anyone to do it. Apparently all the boys we know in town are terribly scrawny. So he called me, to enlist my help in convincing my new Aussie neighbour to be the poster boy for some white kickboxer from Canada.

The photo shoot was in the afternoon and since I was still unemployed, I joined them, hopping in the back of a pick up truck with some Burmese fighters and flying down the highway with the wind in my hair. The truck took us, to of all incomprehensible places, the Mae Sot Central Hill Hotel, a luxury resort at the end of town. "Perhaps it’s a pool side photo shoot," I thought to myself smiling. "Maybe all these muscled boys are going to get all oiled up and we can all jump in the water afterwards…"

But we were taken inside and lead downstairs to the conference room. The room was filled with long tables covered in white and staff were filling up water glasses with iced water. We were given chairs in the back corner and left to wonder what was going on. At the front of the room, behind to podium was a large poster in Thai and we worked out it was advertising the fights, which were to be telecast on the World Boxing Channel. This is rather a big deal, especially for a small town like Mae Sot.

Several other clues soon led us to believe that this press event was not some private photo shoot, but rather a somewhat large-scale press conference. And before anyone could have any second thoughts, the boxing coach was giving my friend a pair of tiny satin boxing shorts and taping up his hands.

He came out of the changing room wearing nothing but the little boxing shorts and looking a little shy. To make things worse, one of the boxers decided he wasn’t wearing the shorts properly and proceeded to hike them up even further, revealing more leg and looking decidedly uncomfortable. By that time, though, they had already put boxing gloves on him, so he was unable to adjust and I’m afraid I was too busy hiding behind a pillar laughing to be much help. I think you can see in the picture just how much fun I was having.

Before things got rolling, he posed with one of the fighters and one of the biggest boxing promoters in Thailand. Then he got up on stage with the rest of the boys and with the panel of delegates slated to speak at the conference, including the governor of the province. For the next hour, while they all made comments about the upcoming fight, he had to stand there, holding his hands up, trying to look fierce.

I took some pictures and tried not to giggle too loudly during the entire event, but it was somewhat difficult, particularly when the speeches were finished and the journalists swamped the stage with their cameras, microphones and video cameras.

And it’s true, it was the highlight of my week. That’s one of the great things about life in Mae Sot. So often dull, but now and again so wildly, weirdly unexpected.

An Experiment

I'm curious. Who are you? Why are you reading this?

I'm always surprised to hear of people reading my blog. I started out writing in order to keep in touch with my family mostly. But I noticed the other day that my profile has 410 views and I run into people now and again who tell me they've read me. No one leaves comments though, so it's hard to know that you're there.

So the experiment:
If you have a moment, whoever you are, I'd love to hear from you. Get in touch. Leave a comment saying hi. Or better yet, send me a postcard. I promise if you put your address on it, you'll most likely get a reply. What kind of person are you? What do you do? How did you find me? Why do you read this? I'm especially interested if you're someone I've never met before.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Jenny
PO Box 27
Mae Sot, Tak.
Thailand. 63110

Back in the Saddle

It’s Wednesday afternoon and I am seated at a desk in front of an open window. Jack Johnson is playing and I spend more time looking out at the view than I do at the work I am supposed to be editing.

The last few weeks have been rather calm, perhaps even a little dull, certainly nothing particularly blog worthy. Perhaps that’s why I have this smile on my face. What, after all, could be much better than a day of luxurious laziness in a wooden house that gets the breeze in the middle of a warm, tropical country?

I returned to Thailand and landed on January 12th. Everyone keeps asking how it felt to be back and it’s been a rather mixed bag. For one thing, it’s always difficult to leave the warm embrace of family, with our lively meals, good conversation and abundance of hugs. Usually this feeling is offset by the feeling of setting off towards the unknown, towards adventure. This time, however, I wasn’t exactly setting off towards the unknown. I’ve been living in Mae Sot for roughly two years now.

What is unknown, however, is what exactly I was going to do here anyway, another question I get asked quite frequently. I’m generally a woman with few plans. If I had them, in the past, they tended to be in four month blocks. Last year I managed to plan ahead for a whole year. I was rather proud of myself, until I felt the end of that year approaching and still had yet to make another plan.

I left Calgary just as a blizzard had begun rolling through. Overnight, the temperature dropped to –27 degrees celsius. By nighttime however, I had landed in Bangkok and the heat of the night (+27) was intense. It’s cold season here and at night I sleep with a blanket on, but I’m still getting used to the afternoons again. The heat makes me sleepy.

My first week back in Mae Sot was more difficult than I had thought. My old house was still occupied by the person who was subletting from me, so I continued to live out of a backpack in someone else’s home. The old friends I had were busy with work and often out of town, so I didn’t see much of them. The town was full of new people. I went out for dinner one night and only knew one other person at the table. It’s not because I went away; it’s just life in Mae Sot. If you don’t make an effort to get out and meet new people almost constantly, eventually you will find yourself alone. Everyone’s stay in Mae Sot is temporary. There is a leave date floating over everyone’s head and it’s just a matter of time before you have to say goodbye.

My days were full of errands and chores, like looking for a new mattress and getting the internet set up in my house. Eventually I moved back in and unpacked, decorating my walls with Hindu pictures and batik from Sri Lanka. I met with people, talked about work, tried to get work, tried to get a long term visa.

It’s strange to be in Mae Sot without work. Work is what brings people here. Nobody comes for any other reason. And here I was in Mae Sot, a foreigner without a job, a fish without fins. One of the first questions people here ask, often before even, "Where are you from?" is: "What do you do?" or alternatively, "Who are you working for?" It was quite fun to reply (at a party where I only knew 20% of the guests): "I’m unaffiliated."

If I were to print a business card for myself right now, I would be tempted for it to read: "Independent Operator." Because at the moment, I am operating. I’m unaffiliated, but I’m not unemployed. I have some well-paid part-time work and a small part-time contract at the moment. It would be nice, in the future, to continue to get such contracts. It’s certainly a lifestyle I am enjoying.

My part time work is with a company called Virtual Travel Guides, based out of Chiang Mai. I write short, low-grade travel guides for websites. Often the guides are being used as filler, to bulk up sites and increase their ratings on search engines like Google. There are currently about 20 of us working for the company, and it seems as if business is good and they will be expanding. I completed my first assignment last week, writing five short guides to Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bhutan and Bahrain. In case you’re wondering, I have never been to any of those countries and at no time will the company pay for me to travel anywhere. It’s all internet research and rewriting.

I haven’t done very much work for them yet, but the work I have done has been highly enjoyable. It’s a significant change of pace from working with refugees in a protracted conflict zone. It gets me writing, even if it isn’t the most quality work and I get to learn things about all kinds of places in the world. There are never too many hours of work a week, so I have plenty of time to take up other work and volunteer in the community, something that is very important to me.

The short term contract I have at the moment is to edit an English-language text book for an educational project involving refugees. Unit Three is sitting open beside the computer at the moment. I was just working on it when the urge to blog came over me.

This week I’ll also start working with the English Immersion Program again, as a part-time volunteer. The goal is to set up some kind of graduate program with targeted workplace trainings. I’m looking forward to working with lots of my old students on that.

With the exception of a couple of meetings once in a while, most of the work I have set up is based out of my home, which is why I have this desk set up in front of this window in my little wooden house that gets all the breeze. I can get up whenever I want, take coffee breaks whenever I want, and take a break to go for a jog whenever I want. Hopefully I have the self discipline to get all the work done by the time my employers want.

Still, it’s a pleasure to be in my pajamas at noon, listening to Cat Stevens and staring out the window with the breeze in my hair.