Chill and challenging Japan trip

Just back from Japan last night ka.

It started off nicely with months ahead of time planning and communicating with friends in Japan about our get-together(s)!

Well! It’s the true world of changes kaaa!

Hagibis hit japan before we left and another storm greeted us the day before we left.

Learning from this trip ka:

Travel plans
Be ready to accept (uncertain situations from climate change, which is so worrying worldwide) that adjustments may be needed at the last minute (we changed our sightseeing destinations and the route we had to head for Narita, buying online tickets successfully around 2 to get up at 4 for the train connection!)

Local friends and contacts are the best to give advice from their direct experiences since news on websites may not be that updated, nor that friendly to visitors as wished.

Hotel management
One hotel came up with some gifts for customers if they don’t make make-up-room request, offering from a box of munchies and souvenir chopsticks to powder sheets and beer! Interested to get it mai ka? It clearly shows how housekeepers and costs could be challenging issues! Here’s where robots can just jump right in na ka!

Becoming cashless soon?
An incentive the Japanese government has been offering to its citizens is to give 5% discount when using card, not cash. I really wonder if it works and at the same time, have been thinking of strategies the Chinese government used to lure its huge population to have cashless lifestyles!?!

Career women!
With more women working even after they have children, nursery has become a must. Yet, it still poses challenges as numbers of babies aren’t that big!

Independent and healthy elderly
More working males and more female elderly are obviously seen! Would this be gradually changing when more women work and hopefully more males stay longer?!
I was at Himeji castle and saw one grandma climbing up to the top to see how it was built and how things were done in the long past. Even I’m much younger, it was a struggle climbing up and down on steep steps all through the six floors! She slowly went down and looked happy! It gave me a good lesson how one’s life can be enjoyable despite more limitations.

Olympics, management, and volunteering spirit
As Olympics will be held next year, my friend has been selected to be a volunteer, saying that her English proficiency should be useful to the event! Out of  over 200,000 applicants, only 80,000 were recruited (to help with 'Game Operations' and more for others too). It’s ‘volunteer work with a proud and happy heart’ kind of thing to me ka. It’s not just the recruitment process (only 2 minute interview per applicant!), successful applicants have to enroll an intensive online training to have some basic knowledge. In addition, the tasks will be assigned, not by choice. Very systematic the Japanese quality style jing jing!

I’m curious to know how many Thais in their 50’s with a full time job and a family responsibility would go through such a process ka!

Living with nature
In the disruptive technology era, Japan stands proud with its philosophy to live in harmony with the nature. The new Digital Art Museum Teamlab Borderless has boasted the blended beauty of nature, art, and technology. Even the tea they served was with digital flowers on our small tea bowls!......Awesome! This makes me feel less worried to see that it’s possible for us to lead a pleasant life, partnering better with AI and other digital gadgets ka.

Is it all about relationships?
Being an alum of the Ship for Southeast Asian Youth Program, I have been blessed to have heart-to-heart friendship with my ship friends. Every visit to Japan and other 5 ASEAN countries (including Brunei which just became an ASEAN Member then!) is rich with endless cultural learning plus renewed or continued strong bonds. 

How much such relationships could be nurtured among our digital-native-younger-generations  and in what ways remain to be my big questions!

Let me stop before going on and on kaa.

Happy Sunday ka.

Intercultural Communication and Creativity

I had an opportunity to give a 3-hour talk the other day to a small group of master's and doctoral students of Chula's English as International Language program yesterday. Among the 9 students, 5 were Thais while two were from China, one Taiwanese Malay from Malaysia, and one from Austria. It was a good mix to discuss intercultural issues in Asia and Europe plus the US with some recent examples I drew from my former Fulbright colleagues.

My plan was to update them on the fast development of technologies and AI and link it back to their interest in intercultural communication so my topic was, 'Intercultural Communication for Creative and Cultured Citizens'. My key messages were to encourage them to keep nurturing their creativity and a bit more on empathy for humans to have increased interactions through their own international focus.

I was sharing a story about an American grantee who never saw the whole fish served and got real scared to see it almost every time they ate out. I asked the class what the Thais did and they got it all wrong to say that the Thais would turn the head away from their American colleagues! The Thais in fact found it so fun that they kept ordering fish on purpose and turned the head right to her eyes! Later she learned to make it a joke and covered the fish head up! I recall this issue was incorporated in the orientation the following year for the host teachers to learn about our own reactions to come up with ways to handle it in a more cross-cultural friendly way ka:))! 

We discussed a little further how some could feel so upset based on their own contexts and the main Ajarn said she too got scared when piglets were served. The Austrian student said he is used to it and in his country, the whole fish dish would be quite costly.

This little story ignited quite a few more stories and thoughts loei ka. I liked it when the main Ajarn jumped in to share her thinking too. I also realized that I have to be more aware not to be too fast to generalize people on my minds particularly westerners to mean Americans and Europeans ka! I learned more and learned repeatedly this key lesson ka!

Some more I've got from this class:

-  This statement from Fulbright is classic and worth discussing still ka....'How Thai people can be so cold when it’s 80 degrees outside but not cold when it’s 50 degrees inside'! One foreign student agreed right away and said in Malaysia, they're well aware about the global warming and so the air-con won't be turned to be so very cold like ours! The Austrian student observed that this cold temperature seems to be quite common in hot countries. 

We included sharing about 'how Thais are so much into taking pix'

Do Thais have a good answer to give to our foreign friends mai ka?

- Even when we think the younger gen grow up in a 'healthier' environment than our time, one student said she has been told since young that she wasn't creative. 

We may need to be more aware of what we comment or advice as it could hinder our kids and students take it so seriously that they lose their opportunities to sharpen their potential in some particular areas that may have been their real strengths.

- Touching on issues concerning development in other sectors than education helps  students know the world has much more knowledge and experiences for them to learn and prepare their own future beyond their own specializations. As I talked more about the algorithms and AI, they were amazed with the advancement and how the world would look like 5-10 years from now. One expressed, 'worried' so I told the class to feel excited, knowing more about the world progress (and yes, I'm worried, especially about our kids in less quality schools and environments).

- The students are in a very advantageous position to learn about people, culture, human interactions as these are the key components of our being human when robots will become our 'now normal' and life with smart devices will distance human beings from one another further. This is a good group to learn more creative ways to nurture empathy in people too ka.

- Cross-sector and cross-generation approaches should be seriously added on the agenda in our education circle and we have to make sure that it's a real two-way sharing.

Have a lovely weekend ka. 

Learning from reflections

Hope you've started a great work week ka.

For my finale of working with a small middle-level team of about 10 people at a science-oriented organization, I asked each of them to reflect what they've learned and what they've changed. 

Let me share some of them ka.

On leadership: 

• Leadership enhances work effectiveness and efficiency for positive changes.
• Leaders should cater to details, offer opportunities for sharing views, and have informal chats about other issues besides work.
• Each individual has to take lead, not just those with leading positions.  
• Leaders have to seek more knowledge beyond the work or urgent tasks assigned.

On implementation:

• Vision, strategies, and action plans are crucial and concern everyone in the organization. Good vision and strategies are like compass to lead us to the right directions. 
• Positive attitude and energy, widened perspectives, continuous learning and sharing are needed.
• Teamwork and synergy with respect and understanding of implementation at different levels will bear positive results as planned. 
• It's useful to have external views to polish some issues insiders tend to overlook for maximum understanding of stakeholders.
• Keep asking questions while not thinking of only issues within our own scope of work only to sharpen our own thoughts and behaviors.

On study visits:

• Study visits open one's mind to new learning experiences shared by people from diverse fields.
• Learning from those in similar fields help us bring/link some thinking and practice to improve one's own work.
• Visiting agencies outside our own field expands our perspectives that could be contributive to our work.
• Power of networking was seen from going out to various places.
• Semi structured study visits with prepared questions and reflections heighten the overall benefits.

More feedback was given and all made me feel so 'fin' and proud of them ka. 

All Sciences from History and Culture

Thanks so much to Ajarn Chaiwat Kaewphanngam, a Fulbright alum, whose connection brought us to learn more from Dr. Kevin Colleary, Portuguese Ambassador's husband, right at their residence kaaaa!

Our theme for this visit was to enable an IPST team to learn more about the social/human sciences thinking and to think further how to lintegrate (link+integrate) the sciences together.

Before then, let me tell you what was behind our thinking and designing this visit na ka. 

First of all, Khun Kevin has been in education all along with his doctorate from the Harvard School of Education. Secondly, it'd work better for a science-oriented team like IPST to learn from an outsider who's in the social/human sciences field with hope that the team would be inspired and trying to see and bridge the sciences. Thirdly, it was a rare opportunity for us all to see the Portugese Ambassador's residence with an exclusive guided tour. Lastly, he is an American who has been with his husband to stay in Thailand for 4 years now and so his marriage to a Portugese and his exposure in our country and region could be so unique to learn from ka. 

Khun Kevin's talk was rich in content and inspiring ka. As always, let me share what I've learned.

- His introduction on history of Siam and Portugal made us all learn much more about the intention of Portugal to build relationship with Siamese through marriages, not colonization, about many plants they brought from different places to Siam from chili (yes, Chili!), papaya, custard apple to guava and cashew nuts and many other, about our own history during Ayutthaya till early Bangkok periods. 

I was surprised to learn that we didn't have chili and papaya while our somtam is popular worldwide (my former colleague's observation!) We owe it to Portugal na ka and should be proud to have 'creative DNA on gastronomy as our core competency too!)

I was embarrassed to know I knew real little about our own history, let alone about the relationship between the two countries. 

I was hurt when Khun Kevin mentioned that Thai people didn't that much 'sense of history'! It's so true when asking myself and hearing from our team of visitors ka.

- From his views, teachers need to nurture students' creativity and critical thinking. Teachers must not carry the burden of saving faces!

I like one simple yet powerful story he shared was when he was a fifth grader. His teacher pulled down a big map and then pulled it up right after that to trigger students' curiosity to ask 'why?' 

I was thinking of one trick I played on my former team long time ago when I wanted to teach them about 'April Fools' Day'. I then asked one colleague to take out everything posted on our division board, telling all that I got upset why they weren't alert to share new info and learning. Many were shocked to learn about it later ka!

- Multi-lingual capacity is still very much needed for Thais.

Well! Big sigh kaaa!... we still can't cross this language barrier while others are working on the third and fourth languages. Language proficiency is to integrate intercultural competence to feel comfortable amid uncomfortable situations for increased creativity and collaboration mai ka?!?

- He stressed the importance of teaching kids about democracy and diversity based on a document on 'Principles and Concepts for Educating Citizens in a Global World' ka.

(https://education.uw.edu/cme/demdiv)

Students should learn about the complex relationship between unity and diversity within and beyond their localities;  world of interdependence and interconnections; citizenship education including human rights in multicultural nation-states; and knowledge and practice on democracy.

Are we aware and balanced when learning about our own history and our situations, while looking beyond our own boundaries to the region and the world?

Do adults realize and prepare kids for what they really need for their, not our, future?

- When asked about intercultural lessons from being in Thailand, Khun Kevin said he learned how Thais could remain calm when westerners tended to express their feelings loudly! He too noticed that he has changed from being exposed to another culture.

It's clear that our exchange programs with reflections from self-assessment continue to be highly useful. How to make the overall experience more systematic remains a big challenge particularly among those who love to say, 'We have it, have done it, have numbers to show trends, etc.!' 

Deeper learning has to be in FOCUS!

- The exclusive tour of the over 150-year-old colonial architectural style house was a delight treat for all of us to learn about the cultural wealth of Portugal, especially ceramics, carpet, and paintings.

- A little reflection session reconfirmed how history has to be integrated into our education, how teachers need to rid some cultural habits that could obstruct kids'curiosity and critical thinking, and how science-oriented people need to understand more about social and human sciences.

Happy weekend ka.