Asian Demography - leader & feature articles

The decline of Asian marriage

"Asia's lonely hearts"

Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious

Asian demography

"The flight from marriage"

Asians are marrying later, and less, than in the past. This has profound implications for women, traditional family life and Asian politics

Aug 20th 2011 | SEOUL AND TAIPEI | from the print edition of The Economist

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Cartoon: Calvin & Hobbes

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Part 6

Clicking on each cartoon will give you a bigger, clearer version to look at.

Optional Task:

What do you think of the style and content of this cartoon strip?

Special Report on Indonesia

Several articles on Indonesia; a couple of years old but still interesting perhaps.

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Opinion Piece: Jakarta Post

Positive plagiarism and the fuzziness of originality

Setiono Sugiharto, Jakarta | Sat, 09/17/2011

Consider the following two situations which are commonplace in academia. A senior professor who has a wealth of experience in writing a number of books and in publishing his research in scholarly journals is caught red-handed intentionally copying the words of others verbatim without attributing the original sources. Also, a university student (a novice writer) quotes the words of other scholars or writers in his term paper and does not make a clear or proper acknowledgment of his sources due to his limited knowledge of academic conventions.

The immediate reaction from academia is to judge both the professor and the student guilty of committing a serious academic fraud, known in the language of the academy as plagiarism. In other words, they are both plagiarists.

Following this reaction are the absolute consequences that the professor and the student must suffer. Academia imposes academic penalties which may range from receiving a “D” grade, to the suspension of academic promotion or even expulsion from the university.

One may wonder as to whether the penalty imposed on the professorial plagiarist should also apply to the student plagiarist. While the academic penalty for a plagiarist (students and professors) is in many cases necessary to prevent copying without attribution and in turn to uphold academic integrity, the decision made in determining the penalty should be based on completely different considerations.

For a professorial plagiarist, the imposition of juridical policy is the best way to curb plagiarism among senior academic members including those of professorial rank. In this policy, plagiarism is viewed as analogous to a criminal act. It is a form of academic dishonesty and a serious infringement of academic ethics and morality, the “academic death penalty” (to borrow the phrase of writing specialist R.M Howard) for which is expulsion from the university, rather than suspension of academic promotion. Thus, this is a moral consideration.

Non-juridical or pedagogical policy on the other hand should be enforced specifically for student (novice writer) plagiarists. Unlike juridical policy, pedagogical policy sees plagiarism as an inevitable process of students’ learning to write, and hence is what R.M. Howard calls “positive plagiarism”.

Needless to say, writing from sources is part of academic writing where students are required not only to write what they believe, but also to support their assertions by quoting other scholars’ arguments.

As academic writing requires a highly specialized skill, it often poses problems for novice writers who are often not familiar with academic convention. This unfamiliarity leads the student writer to produce “patchwriting” – the close, but not exact copying of other sources with the styles of grammar and vocabulary in the target writing slightly altered. Though not precise copying, this writing is still considered plagiarism, to be precise “positive plagiarism”.

Yet, according to Howard, positive plagiarism differs in many respects from the commonly perceived notion of plagiarism. Positive plagiarism is not always related to moral considerations or ethics; it is not a criminal act committed by immoral students; it is not always a form of academic dishonesty.

Rather, it is a form of learning strategy employed by inexperienced student writers who are not yet acquainted with, or are unaware of, academic writing conventions. In essence, positive plagiarism is a “transitional strategy” and a “pedagogical opportunity” used by students to prepare themselves to become members of an academic-discourse community.

It is clear that unlike novice writers (outsiders), plagiarists of professorial rank, as members of academic-discourse communities who also play a role in establishing academic conventions, must be severely penalized under the consideration of juridical policy. Juridical policy proscribes the criminal act of stealing others’ intellectual property and condemns any unethical conduct and academic dishonesty in academia.

The notion of positive plagiarism however should not be restricted only to patchwriting in student writing. In fact, in the works of professional writers and scholars positive plagiarism is not uncommon.

In his book Voice of Deliverance: The Language of Martin Luther King, Jr., and its Sources, linguist Keith Miller shows how even King, a renowned writer and orator, for cultural reasons borrowed extensively from various texts and patched these texts together without attributing their sources when he wrote his famous speech I Have a Dream.

There is good reason why positive plagiarism in the sense of merging voices of different authors should be encouraged among both junior and senior members of the academic community. Critical insights often emerge when a writer takes others’ words, synthesizes, rewords, evaluates and finally reshapes them in accordance with his or her ideology, rhetorical traditions, interests and purposes.

It is also through merging different voices that writers can find space to critically explore their textual strategies in order to construct their own unique voices.

Construed in the sense of voice-merging, positive plagiarism obscures the notion of originality, literacy property as well as plagiarism itself. In other words, there is no such thing as originality, literacy property, and plagiarism.

The writer is an associate professor at Atma Jaya Catholic University. He is also chief-editor of Indonesian Journal of English Language Teaching

Social media in Indonesia

Eat, pray, tweet

Social-networking sites have taken off in Indonesia. Who will profit?

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Jan 6th 2011 | JAKARTA | from the print edition

WHAT does the most populous Muslim nation do in its spare time? Increasingly, it swaps gossip online. Indonesia is now the world’s second-largest market for Facebook and the third-largest for Twitter, according to several web research firms. For industry insiders, however, the most exciting statistic is not how many Indonesians use social media, but how many still don’t. Of 230m or so Indonesians, fewer than 20% are connected to the internet.

Foreign firms see untapped potential. Facebook doesn’t even have an office in Indonesia, yet it has grown like crazy, to 30m users. In May last year Yahoo! ventured into this fizzing market by buying Koprol, a location-based social network. Indonesian culture seems particularly receptive to online socialising. People love publicity, don’t fret much about privacy and gleefully follow trends. “Everything is about friends and location,” says Andy Zain, the founder of MobileMonday Indonesia, a networking forum.

The biggest question for everyone is how to make money from Indonesians’ interest in connecting with one another. Michael Smith, who led Yahoo!’s acquisition of Koprol, says the payoff will take time: “I always tell people that the volumes and willingness of customers to pay in Indonesia [are] so low that you can’t expect gargantuan revenues from it today.”

Western firms are only just beginning to grasp the eccentricities of the Indonesian social-media market. Thanks to years of price wars between Indonesia’s three major telecommunications companies, mobile contracts in the country are dirt-cheap. For Indonesians living in North America, it is often cheaper to buy an Indonesian SIM card and roam with it than it is to sign up for a local plan.

Phones are cheap, too: the country is flooded with Chinese handsets costing only $30-40. Indonesia is also one of the largest markets for Research In Motion (RIM), the maker of BlackBerrys. Indonesians typically connect with each other via mobile devices, not personal computers.

Facebook and Google make money in North America and Europe from display advertising, but this is much harder in Indonesia. Few locals have credit cards or bank accounts, making it hard for them to click on a link and buy something. For large purchases online, payment is generally made by bank transfer. Social-media firms are investigating whether they can tap the microtransactions market—say, by offering virtual currencies or goods that users can use as barter—though forced partnerships with local telecoms firms threaten the profitability of such schemes.

So far, only one firm has cracked the payments nut. Inspired by China’s QQ and Grameen Phone of Bangladesh, Mig33, a firm whose main product is a mobile social-networking application, has set up a virtual economy. Some 4,000 merchants in 150 countries sell “credits” to users, who then can spend them online: sending messages to friends, playing games, or sending virtual gifts. The firm has raised $34m in funding since its inception in 2005. Its founder, Steven Goh, says it will post profits this year. Indonesia is its largest market.

When hobnobbing in cyberspace, Indonesians are especially likely to use avatars rather than real pictures of themselves, says Mr Goh. “Indonesia is a moderate Muslim country where people are creating new virtual identities completely different [from] their real identities,” he explains. Users with black eyes and black hair, say, may create virtual personae with grey eyes and blond hair.

This is common elsewhere in East Asia and in the Middle East, too. But Indonesia is a special case, reckons Mr Goh: its social networks freely integrate both real and imagined selves. The archipelago could prove a useful test market for tech firms seeking to enter the wide-open and barely understood social-networking markets of the rest of Asia.

from the print edition | Business

Some Celebrity "News"

Shanty : Words of warning for celebrity wannabes

Bruce Emond, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Mon, 09/19/2011 10:35 AM

JP/R.Berto WedhatamaEntertainer Shanty was back in town last week for a whirlwind round of promotions for her new book, Bongkar Rahasia, Bagi Cerita (Revealing Secrets, Sharing Stories). The 32-year-old now resides in Hong Kong with her Ecuadorean husband, Sebastian Paredes, and infant son, Juno.

Before leaving Sunday, she answered questions about the book (co-written with Ve Handojo), which details her sometimes rocky showbiz career as an MTV veejay, TV host, actress and, most famously, a singer, and offered her advice to celebrity wannabes.

How was it promoting the book, and also being back in Jakarta?

First, my management team offered interviews to the media, but after two days the media started calling and asking to interview me about the book.

I was very surprised by the reaction. I wish I had more time here in Jakarta so I can have more time to promote the book.

But since arriving Sunday night, I started Monday with promotional activities non-stop from morning to night. I’m tired but very happy.

I’m sad that I had to leave my baby at home for long periods of time, like eight hours a day … I miss him and want to rush home every minute, but I know this is what I have to do to support the book.

I don’t want my hard work to be for nothing because of a lack of promotion.

What is your intention in writing the book?

To share my knowledge and experience. I thought it’s a waste if I just keep it in my head, and I know a lot of people would benefit from this. So they wouldn’t get into the trouble I did.

Your career high point?

When I was winning awards at the beginning of my career. I won the best newcomer category for almost every award. Also, when I performed with 3 Diva [Krisdayanti, Titi DJ and Ruth Sahanaya] in their concert.

I grew up listening to their music, and suddenly I was in a big concert with them. What an honor.

And low point?

There were many low points, but the worst was when I finished my contract with a major record label. I did not know what to do, keep on singing or stop?

I was in that confused phase for months, lost and not knowing which direction to take. I felt like I had failed. I could not think of anything creative, and I did not have the spirit to make music or perform.
I was numb.

What would you tell the 18-year-old Shanty starting out in her career?

Hang on tight, because the road ahead is very, very bumpy!

One piece of advice for anyone with dreams of stardom?

Prepare to do some more hard work, and more and more and more hard work!

Read more about Shanty’s life today in the October WEEKENDER, available Friday.

Taken from http://tinyurl.com/646w4gn

Newspapers From Around The World: Edition No.3

China Daily - 17 September 2011

If you're not really into reading whole articles, why not just browse the headlines, look at the captions for pictures, and take a look at advertisements etc. See if you can pick up some new, interesting - and hopefully useful - vocabulary. Remember to leave comments below if you want to.

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Something To Read No.2

The Food Of India

Indian cooking is colorful, fragrant, and delicious. It depends on a wide array of spices, legumes, and grains for its distinct character.

An Ancient Treasure

India is the world’s chief supplier of spices and has been for at least thirty-six hundred years. These fragrant and flavorful plant substances, which often have been more prized than jewels, have drawn people from all over the world to India throughout history.

Unlike spice seekers from other nations, Indians have always had access to a wide array of different spices. Some of the most popular spices include mint, bright orange turmeric, pungent cumin, sweet and refreshing cardamom, parsley-like coriander, bitter-tasting kari (cah-ree), cinnamon, and mustard seeds. Indian chefs have been using these and other delicious spices to preserve, color, flavor, and perfume their food for thousands of years. Indian cuisine would not be the same without them.

An Artful Combination

Indians use spices the way artists use paint, blending them together in hundreds of different combinations and proportions. For a dish to be considered well cooked, no single spice should ever dominate. Instead there must be a perfect balance of ingredients, with each dish having its own distinctive taste, color, and perfume. This means that cooks need to understand the characteristics of each spice and how they mix together. Chef Mridula Baljekar explains: “Spices are the heart and soul of Indian cooking. Knowing how to use the spices is the key that unlocks the secrets of alluring aromas and magical flavors of classic Indian cuisine.”

Indian cooks blend spices in a number of ways. They create a masala (mah-saah-laah), a general term that refers to any combination of ground spices. They make masala by grinding different spices together into a powder. This may be done in a stone dish known as a mortar with a small, wooden, clublike tool called a pestle. A food processor can also be used to save time. Garam masala (gah-rahm mah-saah-laah), a favorite spice mixture, is a specific blend of up to fifteen spices that is widely used in Indian cooking. It features cinnamon, black pepper, cloves, cardamom, and other spices. It is dark and zesty.

Spices are also used whole. Roots, pods, seeds, and leaves are fried for less than a minute in hot oil or ghee (gee). Ghee is a type of butter in which all the milk solids have been removed. Incredibly fragrant, the spiced or tempered oil is used as a basis for hundreds of different sauces.

Rice and Grains

Sauces are often served over rice, a staple of the Indian diet and an important part of Indian culture. Rice symbolizes good fortune in India, which is why rice porridge is the first solid food fed to babies. It is also the most important crop in India, with one-fourth of all cultivated land planted with it.

Although many varieties of rice are grown, basmati (bas-maah-tee) rice is the most popular. It is known for its smooth, rich taste and fresh aroma. Basmati literally means “the queen of perfumes” in Hindi, one of the most common languages spoken in India. Indians have many uses for basmati rice. It is boiled and topped with a spicy sauce filled with meat or vegetables. It can also be stir-fried with spices, used in puddings, puffed into a popcorn-like snack, or cooked in aromatic casseroles.

Indians eat about 4.5 pounds (2 kg) of rice a week. Before cooking it, they carefully rinse the rice. This removes impurities and excess starch and keeps the grains from sticking together. Then the rice is soaked for at least an hour before it is boiled. Soaking whitens the rice and helps the grains absorb the flavor of the spicy sauces that will be poured over them. According to authors Martin Hughes, Sheema Mookherjee, and Richard Delacy, the end result is, “white, long, and silky.”

Wonderful Breads

Although rice is eaten at every meal in southern India and in great quantities in northern India, flat breads known as rotis (ro-tees) are the core of northern meals. Rotis are also popular in the rest of the nation. Roti originated centuries ago as a portable food that farmers and shepherds could dine on when they were out in the fields. Today Indians use rotis like edible spoons to scoop up saucy dishes, meat, and vegetables.

Rotis are made without yeast from nutrient-rich whole-wheat flour, which is mixed with water and kneaded to form a thin dough. The dough is divided into tennis ball–size portions, rolled into almost perfect circles, and cooked on a hot cast-iron griddle known as a tawa (tah-waah).

Cooks make a wide variety of rotis, but the most common is chapati (chah-paah-tee), a soft flat bread that balloons out as it cooks. Other favorites include pooris (poo-rees), which are deep-fried chapatis, and paranthas (pah-rahn-thahs), which have a pastry-like texture. Many Indian cooks make fresh roti for every meal. Traditionally the woman of the house makes the bread as the family eats. When the roti is done, she brushes it with butter to keep it soft and transfers it from the griddle to the table. “This is simple . . . home cooking,” explains a chef at the Indian Foods Company. “I cannot go for many days without my roti.”

Colorful Legumes

Legumes are another essential part of the Indian diet. Legumes such as lentils, beans, and peas are eaten at least once a day. They are usually flavored and scented with spices and served over rice, or with roti and a vegetable. Since they are loaded with vitamins, minerals, protein and fiber they are quite nutritious. This may be why an Indian proverb says that legumes and roti are all an Indian needs to survive. Indian cooks use over 60 different types of legumes. These include tiny yellow split peas; black, yellow, and pink lentils; and tan chickpeas. One of the favorite ways of using legumes is in dal (dahl), a delicious stewlike dish. Each cook has his or her own dal recipes, so there are countless variations. Depending on the cook, dal can contain just one type of legume or a few. It can be thick and chunky, or the lentils may be mashed so that the dal is thin and velvety smooth. But what gives dal its special taste and aroma are the spices that flavor it.

To make dal, cooks soak the legumes overnight to soften them. Then they simmer them for hours. When the legumes are tender, selected spices are cooked in hot oil or ghee and added to the legumes right before they are served. This gives the legumes, which are otherwise bland, a savory flavor and a mouthwatering aroma. Popular combinations include pink lentils spiced with cumin, pepper, and chili powder, or yellow split peas flavored with mashed garlic, ginger, and cinnamon.

Mint is often added to the stew. And sometimes yogurt is mixed into dal to give it a creamy texture. One thing is certain: No matter the ingredients, Indians love dal. “There is something wonderfully warm and tasty about . . . dal,” explains chef Suvir Saran. “I want [it] when I have a craving for something simple and homey, but still savory.”

Indian cooking is, indeed, warm and tasty. Indian chefs artfully combine brightly colored legumes, richly perfumed spices, and deliciously satisfying grains to create dishes that are uniquely Indian.

If you want to read more, DOWNLOAD THE BOOK HERE. [7 MB]

Why is Reading Important?

Books, not instruction, key to creating writers

Setiono Sugiharto , Jakarta | Sat, 23rd August 2008 10:01 AM | Opinion

Conventional wisdom advises this: "If you want your student writers to be able to write, have them write, and nothing else." Our tendency in teaching writing seems to reflect this wisdom.

The best we can do to assist our students of all levels of language proficiency in developing their writing skills is to give them writing instruction, to encourage them to do more writing practice and then to give feedback.

In addition, as writing entails ability in adeptly using language rules (grammar) and as students often find it hard to write using correct grammatical structures, teachers cannot resist the temptation to explain the rules as painstakingly as possible to their students. In this case, grammar instruction is considered necessary.

Both writing instruction and the mastery of language rules, however, are of little value in helping student writers acquire writing competence. Many published studies demonstrate that the effects of instruction on students' writing are weak, fragile and immediately wear off over time. Other studies show that instruction has no effect at all on writing development.

With research confirming that instruction has little or no effect on accelerating writing competence, it is pretty safe to conclude that writing competence cannot be acquired via either instruction or practice.

It is really unfortunate, however, that most teachers are not well-informed about what research on literacy has told us. Because, in their view, research is often incompatible with what they are experiencing in the classroom, they just ignore it.

While it is true that research often makes statements incompatible with teachers' experience, its importance in helping shape our teaching methodology cannot be overlooked.

We need a philosophical justification of what underlies our methodology. At this time, research helps us discern the extent to which our justification is consistent with the reality we are facing.

In fact, teachers' ignorance of research findings has prevented them from finding good solutions to the problems they are constantly confronting. Writing teachers, for instance, have enthusiastically endeavored to assist their student writers in bolstering their writing ability via writing instruction and practice, with little success.

Such a persistent problem can be solved, as long as teachers are willing to pay attention to the following suggestions based on current research, and then take the other alternative which offers much better and less tedious effort on the part of both teachers and students.

Writing instruction doesn't give students a feel of what good and acceptable writing looks like. Specifically, it doesn't help students acquire writing style, appropriate diction and correct spelling. Increasing writing frequency either through self-sponsored writing or classroom-instructed writing doesn't result in significantly increased proficiency. It must be emphasized that the ability to write is the result of acquiring written codes, not the cause of it.

Similarly, the mastery of language rules, which is the result of grammar teaching, doesn't necessarily contribute to writing development. It has been evident that students who are exposed to grammar lessons for many years and grapple with understanding and memorizing rules are still unable to display competence in writing.

A general conclusion then is that writing competence cannot be acquired via either writing and grammar instruction. Forcing students to write without sufficient competence is tantamount to forcing an engine to work without gasoline. This, however, doesn't mean writing and grammar instruction are of no use and should be jettisoned from the school curriculum.

Their relative usefulness can best be explained in terms of Stephen Krashen's dichotomy: writing competence and writing performance. The former refers to the possession of technical writing skills (i.e. grammar, vocabulary and spelling), while the latter designates the ability to write using efficient writing strategies (i.e. planning, drafting, revising and editing).

Writing instruction, it should be reiterated here, cannot make students competent in writing, but it does help equip students with efficient writing strategies. As these strategies are teachable, writing instruction is key to raising students' awareness of how to compose efficiently.

By contrast, writing competence can only be acquired via reading. That is, the ability to write in an acceptable manner using correct grammar, vocabulary and spelling is derived from reading, not from writing practice. It is reading, Krashen says, that gives the writer the "feel" for the look and texture of reader-based prose.

One might argue that language components such as grammar and vocabulary are teachable via instruction. However, it could be counter-argued that they are much too complex, not to mention tedious, to be taught. What is more, we need to invest more time and energy in making students understand and acquire them.

It seems then that the best and the only way of accelerating students' writing competence is to get students hooked on books and to make them fly to books, just as an opium smoker flies to his pipe.

The writer is chief editor of the Indonesian Journal of English Language Teaching and teaches English composition at Atma Jaya Catholic University, Jakarta. He can be reached at setiono.sugiharto@atmajaya.ac.id.

Copyright © 2008 The Jakarta Post - PT Bina Media Tenggara. All Rights Reserved.

Source URL: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2008/08/23/books-not-instruction-key-creating-writers.html

Any thoughts or questions about this article? Use the COMMENTS feature below.

Newspapers From Around The World: Edition No.2

Here is an add-on for Firefox that enables you to read files in the EPUB format, which are smaller than PDFs.

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Here are two newspapers from the same American city: the "Post" is left-leaning and tends to be liberal, whereas the "Times" is right-leaning and tends to be conservative. These two editions were published on the same day. Those of you who are interested in politics and journalism might enjoy looking for evidence of differing political orientation in the two papers. It is also a chance to have a go at using an EPUB file. These two are only 3MB and 7 MB respectively.

The Washington Post, 16th September 2011

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The Washington Times, 16th September 2011

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If this topic is not your cup of tea, don't worry about it! Busy yourself with something you find more interesting.

Travel: Afghanistan, always

From The Australian:

This is an edited extract from The Honey Thief by Najaf Mazari and Robert Hillman (Wild Dingo Press, $24.95).

IN my country of Afghanistan, everything is arranged in such a way that your heart is broken again and again.

It is not only wars that break your heart; it is the arguments that last a thousand years, the age-old jealousies and, of course, the poverty.

Not that Afghanistan is without beauty; not at all. I could take you to places in the north close to the Oxus River that would steal your breath away; places that you would not believe could exist as I lead you through an arid landscape of broken rock and red sand and stunted bushes.

Then you would suddenly find yourself gazing down from a mountain pass on the river shining under a blue sky and a green carpet climbing up the slopes. And you would think, "Ah! This is paradise!" I could take you to Faryab in the spring; to the plain of Dasht-e-Laili and show you wildflowers of a hundred colours spread so densely over the sand that it would only be the giant dunes rising above the flowers that would make you believe this was a desert.

Or I could take you to Kandahar in the early morning, approaching the city from the west, and the sky would be so broad above us and the air so crisp that you would believe what I had whispered to you: that the walls of mud-brick coming into view were built only a generation after Adam and Eve left Eden.

I could show you many other types of beauty: the smiles and laughter of children who might have little to smile about, nothing to laugh about; the courage of women who gather their children about them and teach them what they will need to know in life, even when the rice bag is all but empty and the sheep are bleating in hunger.

I could show you 500 feasting at a wedding in Mazar-e-Sharif, toasting the groom, singing in praise of the bride, and not one of the 500 confident of lasting through a further year of war.

We are a people who should never have survived our history of 5000 years; we are a people who should no longer exist.

And yet we do, and there is beauty in that fact alone.

Most importantly, what of the mystery of our Afghanistan? Is there not great beauty in the mystery? For we are a very mysterious people, we Afghans.

We come from the long ago, our roots go down so deep in the sand and soil and rock that we can be said to be as much a part of the land as the gundy trees and marsot bushes; we are both wild and gentle, full of anger and full of love.

This is where the world began, in Afghanistan. The world of townships, at least, and I say it was an Afghan who first put brick on brick, and an Afghan who first sowed soil with wheat.

But when you are an Afghan, you want your land to flourish, and instead you are faced with arrangements designed to break your heart. I am about to speak of the food of Afghanistan, and since food comes from the land, let me first speak about land. Few Afghans own any land, or few as a proportion of the total. Most farmers are what we call gharibkar, or sharecroppers, who are permitted to cultivate a few jeribs that are owned by another, keeping one-fifth of what they produce. Another type of sharecropper, a baz kar, may be allowed to keep one quarter of his crop by a more generous bai, or landlord.

A tenant farmer of another sort, a khistmand, keeps 50 per cent of his crop but has to provide the seed, the oxen, the plough and, of course, all of the labour. Many landowners in Afghanistan have never laid eyes on the soil they own. The land came to them as gifts from powerful people or as rewards for deeds done. Their land is handled by an agent, while the owners sometimes live far away.

Oh, the oxen and the plough. Afghanistan is a country in which the most up-to-date weapons have been employed over the past 30 years by the Soviet Union and by the US; weapons worth billions of dollars. Aerial bombardment in some provinces has created huge craters in the soil.

But in 1990 in Faryab province, to single out just one region, the soil of the fields was turned by the oxen and the plough, and by one tractor. One tractor in the entire province. The cost of a single 2000kg bomb of the type dropped on Herat and its outskirts in 1984 -- and hundreds of such bombs were dropped on Herat -- would have paid for nine tractors, while the total cost of aerial bombardment over the period of the war against the Soviets could have provided 800 tractors for every province in Afghanistan.

Do you see what I mean about heartbreak? No nation on earth knows more about modern munitions than Afghanistan. And hardly any nation knows less about modern farming practices.

I am a man who hates waste in all its forms: the waste of soil that is turned not by ploughs but by bombs, the waste of clean water polluted by dead bodies, the waste of energy in murderous bickering.

The most frustrating thing of all for me is knowing what plenty the soil of Afghanistan can produce when it is given the chance. Our fruits are among the finest grown anywhere on earth, our grains are full of sunshine, our vegetables grow plump to the point of bursting. The 7 per cent of land in which things can grow in Afghanistan could feed the population many times over and still leave surplus to sell overseas. And is that not the first task of any nation's people: to grow the food that feeds them?

It is the eggplant that the Hazara praise; that all Afghans praise; or the tomato, the potato, the pomegranate, not so much the dishes that employ them. If a woman of a village in the Hazarajat is able to prepare delicious badenjan, she will be congratulated, of course, but the eggplant that forms the basis of badenjan will be considered to have made the greater contribution to the success of the dish.

When I eat badenjan, I do not pay my wife the sorts of compliments you hear on television cooking programs. Instead, I congratulate her on a successful visit to the market and on having a good eye for eggplant.

OK, for her cooking too, but in few words.

Let me explain. In the West, cooking is spoken of as an art, and art itself is considered something borrowed from God. But it is different among the people of my faith. For us, art is something people do. It has nothing to do with God, who may watch and applaud but does not whisper suggestions into the ear of the artist. God made the eggplant, God made the capsicum, God made the plump ear of corn. What act of creation by a man can compare with the creation of the eggplant?

The eggplant in its beauty is but one of a billion of God's creations. This is a world of such beauty and such diversity that God can well leave to us what we call art, including the art of cooking.

Article found here:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/travel/afghanistan-always/story-e6frg8rf-1226131233831

Any thoughts?

Newspapers From Around The World: Edition No.1

I plan to post about 20 of these in the weeks ahead. Take a look if you're interested. This one is The Daily Express, from the U.K. It's a rather downmarket or lowbrow, rightwing tabloid. Other people would call it popular, provocative and entertaining, and they'd call me a snob!

Click HERE

to download a pdf (approx.35MB)

of the entire 15th September

edition of the newspaper

If you have any thoughts on, or reaction to, this newspaper or any of the stories in it, use the 'Comments' feature below.

Something To Read No.1

DOWNLOAD the PDF [megaupload]

I will post a few of these every week. It's an opportunity to read a wide range of types of writing on a wide range of topics. Read the extract below.

• Consider any new vocabulary or idioms that you find.
• Download the pdf of the whole book if you are interested.
• Remember that the content of the extract could appear in your exam.
• Feel free to comment on this post using the 'Comments' below.

DON'T DRINK THE WATER - A YEAR LIVING IN ASIA

by Simon Cutting

FARANG, CHANG, RED BULL, AND BHANG

THAILAND

Ko Samui — Big Buddha Beach

I woke up unaware of where I was and something seemed to be licking my feet, possibly a dog. My head was tilted to the right nestling on sand, and in my distorted field of view I could see a few people sitting on the beach, beers in hand, talking animatedly about nothing important. I raised my head. It wasn’t a dog licking my feet, it was the waves lapping up against them as they hit the shore. I was soaking wet, as was my wallet and my money belt containing close to five hundred dollars in cash, my plane tickets and my passport. My head was throbbing and my vision was so unfocused I couldn’t even tell if I recognised anybody around me without going right up to them and staring them in the face for a few seconds. I’d have called out their names but I couldn’t remember anyone’s names. After breathing directly into one guy’s face I realised I had never seen him before.

‘Where am I?’ I asked, my words slurred and indistinct.

Either he couldn’t speak English or perhaps in my current state, I couldn’t, but I got no response. He looked at me like he had just scraped me off his shoe until I wandered off up the beach, past some bungalows and towards the road. I had to get home, wherever the hell that was. I hit the road, nothing was familiar. Not just my location, but nothing. Shapes such as trees and houses were completely new to me. I looked about the dimly lit street, which seemed empty and imposing. Where the hell was I?

Then it all came flooding back.

I was on Ko Samui, in southern Thailand. I had arrived that afternoon with my two flatmates from home, Banga and his girlfriend Mel. We’d gotten into Bangkok late and headed immediately south to the islands. I went to school with Banga and the one thing we both share is a common love of binge drinking. Mel had never travelled before and after some initial distress at the smell and filth upon landing in Bangkok she decided that Thailand wasn’t so bad after all and had actually started to enjoy herself. We had planned to meet up with Banga’s brother, Billy, and his girlfriend Ag. Billy is immensely tall and good-natured whilst Ag, who immigrated from Poland when she was six years old, is not immensely tall but just as good-natured. We had decided not to tell them that I was coming to Thailand and so, when we arrived at their bungalows ‘Shambala’, I hid in Banga’s and Mel’s bathroom as everybody hugged and laughed in the next room. I waited for my moment and then emerged triumphantly. Billy and Ag looked briefly stunned and then came rushing over.

‘This is great! I didn’t know you were coming!’ Ag said.

‘It was meant to be a surprise,’ I replied.

We chatted excitedly for a bit and then there was a pause.

‘Umm, but we didn’t book you a room. And they’re full,’ Billy said after a bit.

‘Oh,’ I replied.

There was another pause.

‘Well I’m sure you can find somewhere else just up the beach there,’ Ag said reassuringly.

I nodded. ‘Oh, I’m sure I will.’

So I picked up my heavy pack and trudged out of the room.

‘Come back when you find somewhere. We can have a drink!’ Banga called after me as he ordered an ice cold Chang and they all set off laughing to the beachfront restaurant.

I pondered over the pros and cons of our little joke as I walked up the road, stopping to ask at every place I saw. They were all full. We were staying on a beach called Big Buddha, aptly named after the gigantic golden statue of Buddha that stands prominently on a headland at one end. Unfortunately, I didn’t know this. Banga hadn’t been sure where it was we were going. We had gotten a songthaew from the ferry stop and we just jumped out when he recognised something, as he had been to Samui before. A songthaew incidentally, is a ute with two rows of seats in the back, facing inwards, and usually with a roof. They are the main form of transport on the Thai islands unless you want to rent a motorcycle. In any case, Banga had thought we were on Bo Phut Beach, and had told me as such. I discovered later that this was a crucial piece of misinformation.

Which led to my predicament. I managed to find a place, a good five hundred metres up the beach and when I got back down we decided to have some beverages to celebrate our arrival. I had heard all about Thai Red Bull and how it was so much stronger than at home. I didn’t think that would be a particularly difficult thing as the Red Bull in Australia has no effect on me whatsoever, so when Banga suggested I drink a Vodka Red Bull I was game. In fact, I ended up having about five of them, and I had already been drinking copious amounts of Chang. To cut a long story short, I woke up, waves lapping against my feet and lying in the sand, completely unaware of where I was. The problem, as I have since discovered, is that the Red Bull gives you so much energy that you’re awake long after you should have passed out from too much drinking. Not only are you awake, but you have the energy to act upon every uninhibited impulse that happens to flash through your mind. I spoke to Billy and Banga the next day to check on what had happened.

‘Well,’ began Banga, ‘You started getting very loud and disturbing the other guests at Shambala so we decided to walk you home.’

‘Yes. But the biggest problem with that was that you were unable to walk,’ added Billy.

‘Okay, but why was I so wet?’

‘Well you were unable to walk, but you were able to swim,’ he replied, ‘You said you were going to swim home and ran off into the water fully clothed before we could stop you.’

I thought this over. It sounded plausible. My clothes had been soaking as was my money belt. I had been forced to hang thousand baht notes up on the clothesline in my bungalow when I finally made it home.

‘But wait a minute, if you were walking me home then how come I woke up on the beach?’

‘Well you didn’t know where you lived. You were pretty sure we had come to the right place when you saw a bunch of guys sitting around a plastic table on the beach drinking, but when you approached them you tripped and knocked the table over and all their beers, so they weren’t too friendly after that.’

A memory came back to me. A frosty silence when I asked that blurry figure on the beach where I was. No wonder he wouldn’t talk to me.

‘And then you refused to get up and couldn’t tell us your room number so we left you there. We figured you’d get up and go home eventually.’

They were right. I did get up and go home. . . eventually. When I stumbled up to the road I had been so drunk I hadn’t even realised that I was just outside my own bungalows. I had flagged down a passing motorcycle and asked him if he would drive me to Bo Phut Beach. This he did, and when I got off I realised that I had no idea where I was. I scratched my head (well tried to, but accidentally poked myself in the eye) and attempted to think of another way of going about this. Bo Phut Beach was clearly not where I was, or else I would recognise it. I tried to recall instead the name of my bungalows. They were called Sunset Song 2, but the only word I could remember was Sunset. Now the thing about Thailand is, the Thais are some of the friendliest people in the world. They’ll always help you out and do it with a smile, so even at three in the morning I had no trouble finding another motorcycle to take me to my destination.

‘I need to get to Sunset. . . something. Sunset. . . ’ I stammered, shivering a little in my sodden clothes. The Thais may be some of the friendliest people in the world, but when it comes to naming bungalows and guesthouses they lack imagination. Every second place on the island has Sunset or Beach or Sunrise or Sea in the title.

He dropped me off at the end of a dirt road outside a locked gate of a massive resort complex called Sunset Resort. I shook my head.

‘This isn’t it!’ I exclaimed.

I was feeling a little desperate now. I had been driving around for half an hour or more and I had no idea where I was. My Thai was about as bad as his English and he became angry at me. He wanted money for petrol which I agreed to give him, if he got me home. Looking back I can see how stupid such a request was. He needed petrol to drive me around searching (out of the goodness of his heart and perhaps the possibility of a small tip) for a place that I didn’t know the name or location of, but I refused to give him money for the petrol he needed to do that until he got me there. My logic was not working at full capacity and I was getting a little bit scared. I became even more scared when he got off the bike and shoved me backwards, demanding money. Now I am not a fighter, but I raised my fists in front of my face to protect myself, and he just shook his head and got back on his bike.

‘Screw you!’ he called back at me as he drove away. His English was impeccable in that particular instance but I felt a little better. I had scared him off. I certainly showed him, I thought, as I stood in the pitch darkness at the end of a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. I found a main road through some blind stumbling and soon found myself perched on the back of yet another bike, heading for Bo Phut Beach. It was all wrong again, and I walked up the beach, thinking maybe I was just at the far end of it and would see my place if I walked the length of it. I arrived at a small wooden bar at the far end without having seen anything familiar. The bar was literally just that. A bar in the sand, playing reggae music. The two young Thai guys working there looked up in surprise as I approached. It must have been getting on to five in the morning.

‘You want a beer?’ one asked, and I admit that thethought did cross my mind, but I turned it down. The last thing I needed was more alcohol. Maybe just a Red Bull to keep myself awake. . .

‘You lost?’ the bartender asked and I nodded.

‘I’m looking for a place called Sunset. . . ’ I began and he just nodded.

I think he had seen this kind of thing before. ‘When I close the bar, I’ll give you a lift,’ he said, ‘About fifteen minutes.’

I shrugged. Sure, whatever. I didn’t honestly expect to get home but a change of scenery would be nice. So we sat around talking and suddenly something in my mind clicked. I must have been sobering up. ‘Sunset Song! That’s what it’s called! Sunset freaking Song!’

I was so overjoyed that I had remembered that I didn’t even notice the look of confusion that crossed his face. It turned out, as we were cruising around Samui that he didn’t know where Sunset Song was. We stopped once at a lonely crossroads at one point. Lonely that is except for the five Thai guys sitting around on a little bamboo structure getting drunk. One of them wandered up and said something to my bartender, and then peered at me through the gloom. He face spread into a broad smile and he started to laugh so much he could barely stand up. I looked at him, a bit bemused until I realised what was going on. He was the guy who had dropped me at the end of the dirt road, about an hour and a half earlier. My bartender was beginning to sense that he might be stuck with me, but he kept driving and within a few minutes we met an old man who knew where Sunset Song was.

‘Not Bo Phut. Big Buddha!’ he said.

I could have kissed that old man, and perhaps I did, I don’t really remember. Those two words and I was home within five minutes. We roared up the road on his Honda Dream (Bo Phut is the next beach along) and soon the huge gold Buddha appeared in my vision, like a guide. There it was, Sunset Song 2, just where I’d left it. I got off the bike exhausted and delved into my pocket, showering my new best friend with money, and making him promise to give the other guy some petrol money if he saw him again. He assured me that he would and with that I went into my bungalow, just as the sun was peeking up over the horizon.

‘Hang on,’ Billy said, interrupting my story, ‘Are you telling me you spent three hours or more driving around trying to get back to the exact place that we left you?’

I nodded, bowing my head with shame.

‘You’re an idiot!’ he declared.

‘You really are,’ Banga agreed.

[to be continued...]

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