Business Trip to Thailand (Second visit)

I have been and will be staying in Bangkok from September 5 to September 9, 2011 for my business purpose.

For socio-economic survey, I visited an open-air market in Bangkok yesterday. It was a very huge market. There were fish, meat, vegetable, and other foods as many varieties as I can imagine. An atmosphere prevailing in the market was totally different from other places where I visited during my stay in Thailand. Smells, sounds, faces of people and dogs floating or walking in the market impressed me very much. It was rather a chaotic atmosphere, which was similar to the one which I had during my stay in Mumbai in May, 2010.

Thailand has many faces.

Private Life

A couple of years ago I read a book with the title “Einstein: His Life and Universe” written by Walter Isaacson. This book is a biography of Dr. Einstein. According to the book, when teaching theoretical physics in a university, Dr. Einstein said to his students “You can ask me anything that you are interested in except for my private life.”

Indeed, Dr. Einstein had a deep story in his private life. He and his first wife had two boys and one girl. Or more correctly, Dr. Einstein and his girlfriend who would become his first wife got the girl before their marriage. The girl, however, was transferred to a friend of the wife soon after her birth, and Dr. Einstein had hardly or never contacted the girl after her leave. The reason why she left was unclear.

The younger son of Dr. Einstein had disability in his mental health, and did not have good physical strength. Although his first wife always took great care of the younger son, he passed away in relatively younger ages, I forgot the correct age, but probably in the 20s of the younger son.

The first wife of Dr. Einstein was his classmate in their university. Her major was physics, and had a good talent in science. She helped so much Dr. Einstein develop special relativity when he was 25 or 26 years-old. The relationship between her and Dr. Einstein was good in their initial stage of the marriage, but later, it got worse and worse. They lived together at one time, but lived in a separate location at other time, and finally they were divorced.

I think that the reason why Dr. Einstein did not want to talk about his private life to his students was simple; it was too long. It would take too long time to explain his private life as per requests from his students. Actually, the author of the biography required more than 800 pages of a paperback to explain his private life in place of Dr. Einstein.

On the other hand, how about my private life? I have little to talk about. I have a wife, but no kids. When I am out of office, I usually read novels, listen music from YouTube, write this kind of posts, or strengthen background knowledge of my profession by studying technical books. I like to walk around my town or take a bicycle just to go around. Nothing seems special, and everything seems usual.

I have made some friends through activities of a non-profit organization, Citizen Science Initiative Japan. A head office of the organization is very close to my home, it took just five to ten minutes by walk from my home to there. About once in a month, I visited the office and talked with friends about something. In recent days, out topics were mainly related to 3.11. Many of the people gathering at the office have their interests in science, and their professions are also related to science. Thus, it is comfortable for me to contact them since sometimes we do not need additional explanation or clarification when talking about science.

A record of my private life is important. Although or because my private life is not special, I try to keep recording my viewpoints on my daily life. This motivation originates from my primitive desires.

Staying Alone in Home

I am in my summer vacation. I have been and will be out of my office from August 19 (Friday) to August 25 (Thursday). I have been staying in my home since starting the vacation, hardly have gone out of my home except for having a short walk around my home.

During the walk, I have visited a coffee shop nearby my home to have a cup of coffee. It was nice coffee with a bit of a strong flavor. Its cost was 190 yen, and could be accessible from my home a couple of minutes by foot. Still now, I remember that the first two or three sips of the coffee were the best, anyway.

When strolling around my home, I also have visited a used-book store just to see around; but, I found a book written by Toshiko Hirata interesting, and bought it. It was a poem typed story. The author has a good talent to express herself with nice lyrics. In her book, she focused on a relationship between a husband and a wife. A course of ordinary and usual relationships were depicted with a nice writing style.

My wife has been and will be also out of our home due to her business for this week.

I found it comfortable to be alone in my home. I ate every meat with reading books. I have successively completed reading novels. I am currently reading “Underground” by Haruki Murakami. This book is not a novel, but a non-fiction typed story with a root from the terror occurred in subways on March 20, 1995.

The situation in early 1995 in Japan was quite similar to the one in early 2011. In January 1995, a massive earthquake struck a center of Kobe, and more than 5,000 people were dead. Subsequently, in March 1995, the terror occurred in Tokyo. The nuclear accident at Fukushima followed by the massive earthquake occurred in March 2011. Natural disasters seem to be liked with human origin disasters.

In my office, I spent many of my time in communicating with my colleagues, bosses, subcontractors both in Japanese and English. Day by day, I communicated and communicated and communicated. I am a consultant as well as an engineer. I need time to prepare management plans or technical documents as for my work as an engineer. Along with this, I have to grasp needs of my clients and provide them with adequate solutions as a consultant. Thus, day by day, I have communicated with relevant people and prepared documents, and provided them with the documents, and again communicated with….

As a whole, I like working as a consultant, but, at the same time, I like to stay alone in my home. Reading and thinking alone are good and quite relaxed.

The wind-up bird chronicle

Someone who has visited my blog has said that “The wind-up bird chronicle” by Haruki Murakami was an impressive book. During the trip to Thailand last week, I completed reading The wind-up bird chronicle. I had a set of time in the airplane and before falling in sleep at a hotel in Bangkok.

The novel was interesting. Tohru Okada is a main character. He is 30 years-old, and got married, but has not had kids yet. He lives in Tokyo. His life is not special at one glance. However, as the novel continues, he begins to get involved in unusual things. He often jumps between in reality and in dream. Many characters appear in the novel, and they speak and speak and speak. With the help of those characters, I sometimes thought that I could touch one of fundamental questions of our life. They are usually called as love, dream, mission of our life, enemy to our soul, or others.

I like Murakami’s novels because he sheds light on important things which exist in my mind, but do not usually appear in my daily life.

Business Trip to Thailand

I am now in Bangkok, Thailand. I am here for my business purpose. One of the missions of this trip is related to waste management in Thailand.

Thailand is a good place to stay. Food is good even though it is a little bit hot and oily. Air pollution here in Bangkok is not severer than in Hanoi or Mumbai. Waste is not scattered on streets. Stray dogs are here and there, but they do not come close to me.

What impressed me here was that poor people was poor, and rich was rich. I feel that there are a huge discrepancy between people who have and people who do not have. Taxi drivers or clerks at restaurant or shopping markets seems really poor, on the other hand, business people working at offices seems smart and intelligent.

I will visit Thailand probably 3 to 4 times within the next half year to accomplish my business mission.

Macroscopic and microscopic

When I was a university student, I used to think that I would like to engage in a job through which I could add a valuable contribution to the realization of a better world. I did not hope to spend my time in conducting superficial things in exchange for salary in my future career.

Six years has passed since I graduated my school and started working at a consulting company. So, one question is “Am I doing and delivering valuable services to my clients?

In addition, as a result of my service, our society goes to a better direction?” Of course, no one knows an answer to my question.

From the macroscopic point, our Japanese society becomes worse than six years ago. China has overcome an economic competition over Japan recently. We experienced the large earthquake and tsunami as well as the nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant and distributed a large amount of radioactive substances throughout the eastern part of Japan. The disaster on 3.11 is already and will more strictly tight our national budget in the future.

From the microscopic point, some of my works, which I completed for the period of the six years of my career, satisfied my clients’ needs, and such types of experiences have strengthened the confidence in my management and technical skills. Even I may have satisfied my clients’ needs in some of my past projects, the situation surrounding Japan got worse in the macroscopic context.

After all, individuals can do a very little thing in our society, but I would like to keep doing my best performances in my professional career in the future.

Perception of Radiation Risk

Four months have passed since the nuclear accident occurred in Fukushima. A huge number of information flows with respect to radiation risks is still spreading our society. A remarkable point of the information flow is that the radiation risks are expressed purely based on scientific languages. This makes it difficult for me to understand and evaluate current and prospective risks; thus, I cannot make a priority how to respond this issue.

This sounds contradiction. Scientific language should provide us with reasonable explanations, and I believe that other languages, such as intuitions, arts, astrology, cannot play the same role as science. Then, why cannot I grasp the radiation risks surrounding me even though I am in a position where I can gain scientific information? An answer is easy. My scientific literacy is limited, and a complexity of the radiation risks exceeds my limitation.

“No acute toxicity arising from the radioactive substances to our health is expected”, the Japanese government have been repeatedly expressing to its citizens. However, the government statement lacks scientific explanations; thus, I cannot accept the government explanation without hesitations.

For example, last night I bought a pack of cherries, which have been produced in Yamagata prefecture. If the cherries were to be produced in Fukushima, I would have hesitated to buy them. However, I cannot make a reasonable decision in buying the one produced in Yamagata. I do not know whether or not agricultural products produced outside Fukushima prefecture are safe. Thus, I stop thinking the safety issues in buying the cherries. That was not an act that those who have scientific knowledge should have done.

Since March 11, 2011, I started studying safety issues relating to radioactive substances in my private time. However, I am still uncertain whether or not my life in this Tokyo is safe.

In any way, if similar accidents to the one in Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant occur in Japan in future, the Japanese government will collapse easily. No more nuclear power plants are requested, and current operating nuclear power plants should be abolished in an adequate manner in near future.