Ice Girl Talks

Banlung is a gateway to isolated animist villages up river. The Tonle Srepok River is the river of darkness. The Apocalypse Now River.

The river overflowed with extended tedious years of silence singing a slow meandering song before being punctuated by random acts of violence, gunfire and exploding land mines swallowing eternal cries for mercy as innocent men, women and children were slaughtered in fields, homes and villages along twisted dirt jungle paths or murdered inside animist cemeteries wearing crude carved wooden faces remembering the dead with ceremonies, laughter, animal sacrifice and rice wine hearing the low dull roar of high altitude B- 52 bombers releasing enraptured napalm canister lightning bolts through clear skies rendering humans, mountains and jungles obsolete, accompanied by the steady rhythm of a girl sawing ice.

Someone said there was a war, she said. My mother saw a plane. She thought it was a bird. She wove the image into indigo cotton with yellow, blue and red silk thread. All the women weave here. Men don’t have the patience. They love hunting and killing.

Mother saw a whirling bird, called a helicopter. She wove it with our traditional motifs of weavers, people carrying water, harvesting, dancing, playing music, sitting, resting, flowers, fields, cows, chickens, ducks, birds, banana and palm trees, rivers, sky and nature. She weaves our long story.

Before writing, after cutting and selling ice, I weave.

Animists believe in the natural world. Every living thing has spirit energy.

A shy woman shaman smiled after performing a family ceremony and healing sacrifice near the river. She smeared chicken blood over a sick infant’s stomach. Villagers are superstitious and trusting.

Bored dead eyed humans wandered red dust.

One prolific business in Banlung is mechanical. Along and adjacent to the single east west paved artery were brown wooden homes and shacks of rusting corrugated tin.

Single men or teams of laborious boys hammered, welded and pried, manipulating iron and steel, adjusting belts, guided grinding gears, solidifying particles, firing cylinders, filing metallic blisters, reworking tired 125cc engines and formatting hard drives as spokes on crude machines sang.

Repair and restoration work implied basic life skills using eye-hand coordination, communication theory modules with colleagues, decipherable brooms, grease, balloons, laughter and a high degree of universal understanding and empathy.

Freedom worked 24/7.

Under a broiling sun tempered by a soft breeze they carried buckets of cement over boards, pouring it on red dirt. Freedom shoveled 21 muscular sandy efforts into a wheelbarrow. Freedom pushed it to a new world order construction site filled with profound expectations and poverty’s paradoxes.

Ice Girl in Banlung

Chinese Appliance Factory #8

Good afternoon students. My name is Mr. ON.

It rhymes with song gong, long gone.

         It is 17:10 p.m. If it was 18:01 p.m., I would say good evening, however it is still afternoon. It is late in life. Class meets twice a week for two hours. Show up on time, do your assignments and stay awake. Nothing more. Nothing less. Simple English is good.

         We are gathered here today in the glorious Chinese Communist Party Peoples’ Appliance Factory #8 to begin our simple English lessons. Your supervisor informs me you are here by choice and chance. You have the choice. This is your chance. Am I clear? Do you understand me? Choice and chance. 

         Now. I know. Most of you have been working in the factory since dawn. It is the end of another long mind numbing grueling tedious day down on the killing floor. English has brought us together. You face unique and amazing challenges to acquire a foreign language. To use said target language with meaning. To maybe baby become fluent. It will require your undivided attention, focus and electrical energy.

         You will practice speaking, reading, listening and writing. These are the four basic skills.

Output: Writing and speaking are active.

Input: Reading and listening are passive.

Learning is a never-ending process. Many of you will die before it’s complete.

        Learning occurs in the context of task-based activities. In other words you learn by doing. You do and you understand, as we say, said, did, done.

         We will cover, in exhaustive detail, four important appliances and their English A/C-D/C lets see connections. They are: washing machines, air conditioners, vacuum cleaners and microwave ovens.

         These machines are now essential in everyone’s life. You know this because it is your job to put them together. It’s like English. Putting words together makes a phrase. A short, simple sentence. Some have meaning and some are gibberish. Many words are composites of useless idiomatic semantic syntax that is not the same as income tax however both are expensive.

         Write this down.

         English in. English out.

         Open your head, heart and mouth. Eat English.

         Please open your creative notebook. Using a simple writing tool like a pen or #2, get the lead out fast pencil I want you to consider the following questions. Answer them using basic English.

         How did I get here? ______ 

         Why am I here? _____

         Am I a machine? _______

         Am I a tool of the factory? _______

         What is my motivation to learn English? (Secret answer - MONEY)

         No money, no honey.

Here’s the equation. No English = no job. No job = no money. No money = no food = starvation.

         Your supervisor has instructed me to motivate you. She expects me to motivate you to arrive on time, complete the assigned tasks, and pass the exams. Her management style ordered me to use fear as a form of discipline with you.

We are all well aware how the power and threat of fear motivates humans in our society. If I fail to motivate and pass you I will be executed. Survival is my fear-based motivation. You WILL pass because my little short life depends on it.

         Fear is a funny word.

Fear of starvation. Fear of poverty. Fear of losing face. Fear of failure. Fear of humiliation or shame. Fear of not meeting family expectations. Fear of speaking in public.

         Fear of  ______  (free choice).

         Thank you for your short attention span. Next lesson we will discuss parts and functions of a washing machine cycle with elocution about a Turkish woman using sharp word shears down on her killing floor.

Fooling and Tooling

Greetings,

On Earth inside the Milky Way galaxy filled with 100 billion stars is a small town. In the town is a market where people meet, eat, drink, walk around, sleep, talk, gossip, sell, barter, trade, buy, cry, beg, laugh, and use tools to make things.

What are tools? Tools are things to make things. They make something and use it to make other things. This is called human activity. People once used stones to sharpen other stones to make tools.

Can you show us someone making something?

Ok. Here is a man using a mechanical tool to make a gold bracelet. His tool is made of iron, steel and other materials. It uses energy to work.

Where does the energy come from? The energy comes from machines converting sun, wind, ocean currents, burning coal and processing high grade uranium 235 isotopes into energy. 235 is capable of sustaining chain reactions producing energy to run machines called plants.

Do you mean a plant is a tool? Yes. A plant is a living organism and very valuable. As well, there are plants that kill humans, like hemlock. Plants collect energy from the sun to grow. Humans harvest plants for medicine and food and so on.

If a man and woman combine their tools can they make things grow like plants? Yes. More like weeds. This human activity is called procreation. Earth has about 6 billion examples and signs of intelligent life is rare.

Show us another tool. Ok, A woman's fingers are tools. She uses her tool to sew colorful objects on a piece of fabric with another tool. The tool is a metal needle. Humans evolved opposable thumbs enabling them to grasp objects. Her thumb is opposable to her forefinger allowing her to use the tool with precision.  

We have time for one more tool. Show us a good one.

This man lives in a poor rural village in Sichuan, China. He is a tool like the gold worker and the seamstress. They are controlled by others and used to perform unpleasant tasks for someone else. They are the means of production in a social and economic sense.

He is using a tool to make new tools. I said this at the beginning of today's story. The stone tools he makes will be used to make a wall, another tool. 

Why do they need to make another wall? They already have a famous wall.
The Chinese have been building walls for 5,000 years. It's in their genetic makeup. 
What is genetics?
A sledgehammer. 

Thank you for your attention.

Metta.

Sunset drive

Greetings,

At dusk as an orange flaming ball of gas drifts toward blue mountains, setting trees on fire, painting the sky red, the Kampot river drive comes alive. I sit across the street with an iced coffee at a rolling stall. It costs 1500 Real or 75 sense.

The woman is friendly because I am Mr. Lucky Foot and bring her good fortune. People are curious about the stranger so they visit her and buy something cool and refreshing. They stare. They drink. They mill around. They pay. They leave.

She's been here since dawn. She stakes out the corner across from the Post Office every day. She has everything she needs; a hammock for a mid-day nap, sugar cane grinders, apples, oranges, dragon fruit, mangoes, bananas, java, tea, umbrellas, plastic chairs, folding tables and a fine view. Her husband and two sons help her in late afternoon. 

Fifteen fishing boats return south from up river, chugging through wake reflections of sky. A woman with her daughter perched on the running board of a motorcycle putts past. Men and wives with their kids pass. A man with his dog blowing white hair cruises along.

Blue vans serve as a local buses. They're crammed with millions of humans and their market shopping. The roof is covered with lashed bamboo baskets, boxes, tires, and assorted packages. The open back door exposes material threatening to explode and spill into the road.

Heavy-duty construction dump trucks filled with labor boys blast their horns and spit gravel. 

Chattering Muslim girls in colorful scarves, having finished their day shift at the local P.T.C. weaving center for 200 disadvantaged youngsters from rural areas pedal home. Teams of young chattering cycle boys prowl for girls. Prim girls in blue school uniforms pedal bikes, ride scooters. Blond fat Europeans walk the front as serious local women on a weight-loss program of infinite proportions march along, swinging their gaited arms like puppets in a play.

A man with his rolling cart near the curb pulverizes ingredients with a mortar and pestle. He serves dinner noodles, vegetables and spices to sidewalk lovers, kids, moms and dads cradling infants. A busy woman next door with her rolling restaurant grills meat and fish using pieces of charcoal fired below a clay pot.

Wealthy people blast past in 4-wheel drives. One day I saw a Hummer. It was humming black money. The people inside were invisible. Someone said there are 200 very, very rich people in this country and millions of poor people. How many poor people can fit in a hummingbird? 

Humans trapped inside vehicles scream, "Look at the people outside. They are eating, breathing, living, laughing, talking, dreaming and loving. What if I die here in this cartoon graveyard? Who'll be my role model?"

Accidental children inside rolling machines pound their tiny craniums against reinforced tempered glass barriers yelling, "Look, mom! See the kids by the river. They're playing a game in fresh air. They have air-conditioning. I want to play. I'm hungry!" Mom ignored their plea of temporary insanity.

Dad steps on the gas blasting loose gravel and dust into the air. He wants to get home to his gated house with high fences wearing shards of glittering sharp green glass. To keep them out.

A young boy and and his sister finish eating corn-on-the-cob. He runs to the edge of the world, pulls out his imaginary pistol and fires at the flaming orange sun. It explodes and disappears. He laughs, "Bulls-Eye!" 

He and his sister find their father's comforting hand and they walk.

Metta.

Applied Appliance English

Good afternoon students. My name is Mr. On. It rhymes with song, gong, long gone.

It is 17:10 p.m. If it was 18:01 p.m. I would say good evening, however it is still afternoon. It is late in the day. Class will meet twice a week for two hours. Show up on time, do your assignments and be prepared. Nothing more, nothing less.

We are gathered here today in the glorious People's Appliance Factory #8 to begin our basic, simple English lessons.

Your supervisor informs me you are here both by choice and chance. You have the choice and this is your chance. Am I clear? Do you understand me? Choice and chance.

Now, I know most of you have been working since early morning in the factory. It is the end of another long mind numbing tedious grueling day on the killing floor.

English has brought us together. We face unique and amazing challenges to acquire a foreign language. To use said language with meaning. To hopefully become fluent. It will require your undivided attention, focus and electrical energy.

We will practice speaking, reading, listening and writing. These are the four basic skills. Reading and listening are foundations in your learning process. Learning occurs in the context of task-based activities. In other words you learn by doing. You do and you understand, as the Chinese say, said, did, done.

We will cover, in exhaustive detail, four important appliances and their English connections.

They are: washing machines, air conditioners, vacuum cleaners and microwave ovens!

These machines are now an important part of everyone's life. You know this because it is your job to put them together. It's like English, putting words together makes a simple sentence. Some have meaning and some are gibberish.

Please open your creative notebook. Using a simple writing tool I would like you to consider the following questions. Please answer them using your basic English.

Why am I here? Am I a machine, a tool? What exactly is a machine? What is my motivation to learn English?

Your supervisor has instructed me to motivate you. She expects me to motivate you to complete the assigned tasks and arrive on time. Her management style instructed me to use fear as a form of discipline with you. We are all well aware how the power and threat of fear motivates humans.

Fear of starvation. Fear of poverty. Fear of failure. Fear of not meeting social expectations. Fear of ______.

Thank you for your attention. See you next week when we discuss parts and functions of a washing machine. 

Metta.