ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing ktravula – a travelogue! blog archives for June, 2011.

Oh Fulbright.

I received a spirited email yesterday from someone who had found this blog through search for resources and tips about the Fulbright programme. Here’s an excerpt:

I came across your blog a few days ago when searching for fellow Fulbrighters who were willing to share their experiences on the Web. Either my research sucked big time or there were hardly any note-worthy ones except yours. I loved your posts especially your ’10 Reasons Not To Speak Your Native Language’. Haha..that was hilarious. I can totally relate to that. You see, I’m from Malaysia and our national language is Malay. Obviously it’s an unusual language but it has been quite useful during my stay abroad when we don’t want people to understand us. One day, my friends and I were caught red-handed by a Nigerian who spoke Malay!! Thankfully, we were just commenting on how cute he was. Yes, how about that. Turns out he has lived in Malaysia for quite a bit and he was used to the language. Taught me not to be so obnoxious and use Malay like there was no tomorrow =)

Mails like this make me happy to have – in some way, if only through random observations/rants of daily blog posts – provided resources or stimulus to those who might need them to apply for the Fulbright which I believe is a life-changing experience. It also reminds of why blogging is not such a waste of time after all.  For those that may still stumble on this page looking for resources, let me recommend the following links that might help.

What a Day (June 3, 2010)
A Short History of My Face (January 22, 2010)
Why Fulbright (December 16, 2009)
The Conference (December 11, 2009)
I Was Very Close (December 9, 2009)
The Beginning (August 10, 2009)

and a few others…

Like I said in response to the email, the only other most important criteria needed for applying for the program, along with the required knowledge of language, is curiosity and a sense of adventure, and an open mind.

 

Oh Fulbright. was published on June 7th, 2011, with the tags , , , , under the Uncategorized category. There are currently 7 comments on this article so far.

Homeliness and the Deck

Driving in a dry warm weather through a whiff of air that smells like harmattan and its burnt grass flavour, he heads to school. This is the standard. There are other freedoms along the way: a chance to walk a quiet neighbourhood at night with a coon cat on a leash with a few random stares by those who had never seen anyone of that height and/or complexion in that side of town in a long time, and greeting nods from those who had, or who know him as the new stranger in the big house. An always wonderful evening meal with an amazing family, and after-conversations ranging from events, to issues, to life, and to time.

On the last day of December, 1983 – you were too small to remember – we were stuck at the border point between Benin and Nigeria trying to get back into the country after having traversed the West African coastline visiting very nice places. The Benin border patrols had cleared us but the Nigerian folks won’t let us in. They said there had been a change of government… And the Beninoise then refused to let us back in their country as soon as we got back there… Has anything changed now?

Sitting on the wooden deck out in the warm evening breeze, he looks down into the woods where trees of varying heights and shades go on and on onto a house farther down where no one had ever been. Some people used to live there. On the closer trees are bird feeders filled with sunflower seeds. Father showed him how to add more to it whenever it finished. The squirrels spend much of their times there. Chipmunks also come whenever the sound of hawks are not close by. With little pouches under their necks, they look almost as their exaggerated depictions in those animated movies. A robin came in once along with a little one. Hummingbirds offer a most surprising sight, wheezing in and out of sight like extra large honeybees. The cardinals are the most beautiful, with red crested heads and feathers and a certain grace, all giving the evening a flavour of more than just their sounds.

Whenever the amazing tune of life gets stuck in the mucky throat of over-excitement or even oversimplification, the deck offers comfort, along with the other perks of homeliness. Then everything is all right again.


 

Homeliness and the Deck was published on June 6th, 2011, with the tags , , , under the Observations, Soliloquy category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

On Migrations, and Age

This recent post on my colleague Clarissa’s blog on migrations and the kind of immigrants/grad students that we find in the US raises interesting perspectives. The post she wrote and the one she referenced both talk about the two extremes of being migrant students/travellers in the US: they either completely or extremely assimilate (sometimes even more fervently than already settled natives), or refuse to assimilate at all, living in the host country only in the flesh, and keeping their minds fixated only with things from home. Both extremes are unsustainable but we have all at one point or the other met people who leaned more to either side of the continuum.

Does it have to do with age, education, gender or religion? I can’t tell, but one very endearing characteristics of Czeslaw Milosz’s Visions from San Francisco Bay to me was the very removed but well situated (beautifully written) reflections on life in Poland as observed from California where the author had chosen to settle after a career lasting very many years. It was in the interaction of his fossilized Polish cultural personality with the new and dynamic of the American West Coast that the beautiful book of reflections emerged, and one is grateful for it. I suspect that the extent (and more importantly, progression) of the immigrant’s insularity on the continuum of eventual assimilation will determine the extent of creative conflict that might turn out to delight in form of essays and literary reflections. And surely, age does add a very interesting dynamic.

By the end of our teenage years, we are all usually well situated in our cultural surroundings to be able to thrive with it in a foreign country. The result of the melange of attitudes and interactions from then on determines much of how one’s adult life in a foreign country eventually plays out, and much of it is also fuelled by attitude. For a second here, I return to the short moments at the end of Wole Soyinka’s Ake and V.S. Naipaul’s Miguel Street where the young impressionable men leave their home surroundings for the very first time. Insularity ends, and the real world lessons begin. There might be something to be learnt in comparing the thought progression, attitudes and output of the three writers through the prism of their travel experiences, and more importantly, exposure. And time.

 

On Migrations, and Age was published on June 5th, 2011, with the tags , , , , , under the Soliloquy, Uncategorized category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Sunset in Edwardsville

Evenings like this make everything else worthwhile. Welcome June.

Sunset in Edwardsville was published on June 1st, 2011, with the tags , , under the Observations category. There are currently 2 comments on this article so far.