Before blowing up globally, the stage had been primed by the genre altering Acid Jazz movement.

The only thing I understood, at the end of the movie, I could sing along “LA LA LA, LA LA LA LA LA LA ALA LA LA LA.”

One of the best parts about having a mom who worked her butt off, you had a VCR, cable and a cool TV in the early 80′s. Beyond the classic children movies of the 80′s, we also owned every film from John Hughes. I don’t fully understand where these movies came from,  just the characters that would define my idealized future teenage years.

Was it unhealthy to have a 5 year old watch Breakfast Club, not so much when you consider the books I read.  The Breakfast Club highlighted the madness of what high school could be, before I fully understood cliques. The only thing I understood, at the end of the movie, singing along to “LA LA LA, LA LA LA LA LA LA ALA LA LA LA.”

Simple Minds, a band I never really cared to follow or even knew their name, had my jam. The haunting plea to be remembered by another, meant nothing beyond how good it sounded. Lucky for me and my sister, there isn’t video evidence of us singing along at the end of the film. We just rocked this song hard.

To this day, even though the songs meaning is clear in my mind. It reminds me of those fun moments of my sister and I simply getting along laughing. Movies were such a foundation of our childhood and those soundtracks in the 80′s always had one standout track.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpc7TBhilFI

Living life in one colour,
My dear is not a good thing,
Sadness and happiness are two paths,
Travelling on one path is not a good thing.

As the season (mausam?) changes,
Happiness comes and sadness goes.

- Mausam

Who am I? Well, it all depends on who and when you ask somebody. Life is about truth, only lies and ignorance can allow you to live a life always in a state of happiness and disillusionment, disdain and knowledge in sorrow. The Catholic Church in centuries past, believed that speaking to the ignorant, in a language they couldn’t understand about god was their best path to the joys of heaven. Did it work? Who clearly knows that answer because, we aren’t capable of doing a headcount in heaven. The modern form of sorrow can be found in those decaying urban cities where children deal drugs, hyper-aware of the true limitations and possibilities in society.

The beauty of Eastern philosophy, one lost upon it’s western counterparts is the understanding of balance. Life is about embracing both to gain a greater insight and appreciation for both. In a song, introduced by my father because, his great love for Nitin Sawhney had to be shared. While most of the tracks were in English, including “Letting Go,”  a song that could have easily found itself on this list.  Mausam spoke to me, even though I couldn’t understand the lyrics, my soul somehow had.

For somebody who choose to carefully acknowledge life as a time of seasons, I enjoyed floating between the two. Why worry about suffering if at any given point, I can choose to be happy? Why worry about happiness, when the realities of life prevent you from ever staying there? The problem is when you get stuck, unable to acknowledge the other reality or worse, fear what it symbolizes. In being exposed to all these philosophies, life can never truly conform to a society that states any deviance requires a pill.

People should listen to Mausam only to experience the lyrics and if it feels them with a sense of calm. It was only last year that I felt inclined to find the lyrics to the song. Upon finding them, I understood why, I had fallen in love with it so many years ago. Seasons do change and life consists of paths we can choose. To follow one, which I clearly don’t, prevents you from truly living life.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQx9XAKcc4I

Ask anybody who watched Labyrinth and they will universally make a “You remind me of the babe. What babe? The babe with the power” reference.

The greatest movie of my childhood, without question was Labyrinth. There isn’t a debate on the merits of Dark Crystal, The Last Unicorn and Carebears The Movie all being outstanding and touching movies, but nothing compares to a coked up David Bowie in a codpiece. Labyrinth is a musical that by todays standards might be rated R, considering the grotesque nature of Bowie playing with a baby would create howls of improper relations.

Ask anybody who watched Labyrinth and they will universally make a “You remind me of the babe. What babe? The babe with the power” reference. If they don’t, well they have no sense of joy in their lives. The pure cult of personality that was Bowie was not lost on a generation that knew nothing of his music. What we did know was, he was always singing throughout the movie and had an accent.

Everything about the soundtrack reminds you of that wonderfully whimsical film. The whole thing just took your little brain, scrambled it and showed you a totally new and amazing world. One where it was acceptable to have a clearly drugged Bowie hitting on what appeared to be a 13 year old Jennifer Connelly. Seriously, when you look on this movie as an adult, it is seriously creepy. Yet, as a child it was an adventure that included a song about spells and and magic dancing. We were too oblivious to the suggestion, slapping a baby would set it free. No, we were too busy singing along and dancing to understand child abuse.

Bowie will forever be remembered for his shameless pop opus, Magic Dance. From the heroin addicted creepy guy, to child movie icon, only in the 80′s folks. A time when Jim Henson and his puppets made Bowie seem soft and human. I own the blue ray, I own the soundtrack, because BABY SAID, buy it.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViftZTfRSt8

Stop all this crying and be a man.– Issac Hayes from I Can’t Go To Sleep

Protect Yo Neck! Diversify Yo Bonds! Konichiwa, Bitch! Cream get that money! Ghost and Rza decide it’s time to provide an ethnographic piece on the struggle of black people in America. The lyrics and story speak for themselves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X09ZKfJATaU

Scorn, I can’t over emphasize how disgusted my dad was with getting Happy 2B Hardcore 2

Everyone has a guilty pleasure, mine just happens to be Track 7 & 8 off a Happpy 2B Hardcore album. The redheaded stepchild of the dance scene (sorry, gabber), with it’s needlessly fast BPM and joyous use of vocal samples. Damn that Crown Chakra for it’s inability to stay closed to a slightly distorted vocal of any quality.

Scorn, I can’t over emphasize how disgusted my dad was with getting Happy 2B Hardcore 2. I was over visiting his house and he just said, “here, this is totally you.” Everything he hated about dance music could be found in that album, repetitive beats, annoying samples and slightly below average production. He would have slipped the disc into my bags, just to remove it from his house.

Just how bad is my love of this album and the two standout tracks in my mind. Josh and Legs both hate it and they are electronic music junkies. When, they’re laughing at you and suggesting you breakout the gabber to improve, you know something is wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVuLaCAORpk

Rec 3999

The hospitality business in Japan is multifaceted and serves basically the same purpose to make a tidy profit. The various hotels range in the capsule hotels that serve company men, love hotels for lovers, hotels in coastal areas and the traditional 4 star style hotels. While living in a small town has its select perks the benefit towards doing research for Rec 3999 was interesting because the owner of one of the local love hotels my students parents. This allowed me visit the hotel and ask some basic questions about what services they cater to. While in Tokyo my first night in Japan I had the pleasure of experience one of the better capsule hotels in town that was located in Roppongi. The other hotel branch I have had the pleasure of visiting is a normal hotel that my host brothers best friend owns. The 3 various hotels I have visited since being in Japan have shown me some of the standard values that all hotels cater to while the drastic differences can sometimes make the similarities invisible.

The capsule hotel was an unexpected stay given the fact I had a reservation I canceled at a small little hotel on the other side of Tokyo in the Ueno area. However, I had dinner plans with my friends and being it my only night in Tokyo decided to spend it in the Shibuya Ku. I landed in Tokyo without hotel accommodations as I fully expected to stay at an internet café all night long. While this seems like a very impractical ideal they have become the accommodation of choice among the younger company men given the ability to use the internet, play video games, watch DVDs, read Comics, and enjoy free drinks and the shower that is readily available.  A far stretch from the common image of a wide open space shared by many users the Japanese internet café has private rooms in the size of cubicles with lockers and slippers and robes for its guests. There is a light night owl cost at many and in some cases they have room for 2. The rate is around 15 dollars making it an extremely choice for around 7 hours of rest and entertainment.

I was not able to partake in my normal one night in a city stay given that my friends wanted me to stay in a proper hotel or at least a capsule. The result was me getting on a bus to Roppongi to stay in a capsule hotel which was more then I expected. My great fear was that the place would just be a series of capsules stacked on top of each other with a grungy shower and that I would be fairly uncomfortable within one. Come to find out for 40 dollars I was in what could be considered a pretty fine hotel. The only problem being that the 2 women working the front desk had no control of the English language. This was not a tourist hotel and it catered to Japanese only, luckly my friend spoke English although the fact she was female meant she was separated from me and any problem I had they would wake her up to solve. With that I took my key and locker and went to my room upstairs. I forgot to note that my shoes had been taken off even to come into the registration area. Upstairs I walked by about 30 set of the art massage chairs with TVs, next to that were the lockers that stored towels and a change of clothes into teal blue Pjs and a place for your belongings. Because I am huge by Japanese standards I wound up sleeping in my clothes with my bag all fitting into the capsule. I felt this was extremely amazing given the fact that I am about 6 foot 3 and my feet did not stick out, and I had room for my bag and could still turn around. The capsule held personal environmental controls, an 8 inch TV, and an alarm clock plus a light. The capsule provided privacy via a nice little screen that pulled down which drowned outside light but not my horrible snoring.

The next morning I had more of a chance to explore as I placed my bag into my locker, it was a weekday morning around 6am and the amount of people awake was astounding. They were getting massages, and soaking in the massive bath which was easily 20 feet long and 6 feet wide. The shower room was extremely nice and had a fully selection of toiletries, and next to that was a room dedicated to shaving and hair. Each vanity had hair dryers and other things needed to look ones best. I didn’t really care about that because I was extremely embarrassed to shower in a group of men. The bathroom required bathroom slippers that had to have been a size 9, because I couldn’t even fit my foot into them. The urinals were all the latest no flush Toto and the toilets all western style and shaped like a home toilet but clearly built for hospitality needs. I decided to go downstairs to explore the rest of the hotel only too find even more massage recliners. In addition there were 4 spa rooms that contained 4 different type of massage treatments which were reasonably priced at 30 dollars a half hour. A little past that was a dinner room for a fully stocked kitchen that cooked food to order. The water pot was located there along with beers and the such. The only problem I really had found was that smoking was allowed in the eating area only which was a pain. I think I would have never thought all those services would have been there nor provided for such a reasonable price. I ended up checking out with the help of my friend who then made sure I found out how to get to the airport for my connecting flight ok.

The next adventure was at a love hotel which is a hotel that is used mostly for sex or romantic evenings out. The lack of space and proximity to neighbors or children has made love hotels extremely popular for their privacy and mood settings. Love hotels also feature no front desk staff and the guest never sees anyone as they enter and exist the hotel. The kids who happen to live behind the hotel in their family home seem very well adjusted considering the type of hotel their family runs. The hotels feature garages that the visitor drives into, then cover the identity of the car with a door or curtain. They then walk through a special door that normally leads directly

Coconut Oil: the emerging substitute on the Global market

The Philippines are in procession of a global cash crop, comparable to the cotton industry how multifaceted byproducts. The source is Cocos nucifera L, simply known as the Coconut palm is native to the sub tropical and tropical regions of the world. The Coconuts origins are still a mystery even though science believes Southeast Asia or South America are its birth place, however similar plants date back over 15 million years in India and New Zealand. Its highly buoyant seeds have blessed the tropics by the marine currents, growing in the highly saline seashores. Like rice in Japan, the whole coconut palm is utilized by the native people, creating a beneficial resource. The byproducts are numerous ranging from ceremonial drums from the trunks, roofing from the leafs, buildings from the trunks and the husk and shells as a fuel source are locally used to build infrastructure.

The influence of the coconut to none regional uses remind people of the tropics, an exotic flavor such as mango, passion fruit, or papaya rather then its many benefits. The western world relishes coconut for what the shell protects, the white creamy meat kept moist by coconut water. These products are commonly found in deserts and regional cuisine making it universally known as a food product. Though, the most profitable aspects of the coconut is a easily extractable oil that is highly sought after on the global market.  The flood of cheap coconut oil unto the global market in the 1960s and 70s is a key development of the Philippines showing the benefits of coconut oil for other vegetable oils.

Tree of Life

In coconut industry of the Philippines is the story of a country using a readily available resource to create a global industry. While the Philippines is now the largest grower of coconuts in the world its approach to modernizing the market infrastructure is key to its success. While the abundance of the coconut is shown within the mythology and folk stories of the Philippines. The term ‘Tree of Life’ was key to Pilipino life through the ages.  Coconut farming takes up around 25 percent of the cultivated land of the Philippines while between 25 and 33 percent of the population is partly dependent on it for their livelihood. This vast amount of coconut produces around 11.8 million tons of products making up around 7.0 percent of all exports for the Philippines.  The regions that are the key regions of coconut farming are Tagalog, Bicol of Luzon and the Eastern Visayas. The expansion of the massive amount of space used for the crop is a direct response to the devaluing of the peso which caused the poor to seek income. The response was a 6 percent increase per year on the land devoted to cultivation during the 1960s and 1970s. This increase was a direct order from the PCA as a means to increase the capital of the government. The 1980s saw the raise of the mostly Islamic regions of Western Mindanao and Southern Mindanao which was left behind in the Marcos regimes policies even though Mindanao has the perfect conditions for the tree.

How to grow

coconuts is a fairly simple process which requires little supervision to have an effective crop. The average size of a coconut farm in the Philippines is around four hectares while the average size of an american farm is 189 hectare. This is a stark contrast in the ideal of large effective farming, the coconut farming requires no additional fertilizers or water supplies because of the climate is perfectly suited to its growth. The only real requirements are about 75 to 100 cm of rainfall annually and constant sunshine. The farm owners hardly are onsite, creating the need for seasonal labor which is readily available from local rural populations. These unskilled labors work for below the Philippines national average salary in the semi hazardous regiment. This entails climbing a tree 50-80 ft high to where the fruit rests, carefully dislodging the fruit while keeping ones balance, where it lands on the ground. While in some cases pruning or disease checking is done by the worker this is once again a low maintenance tree.

The average tree in the Philippines produces around 75 fruit per year, although older species produce far less. In 1974 the PCA required the replacement of older native species with a genetically modified hybrid of a Malaysian dwarf and West African  tall varieties which produces 5 times the amount of copra.

Pressing the profit

The Philippines weren’t always a powerful coconut oil exporter, it was the PCA efforts to met the surging global demand for coconut oil. This included increasing the amount of oil mills from twenty-eight in 1968 to sixty-two by 1979 which created an excess of capacity. The process for obtaining coconut oil makes it a perfect crop for the poorer climates it grows in. The process consists of husking the coconut so you can get to the copra, dehydrating the copra to allow the moisture to exparate.  Then the dried copra is grated with warm water where the oil starts to separate by pressing the mixture, this releases the fatty deposits. After the deposits have separated enough you strain the creme to leave just the liquid without any fibers. The next step is boiling of the creme to remove the water, this step can take up to seven hours and needs consist stirring so the natural sugars don’t burn. Once the oil has rendered down it is strained again to remove the sugar leaving only the natural coconut oil. This results in a brownish oil that is considered crude and not suitable for human consumption by the western world because of the copra drying process being unhygienic. Crude oil is used for soaps, lotions, and coconut butter that is readily available in stores because each of these process require further processing to produce the end products.

The shift in the production of coconut oil was the advent of refined (purified) coconut oil that is suitable for human consumption. The process isn’t organic and requires solvent chemicals to remove any organic material from the finished product. This leaves a consumable good, due to the fickle nature of the westernized markets, the traditional color of oil is a clear. The result is the bleaching of the oil to remove the brown color that makes it appealing. The final step is the deodorizing (RBD) of the oil to remove the smell and taste of crude coconut oil that can overpower food. Also the oil can be further compromised by hydrogenation and perservites, losing essential antimicrobials. A cultural trade off given that most coconut producing regions in the world wouldn’t mind the extra coconut flavor given its usage within the everyday cuisine. Where the western markets prefer a clean oil with little taste, which has made canola  oil extremely popular. The resulting product is considered natural coconut oil, however the desire for a virgin form became huge money.

Raise of a Nationalistic Propaganda Machine

Personally, I wish to explain how touching Ashutosh Sheshabalaya’s sense of pride is in the newly formed New Indian Order. To state how touching it is to see a disillusioned technology consultant ridiculing, not only the major economic powers in the world, but by those who in fact he is gainfully employed by, European firms shows true loyalty to the Indian Dream.  Trying to respect Sheshabalaya’s case of the “Rising Elephant” leaves the reader either in two states, the first being a state of disbelief of the imense economic power institutions of the world have nurtured by its Indian replacement. The other state is the one hopefully most readers with a basic understanding of economics comes to, Sheshabalaya’s use of European and American media and statistics to create the economic end game scenario for American dominance.

What does Sheshabalaya accomplish by creating a book using his journalistic background to spread the word of the American eating Elephant? A sense of legitimacy for the skewed statistics and propaganda machines creating global perceptions on outsourcing of labor resources.  Where fault can be found with Sheshabalaya is the goal of his book, if a writer is attempting to research the data they should allow flexibility in the question they are attempting to answer.  Rising Elephant seems to create the question only to explain an answer rooted in nationalistic ideology. Sheshabalaya it appears forget about most of the common laws of economics such as the market self-correcting itself by getting as close to equilibrium as possible. To kid oneself for one moment based on the fear tactics of statistical shock does nothing to explain how India expects to avoid being dragged down by multinational corporations seeking to maximize profits, while Indian workers slowly becoming overpriced.

While it is true as Sheshabalaya states that American media outlets play on the very fears of American workers who are finally having to transition to open markets.  The emphasis Sheshabalaya wishes to draw on is the underlying racist undertones against the poor brown man; however, by doing so he creates a dangerous racial tension between America and India. Where the common history between England and India would be more appropriate to apply his rational of why the west speaks down on outsourcing. Sheshabalaya refuses to take into account the amount of foreign investment that caused his countries reversal from economic ruin from the corruption of the Hindu nationalist party. That without the helping hand of the so-called racist governments of Japan and the United States the newfound services India is finally able to implement domestically, came from the very parties he labels victims of the upcoming Chinese and Indian economic dominance.  To discount the amount of foreign investment within the companies by the emergence of a new younger middle class is of benefit to the economic powers of today. To be responsible for supporting India through debt relief, emergency aid packages, and health services would create a sizable drain on the world economic systems due to India’s growing population.  While ignoring the burdens of being an economic superpower which include, education for all classes, rural and urban or based on gender Sheshabalaya seems to believe in Reaganomics which makes as much economic sense as communism.

The severe competition within India also highlights its greatest problem, the over cosmopolitan of the culture. Where you create a generation who slowly view education, and opportunity as the goal, only to be one of the one million rejection letters resonating from Wipros’ yearly hiring class of 9000 workers. The question becomes what do you do with those workers who don’t fit within the economic structure they have dreamed, do they go back to more traditional forms of life, which has created the acceptance of poverty as ones duty to the dharma system. This is not addressed at all, where mere economic numbers and willpower of one of the newly emerging economic centers in the global marketplace.  The Indian white-collar shift reminds me of the Namibian copper industry that created cosmopolitan culture within the strict society that relied on outside capital. To say that by overestimating the flow of jobs that will be created long term given current market trends is dangerous, because when writers such as Sheshabalaya speak of racism and superpower certainty the downfall is not reaching ones expectations. By creating conversation killers into the mix such as racism, it kills the debate between India and her trade allies while only uniting its people under a banner of misguided perceptions.  Where everyone wishes India the chance to finally became a market that is capable of supporting itself as the British had envisioned, even though in reality it is the Hindu nationalistic that put the country so far behind once it reached independence, and it was the very people they kept out economically who proved the spark for the latest global market emerging.