Monday, March 31, 2014

Censorship in blogging


Censorship - Self and otherwise - both the positive and negatives

Why do you write what you write in a blog? What do you talk about? How often? Can you always write? Can you always publish it? What do you leave out? What do you edit out? What do you purposefully omit?

Writing in a public blog requires a balance between what you really want to say and what you know you cannot say for one reason or another. Not everywhere is as free as America. Despite the fact that we are Americans, we cannot say what ever we think in some countries. Not only would it be impolitic, it could get us deported. 

So how do you choose? I think first you must have a sense of your audience. Who is really reading our blog?

At first we knew it was mostly our family members, some friends and a few people who read sailing blogs stumbled on to ours. I remember feeling unsure about what I should write about. What would be really interesting to anyone but me. We hadn't left the dock yet. When did the adventure begin? Of-course this blog has always been written by two people and usually where I had little experience, Owen could fill in.  He knew where to begin and he had a pretty clear understanding of our initial audience.

In Mexico we wrote pretty freely about what we were experiencing. Our beginnings were interesting simply because many people have trouble knowing how to begin an adventure, so our readership developed naturally without much effort on our part to be extra humorous or super knowledgeable. The only thing I remember thinking about as I wrote back in those days was how to phrase something so that you didn't loose the audience before I had one. I mean how do you find the balance between saying how you really feel about a challenging situation while still maintaining a sense of humor about it. Or how do you write about the mundane activities that now make up your day (like washing laundry by hand) with out boring your audience to death - since most people are not as fascinated by laundry as I had to be. [My motivation to deeply understand the process of cleaning clothing came of course from the desire to make it as painless as possible.]

Once we left the dock (in Mexico) and were living mostly off solar power, our access to electricity changed the amount we could write or how well it was edited. I write both in a journal and on the computer, but I only edit while I'm plugged in. This change was subtle though because we were still too concerned with boat repairs to spend much time writing. 

Then we went on passage. Our first real passage, across the Pacific ocean, drove home just how limited one is by solar power (when using the refrigerator too) and for publishing the blog - how limited Sailmail is. While crossing the Pacific, I wrote most of my blog entries in a journal. We didn't use the computers for much more than navigation. We needed the 1.5 connection hours per week alloted by Sailmail for pulling down weather. Sometimes it took 30 minutes to request and receive a single weather forecast through the SSB radio. So posting tiny "where we are and we are safe" blog entries (for our family) was quite often all we could do. 

Of course when you reach an exotic destination such as French Polynesia you are so blown away by the new feeling of being an ex-patriot tourist in a beautiful foreign mountainous jungle that you cannot write about it. Or you are living it so fully you cannot begin to process what you are feeling. So there is a lapse in the blog, a few significant omissions.

We wrote as we could for the next group of countries/experiences as we sailed west. But it wasn't until we reached New Zealand that we really thought about censorship or what not to say in a public blog. Owen was asked by New Zealand immigration officials to submit a photograph of Madrona. He said, "Ok, I'll dig one up." But by the time he had one he liked, their response was, "we no longer need it." He asked why not and they said, "we just looked up the boat name and pulled one off your blog." After that Owen suggested rather firmly that we not write about the stowaway ants that had boarded Madrona in Tonga. We knew we could get rid of the ants but we really didn't want to pay the $300 USD the NZ officials would have charged us to bomb the boat. [We did manage to eradicate their 3 nests at a cost of $10 USD - but no one heard about how interesting it was.]

I wrote a lot in the 6 month layover in NZ - about everything but pests and swattings. It is illegal to spank, or even swat, your child in New Zealand. I don't think they would have deported us for swatting Griffyn, but we didn't want to find out.

When we left NZ, the passage was quite difficult. I wrote about that, but it was suggested to me, that I get some perspective before I just blather on about how challenging it was (in a blog entry). So I tried to write it in a way that could include a sense of humor and still transfer the feeling of intensity and fear I felt on that journey. 

In Fiji I wrote about Friends and School. When you write about school - you want to be honest - for the other parents traveling with children who might be reading your blog. But you don't want to completely trash the idea of educating your children abroad in local schools. (I'm not sure how I did on that one.) 

I'm still writing about Vanuatu, Indonesia and Malaysia so we'll see. We have been told not to talk against the Sultan, or Singapore for that matter. But there are things you definitely cannot say from here. We don't have anything bad to say about Singapore or the Sultan, but that fact that we can't reminds us that we are not at home.

A friend emailed me recently and asked us how we were? She mentioned that we hadn't posted much lately (in 2014). She was particularly curious about how we ended up in Malaysia. She meant why hadn't we crossed the southern Indian ocean instead of heading north? And I told her many things I couldn't say freely at the time on the blog. I reminded her that we had families that were concerned about our health and to suggest that it was less than perfect might alarm them. 

I told her that we just couldn't make another huge crossing (really two huge crossings considering the short weather windows) to get back to North America in a year with the broken bones Owen sustained when I tried to repeatedly close the cupboard door on his hand during a storm. I told her I didn't feel confident about dealing with more sails almost blowing out when Owen at the time only had only 30% of his strength in his left arm (caused by some unremembered injury during a recent passage). I told her that we were dog tired from almost missing the island of Bali as we fought ferocious currents sucking us out into the Indian ocean. 

I told her that I just couldn't tell our families about all of that just then. That sometimes you don't put things in the blog to protect the ones who love and support you from the truth of an 'adventure' because they have not made the choices in life that lead them to this path. That sometimes this path feels crazy to even the ones who have chosen it. That sometimes you just need a break or maybe it's time to find a new path.

So there are almost as many reasons not to say something as there are to say it - depending on your audience.

P.S. Broken bones, injured muscles, exhaustion and even mild depression heals with time. The kids need different things than what we all needed when we left North America over three years ago. So as we navigate the future (for a while from Malaysia) we will be snorkeling less and spending more time in classrooms.

Carrie



Tuesday, March 18, 2014

So... it was a long haul up from Bali - PHOTOS

Long time...

Special hello to Zander!  The kids will be writing soon, you know - school and homework and stuff.

So as Carrie mentioned we are in Johor Bahru to catch our breath, fix up the boat and earn a little scratch.  I've been playing chase the drip for the last couple of weeks.  We have some persistent drips that have been defying me to find their origin.  I have not begun to fight, blah blah....

The kids are well, as are we.  It's nice to not be always on the move.  I thought I would post some photos that we took between Bali and Malaysia.  So without further ado....


A beautiful mask we got in Bali for like $10.

Dolphins giving escort.  The kids loved this for about an hour then went back below for lunch.

Griffyn makes friends everywhere.

In northernmost Indonesia while waiting for decent weather these kids would come out to the boat and bring Griffyn to shore to play daily.

This family was very gracious and generous, making our wait in northern Indonesia much more fun.

Crossing the Singapore Strait - on the northern side on the very edge of the traffic lane, but not so close to the Singapore boundary to upset the Singapore police boats that patrol like angry hornets.

Tamsyn's birthday (belated) in J.B. with Alex and Bob, and Phil and Sandy.  She had fun.

Not Kansas.  Seems like we were plagued by waterspouts on the way north, some getting too close.

This village was where the family that we visited lived.

A volcano in Indonesia?  What?  Actually you can't throw a rock without hitting a volcano in Indonesia.  This one is on the north side of Bali.

Christmas morning!

Hope you liked.  More to come.  Sorting out our computer problems, and should be able to post more regularly again.

Cheers.

Owen



Sunday, March 9, 2014

Johor Bahru, Malaysia - Teaching Abroad


A good place to stay for a while

Johor Bahru, Malaysia


Hello All, 

We have been very busy since we arrived here in Johor Bahru, Malaysia - last December of 2013. We are in a marina - Danga Bay Marina Club. The rates are pretty good and this place reminds us a little of home. There is a MacDonalds in the nearby mall. The mall is big, 7 floors with a movie theater. We all went to see "The Hobbit" (part 2) around Christmas time. Tamsyn and Griffyn hadn't seen a movie in a theater since we left North America in 2011. So it was a big treat for us. We had chocolate dipped ice cream cones at Mac & Dons. We Christmas shopped like most Americans at the mall. There are many things here that remind us of back home and at the same time, this place is very different. 

This place seems like a good place to stay for a while. We all need some time to be grounded and not in mortal danger as we make harrowing passages. The kids need some stability and a chance to make friends, kick a ball around. Owen and I need some time to figure out our next move. We are tired, tired of traveling, boat repairs, bad weather. And our coffers are empty. We need to rebuild.

I don't think I would ever have planned on spending time in Malaysia, a country I knew little about before arriving. But like many of the places we have visited on this trip, there are wonderful surprises here. Most people are Asian. Malaysians are Malay, Chinese, Indian, Indonesian, Thai, Philippino, and European primarily. This culture is ethnically diverse and also very tolerant. The Malay (meaning everyone who has a Malaysian passport even though they are ethnically Chinese - for example) are gregarious, considerate, generous, spirited and have a strong desire to become more westernized like their neighbors in Singapore (and China), so ex-pats are respected.  

Everywhere there are huge apartment complexes and waterfront malls being built. The air just teams with industry (and noisy dust). There is a ton of Chinese investment money pouring into Johor Bahru right now. JB is across a bridge (the causeway) from Singapore - a wealthy, prosperous, nation state. And despite it's small size (an island nation of one city), Singapore has a tremendous influence on the well being of JB. People are investing here because of it's proximity to Singapore. It's quite cheap to live in JB compared to Singapore and the Singapore dollar is strong. So if you work in Singapore your money will go far in Malaysia.

However commuting to Singapore, from JB is a drag. To arrive at work by 8 AM, you get up at 5 AM. You leave work around 5 PM and arrive home sometime after 8 PM. If you want your kids to attend good schools (the local public schools in Malaysia are still quite poor), you try to get them enrolled in International Schools in Singapore - and they commute with you through customs twice daily. That's a long haul for kids. In the last year, 5 brand-spanking-new International Schools (K-12) have opened their doors. They are all competing for the kids whose parents work in Singapore, but live in JB. Now parents can hire a local driver/babysitter for their kids to take them to and from school, while they do the long commute to Singapore solo. These new International Schools are big complexes which offer boarding options, state-of-the-art sports facilities, and lavish performance spaces. 

It didn't take long for me to realize that I could probably get a job teaching here. I am an ex-pat armed with a Master's Degree. So that is why we have been so busy here since we arrived. I spent three weeks pounding the pavement and was offered three positions in three different schools. I am currently teaching Art, Music, Speech & Drama, Writing and English as a Second Language (all at one International School) to kids from Kindergarten to 9th grade.  Owen is also teaching at the same school.  His subjects are Science, Geography, Environmental Studies, Chemistry and History. (There are Malay teachers at the school too.) Tamsyn and Griffyn receive free tuition, are making friends, playing ball and generally liking being around their peers again. We are all-of-a-sudden quite busy. Yes we have joined the rat race again. But like all cruisers, we arrive at this destination - this decision, knowing we are still quite mobile should we change our minds. Even though Madrona is currently tied to a dock, we sleep on the wake of her next move. She is resting with us. And we dream about the future knowing we have time to get there.

Carrie