in studying foreign languages, i’ve often wondered about learning words based on usage frequency. if your goal is to get up and running with basic conversation, then memorizing the most commonly used 300-500 words would probably be easiest. it would obviously leave lots of gaps, but you would probably have enough of a foundation to understand most conversations and then figure out the rest based on context.

wiktionary has created lists of most commonly used words (sorted by language) based on the subtitles from movies and tv shows. i guess that would mean it would apply to the spoken forms of language more than the written ones, but would seem like a good way to decide which words to learn

ohh, this reminds me …. i’m into week three of the new school term, taking spanish, sanskrit, japanese and an introduction to thai literature.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Frequency_lists

i spent the week before last down in phuket with larry and ray from san francisco (well monterey for now, sf soon). it was the first time i had left bangkok since the new year, and it was super nice to be able to chill and not let my day be run by a clock. every time i leave the city, it does a good job of reminding me how much i love being back here. the countryside or beach is nice and all, but i feed off the energy of the city much more. it’s much more inspiring to be surrounded by traffic, concrete, malls and millions of people than it is to be in the middle of nowhere.

that being said, i shot some great photographs with my medium-format pinhole camera and with my panoramic camera. i’m still sorting through most of the negatives, these two are my favorites so far.

i’ve been invited to show two collages from the my series “how to know god (homage to christopher isherwood)” as a part of a group show this friday in bangkok. the focus of the show is for four senior photography students from chulalongkorn university to show their work along with their professor, and they wanted to ask a guest to show work along with them.

i will be showing the following two pieces, the first as a 1m x 1m lightbox and the second as a 30”x12” lambda print. click on any of the images (including the flyer image at the top) for a full size version. if you are in town and free on friday, please come. it should be a lot of fun.

full version

full version

this video of a presentation from the recent TED conference is one of the most interesting things that i’ve seen in a long time, it’s well worth the 18m44sec that it takes to watch. the description of the video on the website is:

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened — as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding — she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.

but what that description doesn’t get into is the insight that mrs taylor had about how the brain can bring about both happiness and suffering. as she lost the left half of her brain, the feelings she described are very similar to the feelings yogis and meditators describe when deep into their practice. in fact, she may have even experienced a bit of what pantalji describes as samathi. as a person with a scientific background, i found it especially interesting to hear these insights from a scientist.

“I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world, and the more peaceful our planet will be.”

click any of the images to view a full size version of the article.

opening party coverage in volume magazine.

event coverage in thai rat (ไทยรัฐ), thailand’s biggest newspaper

daily xpress highlighted the event as a hot activity of the day many times

bk magazine listed the event as a “pick of the week” two weeks in a row

we took down the show today …. 13 of the 47 works are done, look for an online catalog of the remaining ones after my exams are done. in the meantime, here are some photos from the opening party. photos in slide show by volume magazine and kongsak poonponwattanaporn. top photo by suebsang sangwachirapib (click the photo to enlarge it).

the nation newspaper interviewed sherry and i at the opening, and then published the following article on friday may 16th. the article ran 3/4 of the page, which is much bigger than my scanner and is why the scan looks a bit wonky.

anyone who has spent much time listening to me, may notice that the quotes sound a bit off. they interviewed us both in thai and then wrote the article in english …. wherever i am quoted, they are translating something i said into english. anyway, they captured the essence of what i wanted to say, they just phrased it a little differently than i would have.

i’ll be updating the site and adding photos from the opening soon …. i’ve got final exams next weekend tho, so it may be a little delayed. i’ll get back to posting in thai and english once finals are over too, for now i’m too busy … or maybe too lazy.

(click the image to download the full version)