JSU News
May 31, 2009 at 5:00 am | In Thailand | 1 CommentHere is a recent feature story about my work here in Thailand that appeared in the JSU News.
JSU Faculty Members Travel to Thailand to Discuss Partnerships2009-05-28Drs. Ciganek and Francia meet with Dr. Srisakdi
MCIS department faculty members Drs. Andrew P. Ciganek and Guillermo A Francia, III recently met in Bangkok, Thailand to discuss international partnership opportunities with Dr. Srisakdi Charmonman, the CEO of the College of Internet Distance Education at Assumption University. Dr.. Suprasith Jarupathirun, a visiting professor in the MCIS department from Thailand during the spring semester, accompanied the JSU faculty members. Potential collaborations on information security and assurance was a point of emphasis during the meeting given the MCIS department’s expertise in the area and recently having been designated as a National Center of Academic Excellence by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Dr. Charmonman, who has been recognized as the “Father of the Internet in Thailand” and the “Father of Thai e-Learning”, has held dozens of high-ranking administrative, governmental, and international positions and has played a key role in shaping information security and assurance policies in Thailand. These positions include the Chairman of the Computer Working Group at the Office of the Prime Minister, an IT expert in the Committee to Integrate and Revolutionize the National Records chaired by the Prime Minister, Deputy Chairman of the Extraordinary Committee on Copyrights of the House of Representatives, Chairman of five Subcommittees on National Professional Standards at the Ministry of Labor, an expert member of the National Copyright Committee, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Software Copyright in the National Copyright Committee, and President of the Club of the Associate Judges of the Central Intellectual Properties and International Trade Court, among other high ranking positions held.
Short Videos
May 18, 2009 at 2:41 pm | In Uncategorized | Leave a CommentOne thing that I have been trying to do is take more short video blogs to share with you about my time here in Thailand. Here are a couple from the past few days, one of me at Mor Chit (Bangkok bus station) and one of the street market by my condo. One question I often get is how are McDonald’s, KFC, Pizza Hut, etc. different than in the US, so I will be sure to get some video of that before I leave so you can see for yourself. If you have other things you would like for me to video and share, let me know and I will try to get it up in the coming days.
Bang Na (Undergraduate) Campus
May 13, 2009 at 2:34 pm | In Uncategorized | Leave a CommentEvery day that I have been in Bangkok so far (almost a week) it has been raining out. It has only been raining an hour or two during the day and also at night, but I guess this should be expected as it is the start of the monsoon or “rainy” season over here. I am a bit surprised because last year (from what I can recall), it did not rain as much. The thing that really makes the weather different this year is at night. Almost every night here there has been a brief thunderstorm that has passed through (no longer than 1 hour). Lightning strikes the several large condos and skyscrapers around me so I often wake up to very loud crashes that sound as if they struck just outside my window. I guess that this is something that I will get used to. I took a picture looking out the window of my condo this morning as well as one when it was raining out pretty hard, which I share below.
I met up with Sup, Sonny (professor from JSU visiting Bangkok this week), and Father Bipin (a friend I made last year) at the ABAC Hua Mak campus, which is the place where I taught last year. We were meeting at 9:30am to head off to the Bang Na (undergraduate) campus to meet with the “Father of the Thai Internet” and also get a tour of the campus from Father Bipin. I arrived at the campus at 8:30am, so I took the extra time I had to meet up with the administrators that have both allowed me to teach classes again this year and have arranged my accommodations. Everyone was quite happy to see me and I was given the invitation (once again) that I was welcome to teach at ABAC in a similar arrangement (only teach for 1 semester during the summer) for as long as I wanted. Even though this was not the first time I had been told this, they were very nice to make the same offer again. I guess this offer will be something that we will have to assess on a year-by-year basis. Walking around the Hua Mak campus, I also ran into the same friendly security guards that I saw on a daily basis last year – one was so excited to see me that she walked to me an excitedly spoke a bunch of Thai to me that I could not understand. Once she realized that I had no idea what she was talking about, she simply asked me if I was doing well in Thai, to which I responded “yes”. That was a great experience.
We all did meet up at 9:30am and caught a taxi to the Bang Na campus. We arrived about 45 minutes early for our 11:00am meeting, so we walked around the campus a bit to which Sonny captured it best, “this is not a campus, it’s a palace!” We took a few pictures before our meeting, which I also share below. The meeting was short (only 30 minutes), but was productive. We continued on with our tour, but it began to rain, so we cut parts of the tour out and had an extended lunch on the campus instead. The rain was starting to let up by 1:00pm, but Sonny needed to get back to meet up with his family (who also traveled to Thailand with him) who were shopping at the MBK mall, which is just a half-mile from my condo. I went by taxi to the MBK mall with Sonny and walked with him to meet up with his family. As I was about to leave, I had asked what they were planning on doing today (Thursday) and they said that they will likely be shopping at the Central World mall, which is the mall just across the street from me where I teach at. I encouraged them to give me a call so that I could join them – particularly Sonny and his son so that we could catch a movie while his wife and daughter shop. That should be at around 10:00am. Oh yeah, here is a short video of where I teach this year.
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First Days of Class
May 12, 2009 at 2:42 pm | In Thailand | Leave a CommentI have just finished my second day of class here in Thailand this summer and things have been very busy, but are going well. My experiences from last year are certainly helping me out this year as I teach. For example, I knew to expect that class would not start on time. Class was supposed to start at 10:30am, but no students were in class at that time and only 8 of the 17 students were there at 10:45am. I started class at 10:50am and by 11:00am, all of the students had arrived. Even though I knew to expect this delay, it was still tough on me because I really like to start “on time”. The first thing I had the class do is agree to a “daily” class schedule. The students and I agreed that I will start class at 10:45am (no exceptions) and we will break for lunch at 12:00pm – 1:00pm. There will also be a 15 minute break at 2:15pm and class will end at 3:30pm, if not finished before then. I have also worked on getting more students involved in class by calling more on them to give answers, and now that they have selected teams, I can just call on “team 1″ (for example) to give a response. One thing that is different is that last year I taught an executive MBA class and an evening class, so I was teaching to students that were working full-time. Almost all of my 17 students this year have no previous work experience. That is making things a little difficult because I cannot depend on them to give “real-world” examples from their work to discuss in class, but I think things will still be fine. One problem that I am sure will be an issue is me speaking too quickly for them. At the end of my first class yesterday (Monday), I had one student state that I did speak too quickly. I try consciously to slow down, but sometimes it is hard to see when students are not able to follow me during class.
Sup met up with me after class downstairs in the shopping mall, where I briefly met his sister for the first time who is in college now. Sup helped me out by walking with me to the place where I got my SIM card for my cell phone because I wasn’t able to make any phone calls. I have only spoken a couple of times on the phone when I would keep getting messages that said (in Thai) that I had no credit left on my phone. As it turned out, I had thought that I put about $20 on the card (enough for my two months in Thailand), but it turned out that only $1 was put on the card when it was set up. That was fixed. Sup and I then talked about our meeting that we have scheduled tomorrow at the undergraduate or “Bang Na” campus (with another person from JSU, Sonny, who is visiting his sister living in Bangkok this week), picked up some food on the street, and ate dinner at my condo. Sup was very jealous of the accommodations I was given this year compared to last year.
I had cancelled my second class because of my meeting tomorrow (Wednesday) and had the “make-up” class today instead. That was a very strange thing for me to do, to cancel a class and have a “make-up” class is something I have never done in the US – but this is a common thing to do in Thailand. I thought that many students might not show up today, but almost all did. I guess I should not have been surprised as almost all do not work. With two classes so close together, and since there is only 1 month to teach the class, there has been a lot of preparation work involved. When I arrived in my classroom today, one of the secretaries at the office desk here had told me that the condo I was staying at had requested that I let them know when they could “clean my room” during the week. Last year at the “Hua Mak” campus, I had a cleaning person come during the morning once a week (I think it was on either Tuesday or Wednesday) and they changed the bed sheets, swept up the room, scrubbed the bathroom clean, and took out any garbage I had. The secretary told me that the condo had preferred to clean my room each time I had class during the week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday). Three times a week? I just said, “sure”. I guess they cleaned the room while I was in class today, so once I leave my classroom and return back to my room in a few minutes, I will see what changes have been made.
I will head back to my room today and use the workout facilities there. On Sunday evening I stopped by there and used the treadmill that they had, which was the first time I had ever used a treadmill. I am now a big fan. Last year at the “Hua Mak” campus, across the street from the university (about a quarter mile away) was a soccer stadium that I could run around the outside of and not worry about the hectic traffic of Bangkok interferring. I would have to run at 6:00am in the morning because if I went any later, I would be cooked by the sun. Of course I could only run if it was not raining out too. On Sunday, I had no worries at all. I ran at a very good, consistent pace, which is something that I have a hard time doing when I normally run (either in Thailand or the US), had no traffic, no smog of traffic, no heat of the day (still able to work up a good sweat, though), and was very comfortable. I had no idea what “speed” or “incline” to set the treadmill at (I did everything “manually” instead of using a set course), but I wanted to run for 1 hour as it was the first time that I had done any exercise since the Nashville Marathon about two weeks earlier. I was able to keep up my pace at speed “9.0″ and an incline that started out at “3.0″, but I dropped down to “1.5″ for the last 15 minutes. We’ll see if I will be able to keep up doing this in the coming weeks.
In Bangkok
May 3, 2009 at 2:46 pm | In Uncategorized | Leave a CommentI don’t have Internet access often right now, and when I do, it is pretty slow. I will try to update as often as I can about things happening over here. We had no problems getting through any of the airports on the way to Thailand. The flight from Atlanta to Seoul took only 13 hours, which was 2 hours quicker than was expected, so that gave us some extra time to walk around the Seoul airport. We had terrible seats for both flights – at the back of the plane (very bumpy there), next to the bathrooms (very smelly), and it was the first flights I had been on where I regretted wearing pants (very warm). When we got off the flight in Seoul, everyone had to have their temperatures taken one-by-one and fill out a form on account of the swine flu craze. At the Bangkok airport, they just has something that looked like a scan gun at passengers walking by checking body temperatures randomly. At the Seoul airport, about 5-10% of everyone walking around had surgical masks on. There was a free wireless hotspot where I was able to check e-mail and post an update on facebook. The flight from Seoul to Bangkok took 5 hours. I was only able to sleep for about 1 hour for the whole day as I just was not tired enough or comfortable enough to sleep. I ended up watching 5 movies over the 2 flights (“Seven Pounds”, “The Curious Case of Benjaman Button”, “Defiance”, “Transporter 3″, “The Day the World Stood Still”), watched parts of “Bolt” and “Madagascar 2″, and played a lot of yatzhee on the online games. We arrived on-time (11:30pm) in Bangkok, but we had to wait over 30 minutes for a spot to get off the plane. That delay had us miss Sup at the airport as both of our flights were to have arrived at about the same time in Bangkok. That delay almost had us miss our ride was arranged by Assumption University (ABAC) to pick us up (he was about to leave)- unfortunately, only a car was there when we needed a van since we had 6 checked-in luggage bags! So we loaded up most of our luggage in the car and we caught a taxi with the rest of our luggage our condo. We arrived there at about 1:30am and fell asleep instantly.
We stopped by the ABAC city campus where I will be teaching in the next two months, which is only about a 30 minute walk from Jet’s condo. The campus is on the 14th floor of one of the fanciest malls in Bangkok. The facilities are modest (just a few classrooms) but the view from that high up is spectacular and the set-up is quite futuristic – it is pretty neat. I will not be able to check-in to the condo that I have been assigned yet by ABAC until I return from Phuket. I will try and get pictures and/or video of both the campus and condo I will be staying at in the next week or two.
Jet scheduled an appointment for me to see a dentist about my wisdom teeth at a very nice international hospital nearby her condo yesterday (Saturday) at 1:00pm. I had originally planned to have them taken out in Anniston, Alabama in December, but it would have costed over $1000 (after insurance) and they could not fit me into their schedule. At that point, Jet and I decided that we would have the procedure done in Thailand instead. I thought that the appointment yesterday was to just take x-rays, but after checking in and having my blood pressure taken (about 5 minutes time), I was conducted to a dentist chair where Jet gave an 2-year old x-ray of my teeth taken back in Alabama to the dentist. The dentist scanned it over for a few seconds, looked in my mouth for a few seconds, then brought out a needle. What?!? He was going to do the procedure right then and there?!? He gave me a shot of novacane (took about 1 minute) and immediately started to tug on my upper-left wisdom tooth that was exposed and yanked it out in only about 10-15 seconds. All done. In less than 10 minutes, I had one of my wisdom teeth out. Amazing. And it only cost $50! We scheduled my other wisdom tooth (lower-right) which is unexposed to be removed in two weeks. The dentist said he would have done it yesterday, but since we were traveling to Phuket, he wanted to wait because removing this tooth would require surgery. We’ll see how that goes.
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