A Farewell to the Past, an Exciting Journey Ahead

It's hard to believe that my journey, both personal and in the blog, began over 12 years ago during my freshman year of college. Admittedly, I haven't been as active here for the past couple of years – life has a way of keeping us busy, and sometimes, I confess, procrastination takes over. This post might even serve as my farewell to blogging, or at the very least, my last post from the United States, where I've called home for the past 13 years. 

California Street, with a glimpse of the Bay Bridge in the distance—an iconic San Francisco vista

My thought before my thesis defense

4 days before my defense/a month before moving

- This past week has been pretty interesting. Since I will defend my thesis at the beginning of next week, I have reached out to so many people in my life that I have met over the years to tell them about the defense. (I guess one good thing about doing a defense online is that anyone can join the defense from anywhere.) People that I reached out to include physics friends from my old high school in Thailand, high-school friends, a physics teacher (Ms. Cianciulli!), college friends, people I met during an undergrad summer school, people I met during my PhD from old roommates (quite a few of them), classmates, and Thai friends around the city. This just made me realize how many people that I have met over the past ten years in the US and even more in Thailand. 

Boston Skyline from the Charles river

What would you tell yourself back in January?

I sometimes spend my isolated weekend going through my photos from when I was in junior high all the way up until the past couple months. It is surprisingly an effective time-sink activity when you have lots of free time, like I have now. One time, I stopped at my photos from January of this year (2020) when I spent two weeks in Hawaii, looked that my past self, and told that person "the world that you know it will change completely in just over a month." 

Me on top of Koko Head, one of the nicest place to hike in Hawaii

What would you tell yourself back in January? 

What a weird dream ...

Recently, I have been having a weird nightmare that the entire world has turned upside down.

The Eiffel tower, once crowded with tourists trying to take just another selfies and locals enjoying their brunch on the lawn nearby, is now completely empty. Not a single person or a single car on streets, but pigeons remain packed surrounding the area. Some even notice that these birds start to chirp a little bit louder than usual.

A tree

A Person without Home - Homeless person

I recently read a Thai essay about a person without home by Roundfinger (นิ้วกลม) facebook page and it made me realize how similar the idea was with my own idea even though I have not ever properly written it out. So, I want to use this opportunity to write about my value of home, places to sleep and traveling.

During the summer or winter break that I spent in the states, people often ask me like why I did not go home or how long I have been away from home. In the course of three and a half years I live in US (as of 1/2014), I went home twice. My first time was after graduating from high school in North Carolina and my second time was about three weeks after my second year of college.

So, why didn't I go home?

Mansueto Library of the University of Chicago (not my home, but I did spend a lot of time in there)

Story about Pixar

In the past two weeks, I had experience several things related to Pixar from a book written by the president of Pixar, a new Pixar film, a documentary about Pixar and the exhibition titled "Science behind Pixar". Thus, I would like this chance to write about what I have learned from this period of learning about Pixar and share my obsession about the company.

Me with Buzz Lightyear at The Science Behing Pixar Exhbition in Museum of Science

A Book written by the president of Pixar

I started this journey when I decided to pick up a book called "Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration" by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace as one of Mark Zuckerberg's recommended books. Ed Catmull is the co-founder and current president of Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Animation Studios. Even though the premise of the book is not solely on the history of Pixar, but instead the management of creative enterprise, it still manages to tell different accounts related to Pixar as an example. Being a co-founder of Pixar, Ed had a first-hand experience with all the ups and downs in Pixar ranging from founding the company with the help from Steve Job, achieving an incredible success after its first movie "Toy Story", to facing different struggles as the company expanded and merged with Disney in 2006.

Now it is time for my first website to be published on the internet

I have always fancied about what kinds of website that I will build once I enter into a graduate school. The reason that I decided to hold on until I come to graduate school is that I don't have a good justification to actually work on the website as an undergraduate student. However, as I have attended more talks, lectures, workshops and conferences, I found myself quickly looking up some graduate student online when they gave their presentations, so that I could be informed about who they are and what they are working on. Subsequently, it helped me realize that I aspire to have my personal website as early as I can get into a graduate school.

Fast forward a bit, I am currently a first-year graduate student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the physics department. I have been in graduate school for almost a semester and have been working on my website for a few months. I think now it is the time for my website to be live online. Here is the link if you are interested.

The first version of my personal website

Financial Crisis: Enemy of Any Political Systems

It was my privilege to be able to listen some British people talking about their queen during her visit to Paris and Normandy for the D-day Celebration on June 6th, 2014.

After hearing them talking about how much they love their queen and how happy they are to be able to see a glimpse of her in Paris, I could not stop and think about our own king. Both British and us are all united with this kind of the head of the State. People feel a part of their country because of the love for their monarch. This is something that liberalism and democracy cannot replicate. In my opinion, the thing that hold American people together is the American dream, a kind of ideology or mythology that everyone can rise from rack to rich while the British people are hold together by the love for their queen.

Eiffel Tower, Paris, France

Educational Trek at New Orleans Charter School System

I have never been to New Orleans before, so this trek was a really great opportunity for me to not only learn about different educational organization in New Orleans, but also experience a unique culture in the city. New Orleans is an interesting place to visit regarding education because of its structure which had been changed radically after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. A majority of schools in the cities was destroyed by the hurricane, but instead of rebuilding every school to be in the same conditions as they were before the hurricane, the city and The Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) used this opportunity to create an entire new school system which based on the charter school model in order to progressively improve the education system in New Orleans. Because of this vision, most schools in New Orleans are currently charter schools and a majority of students enroll in charter schools. Specifically, only 6 out of more than 80 schools in New Orleans remains traditional public schools. This allowed us to study the possibility of creating the entire education system based on charter schools. The result was incredible which leaded Arne Duncan, the Education Secretary, to call Hurricane Katrina “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans.”

Holy Cross High School, a catholic private school in New Orleans

Teach For Thailand Visits Chicago

Teach for Thailand (TFT) is the project promoting Education which is inspired by Teach for America and Teach for All. Teach for Thailand itself is fairly new with only two years of official establishment. Currently, it is trying to promote the program to more motivated Thai students who are studying abroad in the United States and England. This is why they made a trip to Chicago.

The connection that I have about Teach for Thailand came from Alisa who is an undergraduate student from Brown University. I met her during my trip to Boston for spring break two years ago. She interned at Teach For Thailand last summer, and I decided to reach out to her once I know about it on the Newsfeed of Facebook. After talking with a person from TFT, I am really excited with help them while staying in the US in any way that I can. However, once I finished my interview for the Campus Leader (CL) position, I did not feel ready to add one more responsibility on top of everything that I have right now. I almost reject the offer, but then I think that no chance comes twice. If I did not take it now, I might not have the same chance again. This is a chance that I can help the Thai education which I simply only have it in my mind for the whole time while not doing anything about it. In the end, I took the chance, and my first task is to organize the TFT tour which they will come to the US to promote the program on different college campus.

Poster for the visit of Teach for Thailand in Chicago

Teach for Thailand is a two-year fellowship program for newly graduate students or motivated individuals to become a teacher in a poor neighborhood for two years while receiving educational supports and workshop for leadership to develop their personal skills. The goal is to provide schools with motivated and prepared teachers to go to the classroom and make a difference with students in that classroom while also develop their own skills, which makes this program a win-win for both the fellows who are a part of TFT and schools that these fellows go into. It is difficult to tell whether it is a successful program or not since this is only its second year, but it is good to see many people are enthusiastic about fixing the education problem and this will be a good start for more discussion about education in Thailand.

A Common History for Nationalism and Role of Public Education

How can we unite people with different races, languages and values to create a unified and harmonious nation? 

Imagine bringing in people from different nations to live together in one place and say that from now on you all are a part of this new country. Chaos is what comes to my mind from this situation. However, this is exactly what happened many centuries ago when people try to create a nation. So, how could they do it? 

One possible answer is "Nationalism." They created a strong centralized administration to create a common history for all people in the country to share. Similarly, when you have a high school reunion, what bring people together is their common experience in high school that they want to share with others. By inventing a common history, the government basically makes us feel like we have a reunion all the time.

Champ De Mars from the top of the Eiffel tower.

Being a Thai Person in 2014

I have not been home for almost a year now since my last time visiting home in 2013 and did not plan to go home for another year.  But because of our current technology, I have received lots and lots of news about Thailand while I am abroad especially from Facebook when my friends shared articles online. Being removed from the country made me looking at the current event with a different perspective. This is not because I want to, but because I do not have the same context and information as a person who live in Thailand has. My foreign friends often ask for my comment about the situation in Thailand, but the answer that I always gave is simply 'I don't know much about a situation.' I wish I could give a better answer, but I simply can't. Here I would like to share my feeling about the situation.

Rattanakosin Exhibition Hall I visited last time I went home (Summer 2013)

Wealth Inequality Around the World

income inequality | Create Infographics

One morning, I found a youtube video about Wealth Inequality in America. I started to wonder whether the distribution like in my home country, Thailand, and other parts of the world. I searched for it in the internet for a while, but it seems like I could not find any graphs or chart on this similar topic. So, I decided to do some research on this topic.

Then, I found the data that I want from World Development Indicator which is the one of many database of World Bank. But I just do not like the chart that it had on its web interface, so I designed to create my own chart, called 'Income Inequality', about this topic using Infogr.am. I found that using this type of method is a good way to convey the information to other people.

I want this post to be all about how I get to make this infograph, so if I did not put any of my interpretation in this post since we should separate between facts and opinion. Nevertheless, others still argue that by displaying numbers like this infographics, a creator intended to persuade readers to a certain direction which is already an interpretation of a creator.

Note: If you want to learn more about infographics, you can learn more about it from Cool Infographics Blog by Randy Krum