Today, as I have been busy with trying to keep the school dry (water has been a theme of many of my days here in Thailand), I have a couple of thoughts that are only tangentially related, but that I hope will make some sense when placed together. Among my tasks here at Legacy is to make occasional (read: frequent) cleaning inspections in the dorms. Among the cleaning problems that I have to deal with on a frequent basis is the fact that the girls’ bathroom ends up very wet, and drainage is a problem.

People often complain about items not lasting. I myself tend to be someone who uses items for a long time, until they cannot be used anymore, rather than being someone who likes to replace items frequently with shinier and newer ones. As long as something works, I am content to use it even when it is not flashy, or even when it has some endearing and occasionally annoying quirks. So when I hear people complain about why things don’t last when they lack any interest in even basic maintenance, it frustrates me. If you want beautiful things to last, you have to take care of them. You have to keep things dry, for example, or they will rot or get mold (which is a nightmare here in Thailand–seriously, this year’s rainy season has been the rainiest anyone can remember, and getting and keeping anything dry takes a lot of work, and usually the use of fans). If you want homes that you don’t have to take care of, make a bamboo house. If you want a nice Western-style house, you have to be willing to do work, as annoying as that is (and I will have to admit that as necessary as such work is, I don’t personally enjoy it).

It seems to me that every single area has its own dangers when it comes to preserving life and comfort. An area that is too dry can preserve items well, but requires a lot of additional water to make life pleasant (or else dehydration is a problem, as I learned while a college student in Los Angeles). In cold climates the heat needed to make life tolerable are also damaging to furniture unless one uses humidifiers to balance out the humidity and make it tolerable. In wet and humid climates, which I am more familiar with, water is the enemy, leading to the growth of mold if it is not stopped by keeping buildings and clothing dry. Everywhere you are there is some threat and some danger that must be watched out for, and there are some corresponding advantages. One simply has to recognize where one is and take the appropriate steps to counteract the limitations while taking advantage of the benefits.

As someone who has an interest in logistics, a conversation I had yesterday led me to think about a possibility on how to return home to the states when the time for that comes. It will require some discussion and some work, and I would have to have a clear idea of the end destination (which is not the case right now), but it may be possible to enjoy a slow and peaceful (and educational) trip from Thailand to the United States while a passenger on a container ship. Taking such a trip would be interesting for me for several reasons, and so I think it would be worthwhile to do so at least once, given that this might be the first trip I’ve ever been on overseas where I wasn’t in a huge hurry to get back for some reason.

First, I am fascinated by the transportation of goods. As a result of my studies in engineering management, the issue of supply chain management and the the way in which goods travel all around the world (often by ship) is something I would like to see more with my own eyes. Even though logistics isn’t a very sexy subject, it happens to be something that is vitally important, and so I would like to examine a little bit more in detail how it is that goods get from where they are made to where they are bought. I have heard that container ships from Asia to North America tend to be full, and from North America to Asia they tend to be empty, testament to the United States’ massive trade deficit, but seeing such a thing in person would be a sobering testament to that fact that numbers and statistics alone do not convey.

Additionally, I am fascinated by the social structure of logistics as well. For example, I have read that the kitchen crew of ships (whether in the US Navy or in the merchant marine) tend to be Filipinos, and that the people in charge of shipping lines and captains for merchant ships tend to be Europeans. Again, Americans by and large don’t appear to be students of logistics, but it happens to be an interest of mine, and so I’m curious to see what sort of people are in such a field and what draws them to it. At the very least, should such an opportunity be possible, it would be a peaceful and relaxing way of traveling as well as one filled with plenty of opportunities for learning about the nuts and bolts of how our world and its trade systems work. I wish to be a thoughtful and well-informed critic of our world’s systems of trade, after all.