Articles by mgedwards

Empty nest

Dear Reader, my family left for China to visit family for a few weeks.  Fortunately, they made it to China without incident.  They were in transit for about 21 hours from Washington, D.C. to Shanghai via Chicago.  Although taking a trip to China right before heading to South America isn’t ideal, it’s better than flying from Paraguay to China, a 31-hour nightmare journey via Los Angeles.  The 14-hour flight trans-Pacific flight from Chicago to Shanghai is the longest my wife and son have ever taken.  My wife said that they were tired but that they both made it none the worse for wear.  Relatives in China are happy to see them.  My son did very well considering the long flight; he rotated his time between watching children’s DVDs, reading books, sleeping, and wandering the airplane.  He loves airplanes and was happy when I told him that he would fly on the "white" airplane versus the "blue" or "grey" ones.  I asked him whether he would rather fly back to Seoul to see his friends, and he responded that no, he would rather go visit family.  That’s quite a change in attitude–my little boy is really growing up! 
 
In the meantime, I am an empty nester.  Several friends have told me to enjoy temporary "bachelorhood."  OK.  I do appreciate the peace and quiet, although it feels too quiet, and it feels strange having no one else around.  So far, I’ve been a homebody.  I ran some errands in anticipation of our trip after I dropped my family off at the airport, but I’ve stayed home for the last day and a half brushing up on my French.  (I will retake my French exam on Thursday to get my score on the books; I hope to improve my score from 1/1 to 1+/1+.)  I worked out a system where I write dialogues.  Microsoft Word automatically corrects the grammar because it recognizes French.  If I don’t know the vocabulary word, I look it up using an online dictionary and then add it to my language database.  I’ve also been looking up the same German and Portugese words and adding them as well; German, because I will retest in German at the end of the month, and Portugese, because I will study Portugese next year.  Improving my language scores to 1+/1+ in French and German and testing in Portugese next year will allow me to qualify in the future for jobs in French-, German-, and Portugese-designated assignments.
 
It’s not too exciting, I know that.  I might sneak away and catch "Pirates of the Caribbean" at the cinema later this week.

A foray into Guaraní

Last Wednesday I met the Paraguayan Spanish instructor to learn Guaraní, an indigenous language that is one of two official languages of Paraguay (Spanish is the second).  Spanish will be the medium of instruction.  We plan to meet each Wednesday at lunchtime for the next three weeks.  
 
Guaraní is a very interesting language.  Unfortunately, Spanish and Guaraní have little in common except a few Spanish-derived cognates such as "problema" (problem).  Today I memorized a short conversation in Guaraní in anticipation of my next Guaraní session.  Here is the short conversation I memorized, which I found on the web site of Professor Lustig of the University of Mainz, Germany:
 
Mrs. Natividad: Good morning. Do you speak English / Spanish?
Ña Nati: mba’éichapa ne ko’ê. Reñe’êkuaápa inglépe / karai ñe’ême?

Jasy: I’m sorry, I  dont speak english.
Jasy: Añembyasyete, nañe’êkuaái inglépe.

Mrs. Natividad: Unfortunately, I speak only a little Guarani.
Ña Nati: Añe’êkuaamichimi mante guaraníme, anga.

Jasy: No problem. You speak already very well.
Jasy: Ndaipóri problema. Reñe’ê porãitereíma.

Mrs. Natividad : Thank you.
Ña Nati: Aguyjevete ndéve.

Jasy: ; Qu te vaya bien
Jasy: Tereiko porãke.

I want to learn a handful Guaraní phrases and dialogues so that I can better function linguistically in Paraguay.  Although only four-to-six million people speak Guaraní, most live in Paraguay.  94% of Paraguayans speak Guaraní, while just 40% of Paraguayans speak Spanish.  In Paraguay, at least, Guaraní is more useful than Spanish. 

Guaraní has an intriguing sound.  For example, the pronunciation of the vowel "y" sounds like a drop of water when combined with the consonent "b".  Considering that the Paraguayan have been known to use Guaraní to define their national identity and confound those who are not Paraguayan, I feel like I’m learning a special language by learning some Guaraní.  During the Chaco War (1932-1933), Paraguayan soldiers spoke Guaraní exclusively, eluding their Spanish-speaking Bolivian adversaries.  I’m happy to have a chance to pepper my Spanish with a few indigenous phrases.

Featured Blog: The Stand-Up Economist

Now that I’ve finished my Spanish class, I’ve moved on to another class that crams as much political and economic theory as is physically possible into three weeks.  (Really, how much can you learn in three weeks?  A LOT, apparently–they’ve crammed an amazing amount of stuff into a short course.)  In today’s economics segment, the presenter talked about the fact that economics, the dismal science, is fraught with statistics with built-in margins of error.  Virtually every sacrosanct measure we trust to accurately measure an economy, from the average price of a gallon of gasoline to gross domestic product, is ultimately an estimate with a varying margin of error.  As I heard this, I thought, but so much depends on these economic measures!  Interest rates, Social Security expenditures, the Federal Budget, you name it–they all depend on the veracity of economic statistics that are merely estimates.  So I got to thinking, how can one bridge the gap between economic assumption and reality? 
 
Sometimes it takes humor to get the job done.  The Stand-Up Economist, a jovial chap named Yorum Bauman, an economics professor at the University of Washington and part-time stand-up comedian.  His YouTube presentation, "Mankiw’s Principles of Economics, Translated," is a classic.  In it, Dr. Bauman boils the ten principles of economics into the following, easy to understand translations of generally accepted precepts:
  1. People face tradeoffs (choices are bad);
  2. The cost of something is what you give up to get it (choices are really bad);
  3. Rational people think at the margin (people are stupid);
  4. People respond to incentives (people aren’t that stupid);
  5. Trade can make everyone better off (trade can make everyone worse off);
  6. Markets are usually a good way to organize economic activity (governments are stupid);
  7. Governments can sometimes improve market outcomes (governments aren’t that stupid);
  8. A country’s standard of living depends on its ability to produce goods and services (blah blah blah);
  9. Prices rise when the government prints too much money (blah blah blah); and
  10. Society faces a short-run trade-off between inflation and unemployment (blah blah blah).

After watching The Stand-Up Economist, it all makes so much more sense to me!