The UW Chronicles: Volume XXV: A New Look at Burma

Hello All:
My reporter's notebook is full and slightly bedraggled, a casualty of the story I began working on two months ago.

After more than a few interviews, multiple copies, 11 pages and the agonizing realization that I have a serious pattern of biting off more than I can chew, my baby has been published. Add some nail-biting and ethical issues, plus last minute edits and source checking right before it went to print (via cell while I was at a Tori Amos concert), and you've got an idea of what went into this two-part story on Burma.

It ran in The Daily's last two papers before finals, the first part on the front page and covering 3-4 pages inside and the second half published the next day in the features section.

Thanks to the incredible guidance of Vicky Yan, my features editor, I did not go insane and I successfully kept to my deadline. Vicky said in an e-mail to me: "I saw a lot of people on campus reading your story the other day and I was so proud!" It's like we're proud parents.

Thank you to The Daily for embracing this unique story idea and gambling on me as a new writer (and now as an assistant sub-editor; You won't be disappointed).

Thanks also to all of my sources--you know who you are--I was honored to be able to tell your part of the story.

As with any news story, there are many angles and perspectives and all of them need to be told. Here are the perspectives of University of Washington students--who have lived and studied in Burma--on a dynamic country that has attracted the attention of the world.

Tin Aung (a student from Rangoon, Burma and an invaluable source) demonstrating the effects of censorship

Spotlight on Burma: Part One
Spotlight on Burma: Part Two: The People's Stories

snow in seattle

The UW Chronicles: Volume XXIV: Summer and Physical and Spiritual Sojourns

On my way home from work last night the waning moon darted behind light posts and telephone poles. It peeked out around buildings, and giggled at Seattle-ites' brave attempts at reclaiming the night sky. The Space Needle and the twinkling lights of the downtown slipped behind me along with the moon as I steered onto the I-5 heading north, towards British Columbia, and far before that, my home for the summer, Lynnwood.

I am living with my college cluster mate Audrey's family, known simply as "the Bakers." Their ranks now include me and my other college cluster mate, Jessi, as well as three sisters (including Audrey), Michael and Laurie, and Sadie, their rambunctious golden retriever. My mornings now include gazing out onto Martha Lake while sipping my tea on their dock, making whole wheat-oatmeal-banana vegan waffles that are always praised but rarely eaten by anyone but me, and dressing out of my suitcase.

I am working full time and have found that it is, indeed, something one should get used to before graduating college. I have become a full fledged barista, able to make a cappucino, latte or mocha in under 2 minutes 30 seconds, and get covered in coffee and steamed milk while doing so. My summer vacation has been deliciously full. My family and I went to Maui to celebrate my parents' wedding anniversary, and quite honestly the pictures speak for themselves. The highlight of the trip occurred while I was snorkeling in Napili Bay, a giant sea turtle emerged out of the darkness of the waters beyond and glided elegantly by me, making its way towards the opposite cove. Incredible. It was a beautiful trip.

The first thing I saw when I got to Maui.


The three girls!

A game of coconut checkers anyone?


The view from our condo


The Dragon's Teeth


A beach near the "Dragon's Teeth"


A native Hawaiian grave site


Me and Mom at "The Gazebo" for their famous macadamia-banana-pineapple pancakes




The line for those aforementioned famous pancakes!


Me and Mom and our stunner shades

Come September my friends and I will move into our new apartment on 42nd and 8th in the University District. We each have our own rooms, two bathrooms for three people, an adorable kitchen and a spacious living room. You are all invited to come and stay, just be prepared for gloomy Seattle weather from September through about April.

I will be a junior at the University and will be completing my basic journalism courses next quarter, which include a class on the art of interviewing, beginning news writing and reporting, and to fulfill my language requirement, German 101. All of the students who were accepted into journalism in the same quarter will be in classes with me, and because we've already suffered through a painfully disorganized journalism ethics class together we have become fast friends. Our study sessions for the class spiraled into political and ethical debates (if we were NBC executives during the Virginia Tech manifesto controversy what would we have done?) and the airing of vast journalistic dreams, like traveling the world for National Geographic or being a hard hitting reporter for the New York Times.

I am very excited to see those familiar faces again come mid-September and really set my sights on making my writing the best it can be. If you ever read a piece of writing that just makes you go "wow", please do send it to me.

I want to be a journalist because it seems as though the profession is stuck in a mire of celebrity arrests and political trivialities. The lure of journalism is in its unique ability to spur readers to action. It doesn't matter whether a reader decides to knit sweaters for soldiers, buy stoves for displaced peoples in Sudan, or simply walks in another's shoes for that inspiring couple of inches of article. That words in ink on a page or pixels on a screen can ignite someone's consciousness is what drew me to journalism, and I hope to throw some gasoline on that fire. Thank you for your support, your belief in me and your love, and most of all, thank you for reading. Take care and enjoy your summers.

The UW Chronicles: Volume XXIIV: The Significance of Windy Days

I was running yesterday, to relieve my stress and overcome some of the emotion that was welling inside me after the tragedy at Virginia Tech, and I noticed something. The wind whipped my hair and worked against me as I jogged along Lake Washington, it whipped the trees just like it had the night my dad died, nearly six years ago, it whipped like this when a young man's body was found on campus last year, it whipped like this, my mom told me, after my cousin Matthew passed. And it whipped the trees into a dark frenzy as clouds began to move from the west and loom over my last quarter mile. The wind must have been pulling the souls from Virginia to wherever they needed to be, with family and friends and strangers like me.

As I walked back to the dorms, a police cruiser slowed and glided along with me, then past McMahon and down the street. My roommate Meaghan's eyes were pricked with tears yesterday when I came home from class to hear the body count, 33 fellow students and professors stolen from their families and their dreams, and, we all shuddered at the thought, from completing their majors, from going out into the world and being the adults they wanted to be.
What if this happened to us? Just last week a man shot his ex-girlfriend and then himself at Gould Hall, the architecture building on campus while I was at my morning's first class. What if he had decided to take out people all across campus because he no longer had anything to lose? A scary thought and too much for us to comprehend.

I watched the news and found politicians and interest groups already spouting who should be blamed, why if their policy was passed this wouldn't have happened. I grew indignant at their rants and scapegoating and let loose an outburst when a news anchor called the shooter a 'terrorist' when I was explaining the situation to my roommate, Patricia, who hadn't heard the news. Her surprise at both what had happened and my uncharacteristic eruption of anger calmed me, and made me realize that I was sick and tired of people pinning blame on everything and hijacking tragedies for their own use.

The only place blame deserves to land is the young man who killed thirty two of his fellow students. He was a young man whose own life must have been horrific and painful and for whom human life must have been cheap to do such a thing as kill his peers and teachers and then himself on a quiet school day at Virginia Tech.

The UW Chronicles: Volume XXII: Snow and the Space Needle

Welcome to Seattle.

January 16, 2007
11:55 am

I'm curled up in a blanket in my dorm room watching the snow fall outside while sipping some Assam black tea with soy eggnog and listening to Sarah McLachlan. And I should be reading about the constitution. But instead I am writing to you because I am warm and there is snow and I am thinking about all of you doing what you do on a Tuesday afternoon after a holiday weekend, laundry perhaps, and I wish that all of you could come up to Washington and we'd have a cup of tea and a snowball fight in the Quad and all would be glorious. In essence, I feel oh so far away from everyone I love in this snow caked little corner of the Pacific Northwest.

It is beautiful though and things have been going well. I love my classes, I'm taking Communication 202 (an intro class), Political Science 202 (American Politics, I can now apply to the major) and ESRM 101 (Forests and Societies, we learned about tree sitting the other day). Thankfully Communication 202 and Political Science 202 are both requirements to get into the journalism major and the political science major, so I am contemplating a double major in those areas, as many of the classes conveniently overlap.

Earth Club is rocking, we came up with a concrete framework for greening the Center for Experiential Learning, and have our environmental poetry night ("Poetry, Change and Chai") at the Trabant Chai Lounge in the U-District coming up in late January. My co-president, Stephanie, just had her 21st birthday and we had a fantastic adventure buying her a vegan cake at the Flying Apron Vegan Bakery (we got to test the different flavors, yum) and I really enjoyed meeting all her friends, many involved in other major clubs on campus and in the Associated Students of the University. They all welcomed me to her birthday party (a perfect stranger except for whatever they heard from Stephanie) with open arms and then sat me down between them on the couch with a slice of cake to watch Bill O'Reilly on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Suffice to say, they are amazing people who impressed me with their passion and intense involvement in current issues, as well as their warmth. I am pleased to say I have six new friends who are involved in everything from the Muslim Students Association to the Save Darfur Coalition to the Student Senate. It was so refreshing to meet members of my generation who are passionate about the world they live in and are looking for solutions to its problems. Ahhhhh.

But I must trek through the snow to class soon and tonight to my first kickboxing class and then tomorrow to my first Hatha yoga class (wish me luck, I'm gonna die. In the class I mean, hopefully not the snow.) My roommates can attest to the fact that I have been running around screaming, "CLIMATE CHANGE! CLIIIIMATE CHANGE!" like a banshee. A Facebook conversation with my friend Justin went something like this:
Justin: "Global warming doesn't exist! It's not warm! It's SNOWING!"
Me: "Hee hee...problem is global warming creates temperature extremes...northern latitudes get colder and southern get warmer...Los Angeles was eighty degrees on Wednesday, why can't we be there?! I say you move to Costa Rica while you still can. BEFORE WE COMPLETELY ICE OVER! AUGH!"
Justin: "I called George Bush and he told me you were distorting the facts...."
Me: "You just made me giggle inside. Tell him I learned it all from him. *snap* :)"

Obviously we have different political persuasions (which is wonderful, diversity is what our country was built on...can you tell I just read James Madison?) and therefore we have a lot of fun with it. But enough of that. I took some photos of campus that I thought you might enjoy. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures while I was at work the other day in Fremont because my goodness, it was coming down and I felt like I was inside a salt shaker, it was amazing. And what made it even more amazing was the fact that I was warm inside Peet's and had all the chai I could ever want at my disposal. God, I love working there. Peet's and joy indeed.

Well, cheers and I love you all. Feel free to e-mail me or leave a comment because I want to hear how all of you are getting along! And please, if you live in snow country (AKA Ohio) us Seattlites already know that we are pathetic when it comes to snow. I mean a major part of the city is called "Capitol Hill", and man, it's a BIG hill, a BIG ICY hill right now. *sigh* And people are still trying to drive up it...and making the mistake of going down it as well. Obviously this city was not built for snow, and adding to it, Seattlites are clueless when it comes to the white stuff. Hugs and kisses to all.
P.S. My roommates and I were just taking the Meyer-Briggs test...I'm an ISFJ (Introverted Sensing Feeling Judging), otherwise known as a "protector-guardian" just like George Bush, Sr., Mother Teresa and Dana Scully from the X-Files...and don't ask me how they know the personality type of Dana Scully, a woman who does NOT EXIST. I have no idea. My friend Jessi is an idealist-something, just like the virgin Mary, or so the website claimed. Don't ask me how they came up with that either. But it's interesting, no? Reading the profile was pretty creepy, I can tell you that much. Well that was random. Have any of you taken it? It's weirdly fascinating isn't it?

And to brighten your day...


Jessi, Jessica Vu and me playing dress up.


Me and Audrey...we will be roommates next year in our own apartment! I'll get things on the floor for her and she'll get things on shelves for me. It will work out nicely.