JarJar Nixon's Blues Kitchen

Actually, I am back in Hanoi this morning and then flying back to Saigon in a couple of hours. HaLong Bay, located on the coast about three hours' drive east of the capital, is still an incredibly unspoiled paradise. We stayed at the new au Lac resort on Tuan Chau island. We saw the Miss Vietnam beauty pageant in a huge amiptheater--only drawback was that people sat in everyone else's assigned seats, resulting in pandemonium throughout the first hour of the pageant. Very nice hearing our friend Tran Manh Tuan open the contest with his signature jazz saxaphone riffs. We went to a cavern bigger than Luray back in Virginia and ate crabs on a very binh dan wooden boat.

Going to Ha Long Bay tomorrow for a conference. Will blog again as soon as I am near email.

Speech students and government students--keep practicing for your final presentations! And see you this Wednesday morning as we review the exciting election results.

OK, first you have to realize that once there was a paper published by a Japanese scientist in the Annals of Improbable Research (www.improbable.com) arguing that tiny, tiny people exist alongside their large human counterparts.

And now comes an article in today's New York Times revealing that, while not microscopic, pretty darn small people have been discovered on a tropical island.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/27/science/28TINYcnd.html?hp&ex=1098936000&en=2774fc8a6fca056d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Here is the start of the story--

October 27, 2004
Scientists Find Skeletons of Miniature PeopleBy NICHOLAS WADE
nce upon a time, but not so long ago, in a tropical island midway between Asia and Australia, there lived a race of little people, whose adults stood just three and a half feet high. Despite their stature, they were mighty hunters. They made stone tools with which they speared giant rats, clubbed sleeping dragons, and hunted the packs of pygmy elephants that roamed their lost world.

Strangest of all, this is no fable. Skeletons of these miniature people have been excavated from a limestone cave on Flores, an island 370 miles east of Bali, by a team of Australian and Indonesian archaeologists. Reporting their find in today's issue of Nature, they assign the people to a new human species, Homo floresiensis.

VNU students--We have some great topics for speeches to inspire.

--bungee jumping
--blood donation
--walking
--caring for elderly parents
--bicycling
--going veggie

Practice practice practice. Remember you are creating an image, an emotion. You are not just imparting information. You are a speech artist.

The people who liked Bush or Kerry before today's debate started were a little more convinced that their candidate was the right choice, but I don't think it helped the fence straddlers at all. The race is still a dead heat and the deciding factors may be what P.J. O'Rourke predicted in the most recent issue of the Johns Hopkins alumni magazine: the weather the morning of the election, the mood of the fence straddlers when they wake up, or the price of gas that day; in other words, it is a question of who takes the trouble to go vote on November 2. That's not necessarily a cynical observation--just a perceptive side glance at how very close this race is going to be.

A couple of friends came over to watch the second Presidential debate with me. Eight p.m. back in St. Louis meant eight a.m. here, so we served up coffee and Vietnamese crepes and our friends brought coffee cake. One Vietnamese friend had just returned from two years in the Boston area as a visiting Fulbright Scholar, so he had more insights into the race than I did.

Was anyone surprised by Kerry's admant 'yes' when asked if he would hold the line on taxes for incomes under $200,000 a year? Was anyone else surprised at the energy and animation President Bush exhibited? This was a very good format--out and walking around--I would have liked to have seen Edwards and Cheney face off with that format.

For my USG students--here is a web site that will help round out your views on American politics. I will also place it on the links section, over on the left side of this page.

www.Centrists.org

For my speech students: your final topic is A SPEECH TO INSPIRE. I will talk to you more about this in the lectures, but you should pick a topic which challenges the listeners to do something exceptional.

An ordinary request:

--watch more movies
--play more video games
--treat your friends to lunch

An extraordinary request:

--donate blood
--'adopt' a poor family
--start a vegetarian diet

An inspirational speech stirs the audience's deepest emotions and makes them resolve to change their lifestyle or commit themselves to an important cause.

An effective inspirational speech is the HARDEST of all speeches to do. Martin Luther King, Jr. was successful at this--you can see a sample of one of his speeches on the CD-ROM that accompanies the textbook.

Just got back from a big birthday party for Dam Vinh Hung at the town's leading music club, M&Toi. Hung is the Marc Athony (Ricky Martin? Justin Timberlake?) of Vietnam, and our five-year old has a crush on him. (He came to her birthday--see the post of Sep. 12 or 13 or so). The M&Toi house band--with the best live rhythm section in the country--backed up his usual song list as well as his songs from his new CD. The club was sardined with about 500 friends, and we escaped after about an hour...Calista wants to go back tonight for his full concert set. We have been so spoiled by great live music experiences here...we won't ever enjoy clubbing in the US as much as we used to.