The Butter House

After May pointed out my butter-related gaffe, a singular question was lodging in the back of my mind: if not a stick, what form does butter in Myanmar take? To get at this question, I decided to go straight to the head authorities of all butter-related matters: the May Myo Butter House. Named after a scenic former colonial hill station in Shan State (the eastern part of the country), the May Myo Butter House features all types, forms, and qualities of butter for every discerning palate. As I entered and encountered a quartet of massive vats of liquid butter, I knew I had come to the right place.

As for my original question - the most likely form you'll see butter take is not a stick form, but rather a sort of gelatinous cream stored in a bag, or in a more syrupy form in a vat. The different colored bags represent different levels of purity of the butter. Butter is sold either by the bag, or you may have your preferred amount doled into your provided container of choice. I can now understand the candy designer's choice of depicting butter as a stick - it might not have been as appealing to have a gigantic metal pot or a plastic bag filled with a yellow goo on the front of their butter-flavored candy.

This raises another question, however: If people in glass houses should not throw stones, what should people in butter houses not throw?

Elevate for Cleanliness

This fruit juice vendor has taken steps insure his straws' cleanliness by elevating and separating them from the rest of the ingredients. What does this say about other ingredients' need to be seperated/elevated/clean? What is it that would make the straws "dirty" if they were placed on the same table along with the other ingredients? Is the proximity to other ingredients,  proximity to the road, or another factor altogether that classifies something as being at risk of becoming "dirty" or otherwise contaminated?

The straws could also serve as an informal marker of the business' success for the day, with the less straws left in the cup, the better.

So I pulled it, now what?

 

A good warning sign, except for the third panel down - the one about waiting until the train has stopped. Suppose one's experiences had not yet exposed one to the octagonal red sign that (for Americans) unequivocally means "Stop". In an international airport such as JFK, where this sign is located, that is entirely possible. 

In the panic of an emergency situation, what would your racing mind otherwise assume the third panel meant?

Sandal wall

Here are wear patterns from thousands of students of this monastic school
made over the years stepping into and out of their sandals in precisely
same way. Without actually watching a student put on/take off their
sandals, what does the wall's wear pattern reveal about the activity?

If one student were to remove their sandals a different way - say, removing
their sandals sideways or facing outwards from the wall instead of facing
forwards - how would that affect others' future sandal removal methods and
preferences? Consider that by following suit with such a renegade that a
student would not only be betraying their former self (so accustomed to the
old sandal-removal conventions), but also the thousands of students before
them whom that individual student had neither met nor even known of, and
yet who left their very same mark of conformity on the wall (just as all of
the prior students before him or her had).

When traces of those before your are more evident, does diverging from their
paths present a greater challenge?

Foot-powered video/music vendor

This CD/DVD buyer/seller functions as a mobile media vendor in this town outside of Yangon. Cellphone ownership and internet connectivity in the town is low compared to urban Yangon, but overall wealth is high enough to justify this woman's services. Here, she's pictured  with her "security detail"/assistant salespeople/customers, who perform equal parts advertising, buzz generation/marketing, and plot explanation of obscure movies (in return for the odd kung-fu film she lets them borrow) as she walks around this and surrounding towns. If a disc she purchases is too scratched to work, she hangs on to them to sell later to someone who wants to use them for their reflective properties by attaching them to their bicycle, vehicle, or fence, or to wire LED's to them for the belief that a disc increases the LEDs' brightness.

Seeing as this is her entire livelihood, this woman likely has a very keen understanding of her market's relative awareness/acceptance of various aspects of Myanmar pop culture, and based upon her movie/music stocks and sales figures she can probably forecast with a good degree of accuracy the attributes of movies and songs that are most worth purchasing from families who are selling. As her inventory is limited to what she can carry in her bag, she must carefully apply her knowledge of how a successful/popular movie or album is treated/sold/resold/talked about when making the critical choice of what used media to buy from customers, which to carry with her (based upon the demographics of the community she is entering - age, wealth, etc.), and determining prices.

Candy Flavor Norms

 

A sampling of what some might consider "interesting" candy flavors. Dispensed on a domestic airline flight, what could have influenced the airline to decide that these were the ideal snack to give out on a flight? 

Out of the dozen or so flavors (including more conventional ones such as the predictable line-up of fruits; cherry, watermelon, grape, etc.), can the origin of these "extraordinary" flavors be generalized about? Does an "Iced" lemon taste different from a "Room Temperature" lemon (and judging by the presence of ice cubes on the wrapper, "iced" in this case likely does not mean "having had icing/frosting applied to it")? Though butter is included in dishes here, how high is the average person on the street's knowledge of what a stick of butter looks like? Probably not high, which is perhaps why one only sees this on an airplane flight - air travel remains out of reach for most people here.

Also, all four wrappers bear one attribute in common: their depiction of two miniature candy wrappers in the lower left corner. Does logic lurk behind this seemingly gratuitous graphical flourish?

Hat's eye view

This hat has a small mirror woven into it. What does the inclusion of the mirror say about the wearer of the hat - particular in light of the mirror's concealed position. Think of the number of reflective surfaces that surround your daily life. If you have ever want to see yourself in a mirror, it isn't too tricky to find a plate glass wall, car window, or even turn on the user-facing camera on your cellphone or laptop.  Now consider a place without any of those things, such as rural Myanmar.

I believe the need to want to know how you look is universal across cultures. Reflectiveness as a feature.