Chopping apparatus

Most people who cultivate corn in these parts of the Dry Zone outside of Mandalay save their cornstalks after harvesting. The purpose of storing, drying, and then chopping the stalks is to convert them into cattle feed, either to feed to their own animals or to sell to others.

The chopping machine itself was built by a craftsperson named U Ba Maung over a decade ago in Mandalay's industrial zone, and cost 200,000 kyat (at the time of manufacture around $150). The "Wuling" brand Chinese-manufactured engine powering the machine cost the operator another 400,000 kyat (around $300 when he purchased it) at approximately the same time ten years ago. He mobilized the entire setup by mounting the engine and machine on a cart so that a pair of cattle may pull it. With the cost of the wooden cart totaling 600,000 kyat (~$450) the entire venture set him back around the equivalent of $900. He borrows the cattle of a friend or arranges to have the cattle of those hiring him for his services transport the machine from his house/workshop to the job site.

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Spare parts for the chopping machine and engine may be gotten in Mandalay, with some fabricated domestically and others shipped in from China. Over the years he’s had to make plenty of creative repairs to keep his contraption running, including his routine sharpening of the chopping blade (here you can see him using a sharpener made in India for the task) and the creation of a fuel tank for the engine out of what used to be a container for a cleaning product fitted with a hose and gasket. His next big plan is to purchase a new motor for the machine with this season's proceeds and use the engine pictured here to generate electricity for his home.

Refueling after dark

The standard method informal roadside fuel vendors advertise their services is to display containers filled with water adjacent to their stall. Fuel is sold by the liter in Myanmar, and if one is refueling their motorbike the means of transferring the fuel from a larger jerrycan to the motorbike is often a repurposed one liter water bottle (often poured through a funnel).

Many stalls are only open during daylight hours, or if they are open after dark their usual local customers know this in advance and there is no need to advertise that fact and draw more attention to the quasi-legal. On streets or highways that still experience a high level of vehicle traffic well into the night, however, informal fuel vendors such as these in Mandalay advertise their services by illuminating their typical "daytime display."

To grab additional attention, some vendors have branched out to use non-conventional containers. When considering the design of containers/packages for goods in resource-constrained environs, combining a distinctive packaging (using green plastic when everyone else uses clear) with simple reusability (one-liter bottles are everywhere, and repurposed for a multitude of uses) means your unique container (and by extension your brand) will be spread far and wide.

Moneybelt

Manufactured in Viet Nam and being sold in a Mandalay fashion shop, these blingin' belt buckles imply global shifts in the status of the cultures they come from. When does a currency become sufficiently valuable to justify immortalizing it in belt-buckle form? Does your currency make the cut? What standards are normally adhered to when deciding which currency to suspend directly above one's crotch? Which is more important - brand recognition or true value? Of course there is an advantage of an unknown currency - freedom to fabricate your own narrative about the superiority of your chosen lucre.

Before Americans get any bees in their bonnets, yes, they also stocked big-faced Bennys.

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?

Booty Radio

The latest offering from our friends at Booty Radio, a "status inflator" of an FM Radio masquerading as a Blackberry/PDA. By walking around with the "iPod white" earbuds in your ear, or, truer to life, just one earbud while talking to yourself (or the woman depicted on the screen, perhaps?), you too can join the ranks of the elite ever-connected-through-multiple-media. Notable is that despite Booty Radio coming up registered as a Chinese company, the image on the "screen" is not of a Chinese woman. 

The static screen image raises a few questions; Is this Booty Radio's "international model" meant for regional consumption?  Why not just put a nice car or a mansion or other symbol of wealth as the "image" and play it safe? By using the image of a woman, is this meant to target men or women?