Jib Koo

If someone asks you to draw the moon, I believe that most of us, including me, will draw something similar to the picture on the left.  Only that after 1st Dec 2008, the day of “Smiling Moon” phenomenon in Thailand, some Thais might draw the moon as shown in the right picture.  …Thanks to the smiling moon; it makes us draw the moon as it should!

Have you ever noticed that the vertical half-moon is unreal in Thailand?

Because Thailand is located near the equator, we can only see the smiling horizontal half-moon, never ever be vertical! This obvious fact has been around since God has finished creating the solar system, the earth and the moon, but how come we always draw the half-moon vertically?

Easy answer: This is one of the samples of how we adopt foreign tools and ideas without considering and customizing it properly.  Very few of us learn about the moon and the stars from the actual sky above, most of us are read/learn about it from the textbook, kiddy picture book or Manga (Japanese cartoon).  Lots of our textbooks are translated from American’s or British’s and all Manga are from Japan. In those books, they always show vertical half-moon—which is how all northern-hemisphere countries see the moon. So, there’s nothing wrong with their book, the problem is we forgot to look up and check if the content right fits for us. It’s just scary how much we unconsciously perceiving the world through others lens.

For the past several decades we keep doing the same thing, adopting tools and ideas from outside, those management tools, developing tools, or even fashion and culture, without customizing them properly before deploy to our culture. 

May be it’s about time we should just pause a little bit, think and look around…
There are many forgotten pieces of us, waiting to be found.