What is Happening in Thailand?

I have been watching the news from Thailand with sadness and confusion. Once again, there are protests in the streets, calling for the government to resign. The current government came to power as the result of a coup, followed by a dubious election. But most of the protestors support the object of that coup, Thaksin Shinawatra, who is notoriously corrupt and has no respect for human rights or the rule of law. There is no good side in this story.

What saddens me is that not long ago, Thailand was a success story, both economically and politically. Democratic transitions can take a very long time, and Thailand’s was certainly incremental, but by the end of the 1990s, it seemed safe to categorize Thailand as a consolidated democracy.

Thailand was an absolute monarchy until 1932, when a military coup forced the king to relinquish much of his power. Over the next sixty years, the country held regular elections, and often looked like a democracy—until the democratically elected governments got too corrupt, or threatened the power of the military. When that happened, the military would stage a coup d’état, something they did every few years, usually with little violence or popular opposition. There was no question that the generals held the real power.

This led to a strange kind of stability, which, along with pretty good economic policies, helped Thailand to develop rapidly. The benefits of development were distributed unevenly though: Absolute poverty was reduced, but the gap between rural farmers and urban middle and upper classes grew. By the 1980s, the middle class (overwhelmingly in Bangkok) had grown, more Thais were educated, and there was increasing pressure for a more accountable government. In 1991, the military overthrew an elected prime minister because his administration was viewed as unacceptably corrupt, but promised to hold elections ASAP. In fact, they did hold an election in early 1992, but somehow the general who had led the coup won, which didn’t sit well with the people. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in protest, which was violently quashed by the military, who killed hundreds. Finally, the king stepped in to negotiate a compromise—a caretaker prime minister was put in place for a few months and new elections were held in September 1992. This time, a real civilian government took power, and began work on drafting a new constitution (another favorite pastime of Thai lawmakers).

Throughout the rest of the 1990s, Thai democracy flourished. Crooks were voted in and crooks were voted out. A massive economic crisis caused in large part by a real estate bubble in Thailand spread across the whole region. Thailand’s neighbors, particularly Burma and Cambodia, became increasingly authoritarian. But the Thai military let the civilian democratic process run its course. Finally, elections and peaceful transfers of power became the norm. By then end of the 1990s, when I was in graduate school studying democratization, Thailand was a poster child for a successful democratic transition in a region still ruled mostly by one-party states (the one other exception being the Philippines). It really looked like 1991 was the last of a long series of coups.

Then in 2001, Thaksin Shinawatra was elected prime minister. One of the richest people in the country, he ran a populist campaign and won the hearts of the rural poor. He helped spread development beyond Bangkok and a few other regional centers. He introduced a national health system that made health care affordable and accessible to almost everyone. He cracked down on the drug trade. But the anti-drug campaign, while popular among many Thais, consisted mostly of extrajudicial executions of hundreds of people accused of drug trafficking. Due process was for other countries, not for Thaksin’s Thailand. At the same time, Thaksin’s companies owned many of the newspapers and TV and radio stations in the country, and if the news outlets he didn’t own criticized the government, they risked being shut down. Free speech was for other countries, not for Thaksin’s Thailand. But it was Thaksin and his family’s corruption that finally brought him down. His relatives and cronies made untold millions from insider deals with the government.

By 2006, people were in the streets again—mainly the middle class, much like in 1991. But this time they were protesting against an elected leader. And then, after 15 years without a coup (a long time by Thai standards), the military once again decided that they knew better than the people, and took over the government while Thaksin was out of the country. He was convicted of various corruption charges, and has been unable to return to Thailand for fear of being arrested.

Elections were held again in December 2007, with Thaksin supporters managing to take power in a coalition with smaller parties. In 2008, there were more protests, and eventually the prime minister was forced to resign and his party disbanded because of conflict of interest charges. The Democrat party (which had been in power on and off through the 1990s) formed the government. So now Thaksin supporters are back in the streets, and it looks as if the government will be forced out yet again.

Why this mini-lesson in the convoluted recent political history of a country on the other side of the world (aside from my personal interest because I used to live there)? I think the tendency, when one hears about street protests, and coups, and unstable governments in developing countries is to write them off as inevitable. Those “Third World” countries just can’t learn to govern themselves. But what makes this case so troubling to me is that Thailand really seemed to have become a stable democracy. Even when people were unhappy with the government, they dealt with it in the next election, or through parliamentary processes and courts, not through military intervention or popular intimidation. But then for the last three or four years, they’re back where they were fifteen years earlier. Once again, the right to govern is based on raw might, not by elections and legal systems, and that saddens me.

I don’t know whom to blame. I blame the military leaders for going back to their old tricks of taking out the government when they don’t like it. I blame the middle class protestors who called on the military to oust Thaksin. I blame Thaksin for taking a new democracy and quickly dismantling accountability and the rule of law, and for being so corrupt that a coup seemed like a better option. I blame the rest of the world for letting it all happen.

Here's the latest from the New York Times.

Here is Human Right Watch's most recent statement.

Randall Chamberlain, Lobbyist

I’ve never been a big fan of Washington, DC. On my first visit there, the government buildings, especially the Capitol, turned me off. The big imposing structures, designed to awe and even intimidate, rather than to welcome the populace into the workings of government, seemed to me the antithesis of “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Since moving to New York 14 years ago, I’ve been to Washington many times for many different reasons, and my opinion didn’t change much. As an adopted New Yorker, I am required to regard our neighbor to the south with a degree of disdain: The District of Columbia does not have the diversity, the vibrancy, or the grit of New York; it barely even qualifies as a city.

So I was surprised to find how much I appreciated Washington on a recent visit. Perhaps part of the change in my opinion came from the reason I was there: I traveled to Washington to take part in the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s (AILA) National Day of Action. Several hundred immigration lawyers converged upon the capital to meet with congressional staffers (and a few members of congress themselves) to press for passage of comprehensive immigration reform. That’s right, I was a lobbyist for a day! (More about that below.) Previously, I had gone to Washington to attend conferences, to meet with colleagues, to visit friends, and even to go to a couple of swim meets. But this was my first time there directly related to the town’s raison d’être, the democratic process.

I’ve had a bit of a change of heart about the city, starting with the architecture. The Capitol, the White House, the Supreme Court, and the buildings surrounding them and housing the various other functions are all clearly designed to convey the message that “This Is An Important Place.” While I wish they had found a way to communicate that message without also expressing exclusivity, it is true that governing a huge country is important; I have begun to appreciate that the buildings themselves help to preserve the gravity and specialness of what goes on inside them.

Walking around Washington, I even came to appreciate the city—at least as an appropriate place for the seat of government, if not as a place I’d like to live. Washington in many ways mirrors the rest of the country quite well. It is a pretty big city, but like most American cities has many more people in the suburbs than in the urban core. The city itself has beautiful mainly white residential neighborhoods, but more than half of the population is African-American. It sits right on the border between the North and the South (although Maryland is below the Mason-Dixon Line, it did not join the Confederacy, and I’ve never met a Marylander who considered herself a Southerner). So while New Yorkers (particularly the eight million of us who live in the five boroughs) walk around in a physical and social environment quite different from the rest of the country, Washingtonians’ day-to-day lives look a lot like those of much of the country, which I guess is a good thing for the people making decisions about those lives.

Like the United States as a whole, Washington is also full of immigrants. As of the last census, 11.9% of people living in the United States and 12.9% of Washingtonians were born in a foreign country. (Check out this publication from the Census Bureau for all kinds of nifty facts on the “foreign-born population.”) And that brings us back to why I was in our nation’s capital. Along with a few hundred other lawyers, I spent the day meeting with congressional staffers to encourage them to pass comprehensive immigration reform this year.

The immigration system in the United States is broken. More than 10 million immigrants are undocumented. (The number is impossible to measure accurately, but estimates range from 10 to 20 million. The figure I heard most often was 11 million. See this paper by the Immigration Policy Center for estimates of where they live by congressional district.) Many immigrants seeking permanent residence based on a job offer are forced to wait up to seven years—even after everything is approved!—before getting a green card. Up until last year, all of the H-1B visas available for temporary skilled workers were used up on the first day they were available. (In 2009 and 2010, because of the economy, there were far fewer applicants.) For family-based immigration, the wait to bring a relative to join you ranges from four years for a spouse or child of a permanent resident (spouses and children of citizens can get a green card immediately) to 22 years if you want to bring a brother or sister from the Philippines. And immigration for same-sex partners? Try Canada. (More on LGBT immigration soon; if you can’t wait for my take on it, check out Immigration Equality.)

Nobody believes this is a good situation, but there is a lot of disagreement over what to do about it. The biggest controversy is over what to do about undocumented immigrants. Many advocate simply deporting them all. Aside from being heartless, and completely impractical, it would have devastating economic consequences: most undocumented immigrants are working, many in jobs that nobody else wants to do. And then there’s the question of letting in more skilled workers: most of the people who would like to come to this country on an H-1B or other work visa would do jobs that we don’t have enough qualified domestic workers to fill. In most cases, they have to prove this to get a visa. And yet, we have arbitrary limits on the number of visas available each year, unrelated to the actual demand for foreign labor.

The argument against immigration reform tends to boil down to this: If we allow more foreigners into the country, they will take jobs away from Americans. But the truth is the opposite. More immigration tends to expand the economy because legal workers earn more, pay more in taxes, and spend more. And the experience of the last couple of years has shown that when there are fewer jobs available here, there are fewer immigrants—either legal or illegal.

President Obama has committed to making immigration reform a priority, but there have been a few other things on the legislative agenda. My day in Washington happened to coincide with the final House vote on health care reform, which was interesting timing for me, but wasn’t great for the lobbying effort. Virtually everyone we spoke to in Washington was so shell-shocked from the battle over health care reform that they did not expect the House and Senate leadership to take on another controversial issue before mid-term elections this fall.

Yesterday, however, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid promised to take up immigration reform when Congress returns to work this week. Chuck Schumer, our senior senator here in New York, and Lindsay Graham of South Carolina are working on a bill to be introduced in the Senate. So far, no other Republican senator has shown interest in the issue, but immigration does not necessarily cut across party lines in the same way as other issues. Some “pro-business” Republicans see the economic benefits of a more rational immigration process, while organized labor leaders, who overwhelmingly support Democrats, tend to want to keep foreign workers out. It should be interesting.

Five Years Ago

I jumped into the pool three stories below the corner of 24^th and Lexington, and before I finished the first length, it came back to me: I really love to swim. I love the feeling of the cool water flowing over my body as I glide through it from one end to the other, the buoyancy of the water holding me up, even the smell of chlorine. It all just felt so right. That was December 30, 2004, exactly five years ago, and I am not exaggerating to say that day—that moment—changed my life.

I had known about Team New York Aquatics (TNYA) for years, having seen them in Gay Pride marches mainly. A combination of factors helped me to finally screw up my courage to give it a try that day: After many years of inactivity, I had been working out at a gym for a year, so I was in decent enough shape; at the same time, I had grown bored with the gym, and was looking for a way to vary my exercise routine; and I had had a conversation the week before with a stranger at a party who swam for another swim team, which somehow made the whole “masters swimming” thing feel a little more approachable for me.

That first day, though, I was nervous—not so much about swimming but about showing up and joining a group of strangers. And in a swimsuit, no less. But TNYA’s web site said they welcomed new members anytime; all I had to do was arrive a little early the first time. What I found was a group of people, most of whom didn’t seem to notice me, but enough of whom said hello that I felt welcome.

The pool was divided by speed, just like the team I had swum on briefly as a teen, so I found my way to the slowest lane. The water was both exhilarating and calming. I soon remembered how to count by 25s, the order of an individual medley, even how to swim butterfly. The coach kept giving us more sets, and I kept swimming. I managed to stay in for the full 90-minute practice, and was amazed to have swum 2,800 meters. I was completely exhausted. And I was hooked.

I went again the next week, and signed up for two practices a week, figuring I could go to the gym two or three times a week and swim twice. Pretty soon, though, I felt like twice a week was not enough, and before long I was swimming three, four, sometimes five times a week. The gym fell off the schedule (I’ll get back soon, really I will).

There is almost always a group of people going out for dinner after practice, and TNYA has become the center of my social life. Partly that’s because it’s where I am most weekday evenings; partly it’s because on the whole, swimmers are smart, interesting people. Mostly it’s because I feel like I belong there, in a way that I don’t feel anywhere else.

After five years on the team, being a swimmer has become a central part of my self-image. Before I joined, I didn’t understand people who were so committed to working out. Now, if I don’t swim for a few days in a row, I get anxious, even depressed. At 40, I am in much better shape than I was at 20, or at any time in my life. But more important than that, becoming a swimmer has changed the way I think of myself. I was never a jock before. Like many gay kids, high school gym class was a nightmare for me. I wasn’t good at any sports; I didn’t have any interest in watching sports. I swam on a city team for a while, and I was briefly on my high school rowing team, but left both because I didn’t fit in with the macho jock culture. For me, being on a gay team makes it possible for me to be a part of group athletics, and to enjoy it, for the first time in my life, and I love it.

And that feeling I had on the first day comes back to me every time I get in the pool.

The Nobel Peace Prize

I've been thinking a lot about the Nobel Peace Prize going to President Obama, and getting a little pissed off by the many criticisms coming from the left. Here's the way I see it: Barack Obama almost singlehandedly turned the most powerful country in the world from a big dumb bully to a thoughtful member of the international community.

After seven years of a "war on terror" that looked an awful lot like a war on Islam, he went to Cairo and made a big public effort to engage the Muslims of the world rather than alienate them.

Breaking from the previous regime's simplistic and damaging approach of "with us or against us," he has pledged to negotiate with those who disagree with us, like the current government of Iran, rather than going for the guns at the first opportunity.

He has publicly stated that he wants to live in a world without nuclear weapons!

To me, it comes down to this: Arguably the most powerful person in the world has consistently refused to simply throw around the weight of the United States' money and military, and instead has insisted on negotiation and engagement. He has chosen to manage conflicts peacefully. So yeah, I think he deserves the respect of the world for that.

I've been repeating this to myself and to my friends for the last few days. And then I had a realization: President Obama has been doing the same thing domestically, and I've been criticizing him for it.

I am really upset about how most of the domestic policy issues have turned out since January. The stimulus package was way too small, so now we're likely to have years of high unemployment, which means huge suffering for millions of people. Whatever health care reform eventually gets passed will probably not include a public option and will probably still leave millions of people uninsured. Don't Ask Don't Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act are still the law of the land, with no end in sight.

All of these shortcomings are the result of concessions to the right-wing minority in Congress, largely because of ridiculous rules in the Senate that mean we can't really do anything without 60 votes, which we don't quite have. Don't get me wrong: this pisses me off, and I stand by my anger at the Republican and "moderate" Democratic lawmakers who put corporate profits and bigotry ahead of fairness and compassion at every opportunity. But I have also been upset with the president and the rest of the Democratic leadership for hesitating to throw their power around as much as I would have liked. We won the election, and we won big, so we should be able to do what we want, right?

Well, maybe not. Didn't I just say that I think President Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for refusing to simply use his (our) power as he sees fit, and instead engaging with the rest of the world? I really do believe that searching for commonalities and treating people with respect, even when they're acting hatefully, is the peaceful way to manage conflict. If that's the right way to deal with Ahmadinejad, maybe it's the right way to deal with the GOP too.

I still believe that he has let down LGBT people by refusing to put our rights on the agenda. And I still believe that he could be pushing harder for better health care and better economic policies. But maybe I'll ease up on his tactics for a while.

Shalom aleichem

As-salaam aleikum

Purim

I've never been a big fan of Purim. Although I'm a big fan of cookies and drinking, the two pillars of Purim celebration, the story that goes along with the revelry has never sat well with me. Today I re-read said story, the Book of Esther. In many ways, the Purim story follows the standard template of Jewish holidays: Bad guys tried to kill off the Jews; through our wits and strength and the intervention of G-d, we were not annihilated; let's eat! In this case, the bad guy, Haman, literally wanted to kill off all the Jews in the empire, i.e., genocide, mainly so that he and his people could take our money and stuff. Not nice.

But here's where the story loses me. After the lovely Queen Esther and her cousin Mordechai foil the evil Haman's plans, what do they do? Well, with the help of the king, they turn it around on him, killing Haman, his ten sons, and 75,000 other people! Now I know this is fiction, but I refuse to celebrate collective punishment and mass murder. While the story rubbed me the wrong way from the first time I heard it, it is especially troubling to me now, because it seems so much like what Jews did so recently in Gaza, with similar rationale. So count me out.

Instead, my observance of Purim consisted of making a donation to Human Rights Watch, my former employer, in honor of Alison Des Forges, who was killed in a plane crash a few weeks ago. I only met Alison a couple of times, but she was legendary for her tenacity in documenting the horrors of the Rwandan genocide, so it seemed fitting to me to honor her on this day.

World's Worst Tourist

I am the world's worst tourist. I love to go to new places, but I have very little patience for, or interest in, most "attractions." I'd much rather walk around a city than a museum most of the time. So when I was in Jerusalem, I made the obligatory trip to the Western Wall and the Temple Mount, but skipped the rest of the must-sees. For the most part, I'm happy with what I see, but I'm afraid I probably miss out on some really cool things.

I'm also lousy at souvenir shopping. I just never seem to find things that speak to me. So if I don't bring cool stuff back to my friends back home, it isn't because I'm not thinking about you--it's because nothing is good enough for you.

Meanwhile, I have been walking around Istanbul for a few days, and have in fact seen some cool things, most of which are quite well-known attractions.

I arrived just in time for Erev Rosh Hashanah. Mostafa, one of two people I know in Istanbul, was kind enough to contact a Jewish friend, who was kind enough to arrange for us to attend services at his synagogue, one of quite a few in Istanbul.



Istanbulu Jews are mostly descendents of Jews expelled from Spain during the Inquisition, so they're Sephardi. Over the intervening 500 or so years, they've become quite integrated into Turkish society. The service was interesting--the same words I'm used to but even more mumbled than at typical Ashkenazi services. And at one point, when I was lost in the service, I started hearing Spanish! Well, it was actually Ladino, which I knew was still spoken by some here, but it still took me by surprise.

The other notable aspect of the Rosh Hashanah in Istanbul was the security. There have been a few bombings of synagogues here, so they're pretty uptight about whom they let in. Because we were not members, we had to go to the side entrance and fill out a form, show our passports. All was going smoothly until the guard heard Mostafa's name. And then asked for his passport, and saw that he was born in--horrors!--Lebanon. But after checking with someone, he let us in. (We didn't mention that Mostafa's parents were born in Jaffa.)

My other friend in Istanbul, Riva, has generously opened her amazing home to me while she travels down to the Aegean coast for a few days. Here are a few photos of the views from Riva's windows:






Dinner on Tuesday was in Kadikoy, across the Bosphorus, in Asia! Even though the separation between Europe and Asia is arbitrary, I'm still tickled by the fact that I look from one continent to another every day, and that we took a ferry to Asia for dinner. Here's Mostafa on the ferry to Asia:



And here's the lovely Riva with her charming and handsome boyfriend, Fehmi, after dinner (in Asia!):



I don't remember what this was, but I thought it was pretty:



Sultanahmet:



Aya Sofia:



Entrance to Istanbul University:



The view from Starbucks on the Bosphorus:



Street scenes:






For Kerri:



The view from Ortakoy (bridge to Asia in the background):



Beach on the Black Sea:

Last Day in Israel

Tomorrow I'm off to Istanbul, leaving the land of my ancestors (well, some of them) behind. It's been a very interesting week, but I've had enough. Mostly, I've had enough of being alone, so I'm looking forward to being with friends in Istanbul.

Speaking of friends, I was not actually alone today. I went to Pardes Hanna, about 40 minutes from Tel Aviv, to have lunch with my dear friend Sat-Sung. Neither of us can quite remember when we last saw each other, but it was somewhere in the neighbourhood of twenty years ago. Two hours wasn't quite enough time to catch up on two decades, but it was a good start. Thank you, Facebook, for helping us to reconnect!



In addition to seeing an old friend, it was interesting to see a small Israeli town, and the landscape around it.





Random observations:


There are a lot of cats in Tel Aviv! All kinds of apparently domestic cats, just strolling around the streets. Why don't New Yorkers let their cats out?

There are an awful lot of soldiers in this country! Yes, I know this isn't news, and I haven't exactly been surprised. (Little in Israel has really surprised me, since it's so much in the news, and in the minds of American Jews in paricular.) But it's remarkable, and certainly unusual for me, to see women and men in uniforms, carrying big guns, all over the place. Most of them appear to be off duty, but it's still a little disturbing how militarized the society is.

There are a lot of security checks! In particular, at the entrance to every train station, bus station, and shopping mall. And occasionally individual stores (I saw this in Jerusalem, not in Tel Aviv). Sometimes there's a metal detector and an x-ray machine; sometimes just a person checking bags. And none of them have seemed particularly interested in me, which I attribute to racial profiling. I must say, though: As unnerving as it is, it makes a lot more sense than what passes for security in many New York buildings, where one is asked to show ID and or sign in, but nobody checks what people are bringing in with them. (And speaking of bogus security vs. real security, when I went through security in the Istanbul airport to board my flight to Tel Aviv, I didn't have to take my laptop out of my bag, I didn't have to take off my shoes, and nobody said anything about liquids! I look forward to seeing what security at Ben Gurion Airport looks like. Stay tuned.)

Israelis drive on the right side of the street, but the trains run on the left, apparently because the Brits built the system. But didn't the Brits build a lot of the roads too?

The creation of modern Hebrew amazes me. Until around the turn of the 20th Century, Hebrew was not used for conversation by anyone. The early Zionists decided to leave behind their European languages and turned a "dead" language into a living one. It seems like it would have been easier for most of the early settlers (invaders) to stick with Yiddish and a mishmash of other languages, but they didn't. They said to themselves, "we're starting a new society, and so we're going to speak a 'new' language." I think that's pretty cool. (On the other hand, how might things have been different if they had learned the language of the people who were already here, Arabic, and tried to join the existing society, rather than replacing it?)

Jewish Guilt

Walking around both Tel Aviv and Haifa, I've been marveling at the fact that they've been able to build really quite beautiful, modern cities--Tel Aviv feels a lot like California--in such a short time. While there were cities here already (in some cases for thousands of years), much of the infrastructure, and much of the society, has been built only since 1948. It's impressive.

But, of course, there is a dark side. These cities weren't empty before 1948. In Hebrew school, I was taught that the Arab leaders told the people living in what was then Palestine to take off for a few days after Israel declared independence, that they'd be able to come back just as soon as the Arab armies pushed out the Jews and put an end to this whole Jewish state idea. And while that may be part of the story, the other part is that the Hagannah, the terrorist group that became the Israeli Defense Force (think about that for a moment), forcibly ejected hundreds of thousands of people. The lucky ones went to places like Lebanon and Jordan, and sometimes farther off. Others stayed closer, either by choice or because they had no choice, and their children and grandchildren are now living in Gaza and the West Bank. Either way, their land was confiscated by the new state, and much of the land in the lovely cities I'm now exploring belonged to them.

This included the family of my friend Hiba, with whom I had dinner in Ramallah the other day, and whose family used to be prominent landowners in Haifa, and my friend Mostafa's parents, who fled Jaffa for Beirut in 1948.

The narrative taught to Jews in North America is one of repeated efforts by both Palestinians and neighbouring Arab states to annihilate the State of Israel, and repeated victories by Israel against this "aggression." Well, what would you do? We took their country! Of course they want to push us into the sea!

I said "we," didn't I? I haven't felt a deep connection to the land or the people or whatever since my arrival here. But I do feel basically at ease, at least in Tel Aviv. And I know that if I were so inclined, I could find my way to whatever government office handles these things, say "I'm here to stay," and they'd welcome me with open arms. OK, I'd have to go through no small amount of red tape to prove my Jewishness (particularly given my gentile name), but I have a right, under Israeli law, to live here. Hiba and Mostafa (and many many others less fortunate than they), whose parents were born and raised here, do not.

Shabbat

Shabbat Shalom!

Despite Tel Aviv's secularity, Shabbat here is very quiet. Stores, with the exception of small corner stores, are mostly closed. Buses don't run; trains don't run; there aren't many cars on the street. It's actually very nice. Restaurants are mostly open, so people can hang out in cafes and stroll around the city, and not much else. So that's what I did.

Speaking of restaurants, I had to take a picture of Orna and Ella's, where much of the action in one of my favorite movies, the Bubble, takes place:



And this one I just found amusing: "25 years of humus."

Dead Sea

This posting is out of sequence; I went to the Dead Sea on Tuesday (so sue me). What can I say about the Dead Sea? It really is that floaty! It actually took effort to push my feet down to the bottom, quite a weird sensation. I should have asked Stefan to give me drills to do, taking advantage of the floatiness to make me a better swimmer in normal water.