Thursday, December 25, 2008

And a Merry Christmas from Kathmandu

There's a hint of rain falling outside, the first drops I've seen since I got here and very unusual for the season in Kathmandu. It makes me thing of the epic snow Vancouver's received this week, and I'm more than mildly jealous to have missed it. Moreover, I wish I had the chance to spend Christmas with my fine family and friends back home - the occasion is rather different here in this very Hindu country. Aside from the occasional "Merry Christmas" tossed my way, there's little to show Christmas is happening at all here.

So we Canadians and a few other assorted bideshi (foreigners) arranged a Christmas of our own, complete with presents, trees, and Santa Claus. We had a fairly epic party last nigh at my friend Craig's house, wherein a suspiciously skinny Santa (not me) orchestrated a somewhat spiteful but highly entertaining Secret Santa exchange. I spent morning making Christmas calls to back home, and it helps immensely to check in with loved ones on a very un-Christmas Christmas. This evening, about 15 of we volunteers gathered at the home of John and Cathy, two soon-to-depart volunteers who prepared a lovely Christmas dinner with virtually every trimming. It was relaxing and hugely appreciated. Now I'm whiling away my last hours of the day, and wishing deeply that Boxing Day were also recognized here.

Merry Christmas to all - I promise I'll be there for the next one!

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Mein poor neglected blog...

I’m going to take a short break from ranting about Nepali traffic to rant, in brief, about the politics of other countries.

Every time we think Zimbabwe’s situation can’t get any worse, it does, and now a cholera epidemic that doesn’t officially exist is ravaging Harare. African leaders are beginning to make promising noises about ousting Robert Mugabe, but seriously, guys, couldn’t this have come 5 years ago? He is, with the arguable exception of (the possibly incapacitated or dead) Kim Jong Il, the worst person in charge of a government today. He has overseen the deaths of (at a guess) over a million people, mostly by malnourishment and disease, of his once incredibly promising and self-sufficient country. Zimbabwe is beautiful beyond description, and full of industrious and friendly people who need to have the shackles of the ZANU-PF party permanently removed. In the words of more than one Zimbabwean I met while travelling in South Africa, “We are just waiting for him to die – waiting so we can return home and get on with our lives.”
To the other African leaders who have quietly coddled Mr. Mugabe since he embarked on a rampage of ethnic cleansing in the province of Matabeleland in the mid-1980s, and half-heartedly clucked their disapproval at his spree of land theft early in this decade: it’s time you guys acknowledged a few things. Robert Mugabe is a vicious thug who will never willingly share or relinquish power, and he has already demonstrated his willingness to immolate Zimbabwe rather than give up the reins. His “power-sharing” agreement with rightful president Morgan Tsvangirai will remain a sick joke, as Mugabe will always undermine (or kill) anyone who represents a significant challenge. Every month he remains in power sets Zimbabwe’s development back by years, and all that wasted human potential is increasingly on your heads. He won’t be quietly shuffled aside, or coaxed into leaving the country as Charles Taylor was lured out of Liberia. Even at 84, he won’t succumb to illness nearly as soon as he ought to, displaying as he does the unfortunate resilience of the truly evil. He may have to be removed by force; either way, his continued vicious rule discredits the much-appealing vision of the New Africa.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Kathmandu brings out my inner nerd.

But then, so does everywhere else. Today’s geek spasm comes courtesy of Kathmandu’s incomprehensible traffic. Through the magic of queuing theory, a single taxi can pause to pick up a fare, and create an astonishing Gordian gnarl of outraged honks and stalled two-stroke engines that can easily take 10 minutes to untangle, during which time it will cheerfully paralyze traffic for kilometers in every direction. It’s absolutely fascinating, and it sets my mind abuzz with formulae I never really learned, the remnants of the queuing theory and game theory that I half-grasped in undergrad. (Econ 382, Applied Game Theory, is still the niftiest course I took at SFU, for those enrolled there now).

In a rational, well-ordered city, this would be impossible. Those two adjectives, however, are as likely to be applied to Kathmandu as “soothing” and “verdant”. This city is a mass of undifferentiated bloat, nourished by spontaneously-formed one-lane capillaries and gasping in cobalt-blue smoke, a vaguely benign urban tumour. But it offers me endless, tantalizing food for thought, filling my mind past capacity with tenuously-connected fragments of pop sociology, science, politics, and sheer (often aghast) wonder. And thus it reminds me why I travel.

Sunday, December 07, 2008

Much is afoot.

I've been conference-enthralled much of this last week, and I'm leaving for Nepali lessons in three short minutes. I'm not neglecting my precious blog, nor either of its devout readers. I'm popping in to note that it appears I'll be professionally obliged to spend some time in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka at some point in the next year. Most excitingly, I've got a line or two into some short teaching gigs in Peace and Conflict Studies at some universities in South India. I'm not sure where this will all leave time for my actual job, but I'm sure it'll sort itself out.

I came here to network; I had no idea it would happen so bloody fast. Yippee!

Sunday, November 30, 2008

In which life continues apace…

Friday’s banda never materialized, which is surely for the best. I’ve got far too much to do to be dodging flying brickwork in the process. And yet… sigh…

I completed my first semi-week at work. I’ve spent my mornings at Worldview Nepal, an organization that (at the moment) trains reporters, teachers, and other change agents (in the parlance of the field) in human rights-related issues. I’ve been editing a couple of reports and brochures on how to combat human trafficking without trampling on the rights of the trafficked. It’s undeniably grunt work, mainly copy editing, but on a fascinating subject that will allow me to get my feet wet with the organization before I attempt to shoehorn myself into their program work.

A bit of clarification on that last point is due. I’ve been hired as a Communications Advisor, which means that my official capacity is to write, edit, design and proofread English-language proposals, training manuals and marketing materials. This is not what truly fuels my professional passions. Why then, you ask raptly, did you take the job? I took it because the primary preoccupations (human rights, post-conflict development and microfinance) of my two employers just happen to be things that fascinate me to no end, and the things for which I’ve really been trained. My rat-race profession of Communications Something-Or-Other will serve mainly to bring me closer to those far more fascinating subjects, close enough (in theory) for me to jam my fingers into many different pies. I’ll start, the theory, by working on their written materials, and then pop my head in all the appropriate doors, wedge myself into all the relevant meetings, and generally make a nuisance of myself until I’m doing hands-on fieldwork. I’ve discussed my intentions with my liaisons at CECI, the Canadian organization that funds and organizes this entire endeavour, and they wholly endorse my mildly deceptive strategy. Nifty.

Until that happens, however, I’m getting the lay of the land here, and reducing the odds that my travels will kill me. I found a cruelly expensive, viciously ugly, canary yellow bicycle helmet that will nevertheless be more attractive than a skull fracture. Speaking of my wheeled commute, I had a bit of a run-in last week with the Chinese diplomatic corps. Cycling past the Embassy, I curved around a parked car at the precise moment that the driver (shoulder checks be damned!) decided to pull out, indifferent to my presence. I clipped the corner of his car and, startled, staggered to a stop without suffering any particular insult to myself or my precious bike. Not so lucky the lesser vehicle – I mightily tore the bumper, headlights and all, almost free from the car, and it dangled feebly by a few wires. A Chinese gentleman (whom I judge to be a diplomat by the fact that his English was more eloquent and precise than my own) leapt from the car, apologizing profusely, and assured me that the blame was his (or his driver’s, whichever). I bid him adieu before he could change his mind. Paul 1, China 0.

Much else has been underway: language classes, moving, plotting some epic treks, and a tale of $600 dumplings (not my money, thankfully). My internet connection will be a bit inconsistent for the next 3 weeks, by which time I’ll move into my permanent digs, but in the meantime I’ll sure I’ll find the bandwidth to share more tales of Kathmandu.

Friday, November 28, 2008

I've only been here two weeks...

... but I know what it means when the distinctive "you've got a text message" chime wakes me up - it's Banda time, baby!

In practical terms, this means I won't be able to make it to work, since it's needlessly provocative for me to try to run the blockades. It means that my long-delayed haircut gets delayed a little longer, since the shops will be closed. Food will be a little more difficult to acquire - I'll have to eat in the hotel restaurant, methinks. And, oh yeah, I'm going to go out and get some snazzy photos. It's just 7 AM, and I hear whooping crowds from the direction of Lazimpat, the nearest major street. Don't worry, they've no problem with photographers - helps to publicize the cause.

Yesterday I wandered through the mob that constituted the embryonic phase of this banda, which is called to protest (?) the as-yet unexplained deaths of two 15-year-olds, likely by nefarious means, on the outskirts of town. As I rode my bicycle home from work in suspiciously sparse traffic, I saw with curiousity that other cyclists were dismounting and walking their bicycles. It seemed wise to do the same, and shortly I came upon a nearly empty intersection normally swarming with taxis and tuk-tuks. A swarm of perhaps a hundred youths roamed the street, none visibly older than 15 (though it's hard to tell, in a country where malnutrition masks age very convincingly). They carried makeshift banners, photos of the two dead boys, and they accosted anyone disrespectful enough to drive a car or motorcycle through the bare street. I couldn't understand these conversations, but I infer that the protestors demanded the drivers show the banda the proper respect by walking home. Those who refused and tried to drive on had to dodge a rain of fist-sized chunks of masonry (none of which connected with anything fleshy, so far as I saw). A few plumes of black smoke that I (correctly, as it turns out) took to be the product of burning tires rose a few blocks away. Once safely clear of the mob, I slowly, and respectfully remounted my bike, like many other commuters, and enjoyed a remarkably smooth ride home on a street nearly devoid of traffic.

Oddly, about 30 minutes later, when I'd grabbed my camera from the hotel, life seemed to have resumed its normal pace. Traffic had returned and there was no mention of the riot. And yet, it appears that yesterday was the rehearsal - today we see a full-blown city shutdown. Photos and eyewitness accounts to follow.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

A day.

I had things to write about, but now I'm just watching the horrific events unfolding in Mumbai. It's a little hard to know what to think, right off the bat. The head of Mumbai's anti-terrorism squad has been assassinated along with his top deputies. At least a half dozen different sites have been attacked in commando raids entirely unlike the typical Al Qaeda coordinated attack. I've never heard of the "Deccan Mujahideen" before, and I don't think anyone else has either, but I presume we'll be hearing much more of them soon, though it seems likely that's a front name. I'll just watch for now, and keep my opinions to myself.

A few people have asked, so: I'm fine. I'm a thousand kilometres out of the way in a country that shares none of India's issues with Islamic radicalism. Thanks for your concern - I'm in no danger here.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

The first of many...

Bandwidth remains a fickle, miserly mistress, but I've been able to cram a few photos through the thin straw and more will follow. First up, the riot cops last Thursday:

Banda vs. Police, Kathmandu

Next, a cremation about to begin at Pushpatinath, the holiest site in Nepal for Hindu funeral rites.

Cremation at Pushpatinath

I visited the temple complex at Pushpatinath last weekend, and witnessed several such cremations underways. My tour guide reassured me that taking photos was offensive to neither the grieving nor to Vishnu.
I accelerate...

It's a wonderful thing to be wheeled. After two weeks of walking, time enough to taste the contours of this jumbled city, I bought a bicycle for my 20-kilometre daily round trip commute. My new steed is a shiny craft of aluminum and plastic that would have mildly embarrassed me before the bicycling bourgeousie back home, but here it's the pinnacle of human-powered transport, and to me it's a genuine godsend. Uber-sophisticated it ain't, but it has brakes that appear to respond to pure thought, and fat, guileless tires that would grip and oilslick on an iceberg. It lets me outmaneuver the motorbikes and outrun the other bicycles. It's precisely what I need. The beast was costlier by a hefty margin than any of the others I found in a week of searching; indeed that's why I brought it home with me. The $300 price tag is a feeble midget next to the mighty expense a bent wheel would extract in blood and treasure. The gnashing maelstrom of Kathmandu traffic is not a place to entrust my sanity and endoskeleton to the wretched steel frames offered up by the lowest bidder. My colleagues with the dreaded "cheap Chinese bikes" begrugingly popular here have walked away from such potential mid-ride catastrophes as watching the handlebars or pedals abruptly detach from their trusted rides. I won't test my luck so.

That ominously said, Nepali traffic, for all its chaos and bluster, hides an odd tranquility. Lane markers are an absurd fever dream here, and stoplights an amusing suggestion. Traffic ostensibly moves on the left, but that's only a guideline, and shoulder checks are effectively a religious taboo, but somehow I don't feel my own mortality on Kathmandu roads the way I did in Chiang Mai. The overstuffed roads seem to naturally divide themselves into capillaries, admitting only one vessel at a time, and no one takes it personally if it's not their their turn. Nothing moves particularly fast, and my thin profile lets me weave through the nearly motionless traffic - I typically get places far faster than the car-bound. People actually slow down or (gasp!) stop rather than tear through me. It's busy, it's anarchic, it's noisier than anyone who hasn't been here could possibly comprehend, but in it all, I don't feel that anyone on the road is actively trying to end my life. Unlike Thailand.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Blowing stuff up real good...

I had many menial errands to run on Thursday; a bicycle to buy, a barbershop to find, self-medication to perform. None of it happened, because a Nepal has an odd tradition called the banda, which I’m told it shares with much of the Indian subcontinent. A banda is a particularly obnoxious variety of street protest wherein the aggrieved consider that they have the moral right to demand a complete shutdown of the entire bloody city. In this particularly obnoxious form of dissent, a mob of several hundred or more snarling citizens roams the street and, among other behaviours I don’t yet fully comprehend, ransacks any business or working vehicle that has the audacity to disrespect the banda by disregarding the general strike.

My employers at CECI send out a mass text message on Thursday morning saying that a banda had been called for the entire Kathmandu valley, and that those of us with long commutes should stay put and avoid the madness. I wasn’t working that day, but was a bit under the weather, and so I didn’t leave the hotel until 11 or so, camera in hand. The fun had largely petered out by then, but I still passed a public bus thoroughly wrecked by the angry mob, and the streets were littered with fragments of masonry. Kathmandu’s ample supply of tottering brickwork provides ready ammunition that presumably rained down upon riot police for much of the morning. Traffic was unsettlingly sparse, as only a handful of motorcycles and no cars plied the streets. Late in the day, hundreds of armored cops manned major intersections. A few wore a curious scarab armor that brought to mind feudal Samurai, but they rebuffed my requests for snapshots. I later snuck a few surreptitious shots of their less exotically attired colleagues, which will be e-displayed as soon as I have functional bandwidth.

My taste for urban chaos is well-known, and I briefly cursed my inertia for depriving me of a first-hand taste of Thursday’s banda. However, I’m new here, and it’s likely better that I avoid such lunacy until I’ve the local knowledge to safely navigate it. Bandas of one variety or another are reportedly a regular event, though this was (I’m told) one of rare intensity. There’ll be another for me to enjoy sometime tolerably soon.

Friday, November 21, 2008

I've had my reasons...

... for slacking off on the blogging. Namely, that I've been sick and still occupied with my Nepali language classes and general acclimatization. Much has happened (the aforementioned classes, a meeting with one of my new employers, and, amazingly, a banda which will defined and described in great detail when I have the bandwidth to upload photos tomorrow). I've secured an apartment (two, actually) and am settling in nicely, aside from being humiliated in last night's poker tournament. I've had two welcome lunches (at one of which I was required to sing) and am plotting treks to Everest, Annapurna, and possibly Tibet. All of these wonders deserves a post of its own, which it will get, but in the meantime I'm checking in.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Another try...
The following are worth a shot:

011 977 01 980 800 1055

011 977 980 800 1055

011 977 0980 800 1055 (especially this one).

Sadly, I can't test it from here. Whoever can tell me what works gets a free Sherpa.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Phone!

I have a mobile phone here - reachable from Canada by calling 011 977 1 980 800 1055. Fun!

Sunday, November 16, 2008

A victim of itself...

Kathmandu is a perplexing city, mystifyingly ancient and yet obviously wracked by adolescent growing pains. Pale Buddhist stupas and intricate Hindu temples lurk and loom in every neighbourhood, having survived centuries of South Asia’s famed mix of war, privation, religious upheaval, relentless monsoon weather, arbitrary seismic spitefulness, and a mercilessly thriving tourist trade that (I presume) predates outsized Americans in Tilly hats and cargo pants. Kingdoms have blossomed and withered here with stubborn regularity since before Gautama Buddha went for his long walk, and empires have washed over Nepal like tides, for longer than words have existed to record them. Every iota of this history and prehistory has left marks, and the occasional ugly stain.

But Kathmandu’s most belligerently obvious trait is its unmistakable newness. Nepal’s unsettling rate of population growth and textbook developing-world economic superurbanization have bloated this town far beyond its healthy size, a process greatly accelerated by ten years of moderate-intensity civil war that drove the capable and the fearful to the shelter of the capital. Planning was negligible, pollution controls nonexistent, and the city has a people-to-stoplight ratio somewhere (literally) in excess of a million to one. So now Kathmandu marinates in pollution far greater than wind and rain can alleviate, with demands on the water, electrical, road and sewage infrastructure three times what they were designed (I use the term loosely) to handle. The results are (here’s that peculiar Nepalese poetic incongruity again) both utterly predictable and completely flabbergasting. The street traffic is an extraordinary pandemonium that defeats my capacity for hyperbole. In most districts of the city, the power fails for (a meticulously scheduled) 35+ hours per week, anticipated to leap to 90+ by early December. Odours of genuinely demonic provenance occasionally waft up from… nowhere in particular. Kathmandu is struggling, and thus far failing, to deal with its own explosive growth, and one result among many is that there are a great many conundra here with which someone like me can busy himself.

This will be an interesting year.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

The first day is always the most foolish...

My Nepali/Canadian hosts at CECI (my new French-acronymed employer) graciously opted, in light of my midnight arrival yesterday, to begin my day with a leisurely 12:30 lunch, for which I am boundlessly thankful. I awoke at 6:30 and briefly chronicled the sunrise with my shiny new Canon (still waaaay too much camera for me, I’m willing to admit). I sleep-chewed my way through an inoffensive hotel buffet breakfast, hunted down some bottled water, and quickly toddled back to bed for a few more hours. I roused myself for a lovely lunch with my new overlords and my fellow volunteers, and enjoyed chorizo enchiladas, a noted traditional Nepali delicacy. I suppressed jetlag yawns through a few hours of orientation, and then bravely (though not wisely) decided to walk hotelward from the CECI office.

Nepal’s now-extinct(dormant?) civil war left a heavy legacy of militarization, and so major government buildings remain lightly surrounded by manned gun nests, with sixty-year-old bolt-action rifles resting lazily on sandbags, indifferently attended by soldiers a third their age, barrels consistently pointed out into the streets and sidewalks. In the 30 minutes it took me to get badly lost, I walked in front of these ancient arms at least a dozen times. I’m sure they’re appropriately locked down, and so forth, but I find it unsettling to be forced to march point blank in front of the bloody things anyways. While observing this absurdity and wandering through this mangled labyrinth of a city, I unsurprisingly ended up badly off course, and was retracing my steps when a CECI coworker miraculously happened by on a motorcycle. He offered a courteous and very welcome ride back to my hotel (in unnerving Kathmandu traffic, of course, but there’s some line about beggars and choosers) and I wisely resolved never to try anything new or adventurous again.

Once returned to familiar territory, I purchased a single local electrical adaptor. Marveling at my ingenuity and financial acumen, I ingeniously plugged in my single Canadian power bar and ingeniously saved myself the cruel expense of buying multiple adaptors for my multiple toys. My power strip abruptly surrendered to the unfamiliar Nepali voltage, waving a furious white flag of searing blue plasma, molten plastic and acrid dark smoke. I’m reasonably thankful I didn’t ingeniously try this on my Xbox first. Ye GODS, my room stinks now.

And so I go looking for food, in the hopes that the stench of electrical experimentation will have evacuated in an hour or so. More to follow tomorrow.

P.S. Nepal is 13 hours and 45 minutes ahead of Vancouver. Ponder that briefly. If that’s perplexing to you, imagine how I feel, stranded in this temporal no man’s land.
At 11PM, Kathmandu is tomb-quiet, and nearly so dark. Little to see as we rode in from the decaying, crazed airport, except an abundance of street dogs rooting wherever. At 6 this morning (I think) - the red sun had barely risen and cast my hotel room in bright pink. I'll go exploring.

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

In days to come...

History will be made tomorrow - and it won't even be a close outcome.

I'm moving to Nepal on Sunday.

I'm returning to my own life, after a year in someone else's skin.

'Bout bloody time.

The blog will be resurrected.

Thursday, October 02, 2008

Others have said it first, and better.

A bloody good (and bloody long) article expounding on what I just said. Of primary interest to people like me.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Big day today.

That is all.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Much to tell, but not today...

Big things are afoot, but I'm in enforced radio silence at the moment. There may be important news in a week.

Things are going well.

Thursday, May 08, 2008

There are better things I should be doing.

I miss my students, and what they symbolize - meaningful work, meaningful existence, daily challenge and self-improvement. I wrote to them yesterday, inquiring about their situation in the wake of the devastating cyclone in Burma. One year ago today I was in Rangoon at the start of the monsoon season. I'm half relieved that I wasn't there when the cyclone descended in its fury. Yet my remnant half is desperately wishing that I were there, so I could be of some value. It's hard to imagine a worse place for this to happen - ruled by a vicious clique indifferent to the people at the best of times, paranoid to the point of parody, and consumed by rank greed. Burma is an aid workers' nightmare, with the most decrepit transportation infrastructure I've ever seen, miserable sanitation and uncounted local rivalries that politicize humanitarian assistance. I will be very surprised if the death toll is below 50,000, and I won't be shocked if it exceeds 100,000.

Anyhow, I received this email in response, remarkable primarily for its unvanquishable good cheer.

Dear teacher Paul,

There is clearly no need to say how much i thank you for your kind regards on our families and all of my friends, and i get happy to get nice and kind message from you. Dear teacher Paul, we ( all of your students and all of your students' families ) are in good situation. Dear teacher Paul, i would like to say you again " thank you very much" and one thing i would like to apologise is that i really hope that you will understand on me why i have been absent to send nice message to you. The reason why i have been like this is that i was away from internet. Dear teacher Paul, i really and honestly wish you to give my nice and kind regards to your family, especially your girlfriend you love more than your parents. Just kidding, teacher Paul, ha ha ha....... i really miss you so much, teacher Paul. Good luck! By the way, i would like to know where our kind and nice teacher, Jonna is staying and including her email address that can be sent to her.

May you get free from illness and diseases.

I remain,
Yours very good student,
Name witheld

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Things to do...

I'm likely to go dark for a few days. I know it breaks the compact, but these are unique circumstances and there are a lot of things I need to do. Emily's sick (I'm not going into details now), and though she'll get better, she's frightened and so am I. I'm having a rough time with it because I don't have many ways to be useful at such distance. So I'm going to spend a few days applying here and there with a newfound vigour, and trying to pull some strings to get me to where I can be of some value at a bad time. I'll be back when I have some time and something relevant to say.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

The joys of sleep-deprivation...

A while back I noticed that I made a special point of going to bed early on Thursdays, so as to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when Friday's parties rolled around. Being well-rested during the slave week seems a lesser concern. My coworkers opine that this is an unfortunate reversal of appropriate priorities. I reject their hypothesis.

But I do think it's time I slowed down for a couple of days. I was up at 5 AM today to do a favor for CUSO, interviewing some would-be international interns. One was supremely qualified, the other radically less so, and I hesitate to recommend the latter for international work. Ugly thing is, they're a couple and travel as a pair, so it'll be interesting to observe the vicissitudes. That nicety concluded, I worked a further 10 hours at my actual job (the departure from which I've momentarily stalled while I accumulate capital for something more cataclysmic). I'm wiped, and my bed beckons.

In other news, I'm sunburnt, I've raged at a couple of people who might not have deserved it, and I'm two episodes behind on Battlestar Galactica. More impressive is that Brendan finished his thesis defence today at SFU, capping a years-long process in which his entire skull has frequently incandesced with stress and intellectual fury. Now he's finally, blessedly done, and is likely to rejoin the functioning human race. Yay Brendan!

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Mmm... food...

Inasmuch as I'm forced to get up at 5:30 tomorrow morning, in order to do a favor for CUSO and interview a Vancouverite who wants to move to Thailand, and inasmuch, as I spent much of the evening updating online profiles for people who might someday oblige me with a trip to Afghanistan, I'm somewhat bereft of time and content. I did, however, just enjoy a spectacular dinner at Guu (many thanks to Erin - Bob, you should come sometime very soon). If memory serves, it consisted of chopped salmon sashimi with raw quail egg served in prawn chips, a hard-boiled egg wrapped in pumpkin croquette, grilled yellowtail neck, some form of spiced egpplant, incredibly textured pork intestine, grilled squid legs with wasabi mayo, and some sesame balls to wrap it up.

I love eating in this town. Guu is one of my favorite restaurants, an honest Japanese izakaya with incredible food, rational prices, and an shriekingly authentic ambiance that can't be outdone. The food isn't all as... exotic as the freakier bits above, but there's plenty to reward the adventurous. Go there tomorrow if you haven't already been, or if you haven't been this week.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Self-flagellation...

It's late, I'm tired, I've just spent an hour applying for a job, and I lack the energy to say anything perceptive and poetic at this feeble hour. And yet I've bludgeoned myself into more posting, because otherwise more of my slavishly gained dollars will shoveled down Christian's remorseless maw. It's an indignity I won't abide.

But dammit, that doesn't mean this post has to be good. Mainly it's to announce that I'm officially hunting for international work opportunities again, even if that means semi-paid volunteerism. I've got my eye on India this time, in part because they say it's that place to sear some humility into the soul of the complacent and self-congratulatory traveler. I'd also hit New York, but everyone's been hearing that for months and I'm still no closer to a work visa. So we'll see.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Only in Vancouver...

I waited a few minutes for a bus this evening at Main and Terminal. While I stood among a crowd, a dreadlocked man in his early twenties wandered loudly among us, asking proudly but not belligerently for a cigarette. All the while he cradled his left arm at an odd crook, and when no one passed him a smoke, he began cheerfully showing his elbow to us. A small but unmistakable blade of bone protruded cruelly through his forearm. He showed no signs of pain, and whatever chemical amusement had blunted the appropriate agony had also rendered him ignorant of the pressing need for medical care - or the imminence of amputation.. He just wanted a cigarette.

I've seen much worse injuries in much worse places... but this story could only be told in Vancouver.

Friday, April 11, 2008

Missing Thailand...

Song Kram, a gargantuan water war involving a quarter-million atavistic revelers, is underway right now on the streets of Chiang Mai. Last year during Song Kram, I had my foot overrun by a pickup truck, a bucket was shattered on my forehead drawing plenty of blood, my keys/wallet/phone were inadvertently stolen by my students, and I acquired a whomping case of heatstroke wandering about trying to find a way back into my apartment.

And yet I desperately wish I could be there in the chaos right now.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Late nights...

I'm up anxiously devouring what information I can devour regarding cerebral arteriovenous malformation and taenia solium infection. Not for me, but it's worrying all the same. I'll share more some other time. I'm also schizing out over my thesis, but it's forcing me to re-lubricate my mental gears and fire up my critical thinking after a lengthy atrophy. It'll be good for me.

But both these things conspire to make tonight's post a short one.

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

I've previously mentioned that I'm a bit of an adrenaline junkie, and perhaps seek out more fear and mayhem than is entirely healthy. As I suss out the contours of this particular psychological peccadillo, I've begun to grasp that while I'm mildly addicted to fear of my own death, I'm thoroughly petrified (like most people) of public humiliation. Given the prospect of making an intolerable schmuck out of myself, I fairly typically shrivel into myself and refuse to get off the couch.

Why the conversational detour, you ask? I'm dipping my toes in the fetid swamp of academia once more. My friend Jocelyn (who just laudably had a paper published in The Lancet) is organizing a conference on Global Public Health at SFU in May, which includes some subthemes of Conflict and Public Health, and Global Mental Health. Some strange amalgam of those two apparently covers the odd academic space inhabited by my unpublished thesis on the evolutionary psychology of suicide terrorism. So Jocelyn has asked me to submit my thesis for inclusion in the conference, the expected outcome of which would be me blathering for half an hour in front of 50 bellicose skeptics who desperately want to prove me decisively wrong. And, if possible, they'd prefer to demonstrate further that I'm a feeble dimwit with intolerably sloppy research techniques using a psychological framework that more than a few people have (utterly wrongly) labeled as enabling racism, sexism, and cultural discrimination. I've never presented a paper at a conference before; I'm unfamiliar with such academic rigours and I have a sneaking suspicion that my thesis advisor in grad school never actually read my paper. So it's possible that I'll open a merciless torrent of ridicule on my embryonic academic reputation, annihilating a field I'd otherwise like to develop much further (since no one else seems to be doing so). I could even lose control of all muscle function halfway through the presentation.

I'm going to do it anyway. But some cathartic kvetching is exactly what the doctor ordered. This is a necessary rite of passage, particularly given that 2 years absence from the cheery world of counterterrorism policy has started to blunt my carefully cultivated (and entirely psychosomatic) micro-reputation as an International Man of Mystery. I'm strongly considering launching my PhD pursuit in the next few months and this would be a fine start. And besides, I was supremely confident in these ideas two years ago when i wrote the thing - I must have been on to something then, right?

So I'm going to go dust off my thesis and immerse myself in my own gibberish about status competition in environments of externalized morality, and kin-altruism identification mechanisms, and higher-order theory of mind. Somewhere in there is 250 words that makes my ideas sound relevant to this conference without sounding utterly ludicrous. Wish me luck.

P.S. It'll also take my mind off the fact that someone important to me is having some inexplicable and scary medical issues very far away, about which I can do very little. I don't feel like getting into the details, but I'm more worried than I probably should be, which does very little to alleviate my apprehensions. So a little ivory-tower sequestration is probably just what I need.

Sunday, April 06, 2008

It's time...

For me to resume my e-scribbling. It's been pointed out to me that I'm sexier when I write. I feel larger and more the master of my own life when I write regularly, and well, and with abandon. I've recently absented myself from an ocean of drama, and to hell with it all - no fun to write about, no fun to read. Now's a fine time to chronicle many thoughts on different things that fascinate and motivate me far more. The rank yet hopeful Zimbabwean elections, my imminent-tentative-amorphous vanishing, the interminable gorefest of the Democratic primaries, the food I'm gradually regaining the alchemical skills to prepare, the mythical-yet-scintillating dream jobs I seek here and abroad, my ongoing efforts to reconstruct the obscenely ugly ninja clock, the reluctant onset of blessed summer, and the curious fact that all my kitchen cupboards get extremely hot when closed.

So I'm back on my autofascistic pay-per-blog-lapse program for a month. Though I'm allowing myself a single mulligan, to be used at a time and for a reason of my unimpeachable choosing, should I need it. The usual caveats regarding hospitalization, sudden travel, and the disintegration of technological society also apply. Speaking of which, who knows a cheap, simple and fast way to get a US work visa?

Thursday, March 20, 2008

And the fun continues...

I'm enjoying my job a lot more now that I know I'm leaving. That's encouraging - it'll mean I leave on an up note. It doesn't alter the basic calculus... I'll get bored again, badly, if I stay, and it's time for me to start seriously turning over rocks for international work.

Right after I moved into a new apartment. Oh well, them's the breaks.

It's been very gratifying, actually, to contemplate the new opportunities. I belatedly recognize that since I got back to Vancouver I've been in reactive mode, as Erin puts it. With a mediocre job outside my field, I've been a touch too stressy and well below my normally irritating level of self-confidence. And now I feel bloody fantastic... everything's on the way up.

Speaking of good times to come, I'm headed up to Hope Friday, for an apparently massive party with Jim and Tamara. Should be a blast - I haven't seen those fine folks since Christmas. I'll be back Saturday, so if y'all know of any festivities that night, I want in.

Monday, March 17, 2008

In which I abandon "In Which"...

Because I'm tired of it.

Great night Saturday. At Bob's insistence I hit the Railway Club on the last drinking day before St. Paddy's Day to enjoy the Dreadnaughts, a kickass and kinetic Celtic punk band I should have found long ago. I doubt we many revelers left the club before 2, and then only after some forays into a merciless mosh pit (which pummeled poor Eva's nose) and a few rounds of high-impact hugging. After a brief stopover at my apartment, so that my compatriots could devour the expensive scotch I'm unlikely to ever touch myself, we took an odd 4AM trip to Hamburger Mary's. It seems ill-advised at the time, but somehow I woke up feeling absolutely pristine 3 hours later. Perhaps a wee-hours greaseburger is a fine hangover preventative - I'll test this further in future, since I'm a block away from that reliably mediocre kitchen.

There's much afoot for tomorrow. I hope you'll wish me the courage I need to do what must be done, the dignity to do it well, and the sheer anarchic atavism required to enjoy it from start to finish.

Tomorrow will be a very good day.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Nicolas Parenteau, a friend of mine, died on Friday in Chiang Mai. He skidded off his motorcycle in unforgiving Thai traffic, on a chaotic road that terrified me a thousand times, and died in hospital ten hours later.

A fellow Canadian working through CUSO with Burmese exiles in Thailand, Nic was a good person in the purest senses of the word. A gifted agriculturist, he was most fascinated by digging his fingers into fertile earth, and dedicated his final year to giving long-downtrodden people new means to feed themselves. I didn't know him as well as I should have, but I spent a fair portion of my final months in Thailand hanging out with him. He was kind, generous, devoted, funny and full of cheer. Were you to describe the kind of person the world needs to see more often, Nic would be a fine place to start. A vast many people, myself included, are richer for having known him and poorer for having known him so briefly.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

In which I go on vacation...

Okay, I've blogged a month and only missed a day. I've fulfilled my contractual obligations. I'm going on hiatus until Wednesday while Emily visits. Toodles!

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

In which unrequited counsel becomes a stream of babble...

Then again, it seems likely that any post like this is a call for advice. Christian hates his job, and has understandably begun to wonder if his general malcontent and short temper signifies something chemically amiss in his wetware. I doubt it. Christian's a cranky man, but I think he's generally far better-balanced than he gives himself credit for. He needs to find new work. Not a new job, but a radically different line of work. It's trite, but he has to find something that he loves to do, or he'll spend the rest of his life mired in this sort of restless antipathy.

I'm not doing what I love these last few months. My work is an endless, hurried banquet of minute, unsatisfying tasks that have never once engaged anything outside my reptilian complex. I write a dozen letters for other people a day, tasks so anxiously dull that I feel like instinctively rejecting the praise I receive for their quality. I tread water in a vast ocean of business buzzwords that bury the cliche-meter deep in the red zone.
I am genuinely confused by the deep satisfaction that most of my coworkers draw from their daily labours, which change not one whit between days. I don't begrudge them that - they've found something they enjoy doing day in and out - and I'm sure their heftier paydays lubricate the deal more than somewhat. They are fine people to work with, and my job is neither dangerous (sigh) nor unreasonably difficult nor cruelly underpaid. But this isn't what I'm meant to be doing.

I've been fortunate enough to find politics, which I excel at. I know what I'm supposed to be doing with my life, and I'm not doing it. I must return to work that I love as soon as possible. It's not always a picnic doing what you're best at, either - frustration and impatience are still my periodic companions. On a couple of dire occasions last year at the school in Thailand, my erstwhile boss and I came very close to violence. But for my part, I was so angry because I had legitimately different objectives which I felt he was obstructing. I was in a situation entirely unlike my current one, in that I was an expert in my field and he in his, and so we both had the philosophical footing to demand certain things from the project we shared.

Whereas I'm a rookie at my current job, a mid-level grunt spot in a dandy and well-respected human resources firm. If ever I'm certain I'm right - which happens less often than you might think - it doesn't matter. My superordinates' experience and rank trumps my conviction every time, and despite their superficial attempts to ladle more responsibility into my bowl, I'll never attain the rank and experience to go head-to-head with the powers that be when we fundamentally disagree about what's best for the organization.

That doesn't work for me. I'm not confrontational by any stretch, but I'm a person of conviction and I chafe enormously at lacking the intellectual freedom to set my own agenda to some significant degree. Christian, I think, is more like this than he has been willing to admit to himself. He's a smart guy, and he's frustrated. If I spent a decade selling plumbing supplies to ingrates and miscreants, my rage and contempt for humanity would start to poison the rest of my life too. But go straight for the cause, my friend. Chemical alteration is surely worst conceivable answer (with the possible exception of having kids to beat the boredom) - it doesn't even treat the symptoms of this malaise, it merely replaces some of them (anger and loathing) with others (mental slothfulness and serotonin malfunction). Religion won't help either - that just replaces a few of your dilemmas with larger ones, and then tells you you're going to hell if you dare to ask for real answers. The better solution (though I surely repeat myself) is find something you're bloody good at and that you immensely enjoys. This is surely easier counsel to give than follow, but it's true.

My advice to Christian and anybody else in this situation (including myself): take night classes in whatever the hell you're even vaguely curious about. Start reading the Economist cover to cover - more than once something I found in there sparked an interest that substantially redirected my entire life. Take up a serious hobby in which you run the risk of tragic failure - start growing green things, or making something with your hands, or learning some musical skill, or speaking a foreign language. Fail at things, get better at them, ignore your deep intrinsic laziness, and push far outside your intellectual comfort zone. This sounds like an idiot laundry list of generic self-improvement shite, but it's not - it's a shotgun approach to finding something that ignites a genuine creative passion that you've largely abandoned hope of finding. If you can't stick with it entirely of your own accord, do what I do - set up a system of penalties that screw you even harder if you stop trying. Then once you've found something you love to do can find a way to make money off it and stop doing all this make-work shit you can clearly no longer tolerate.

This is a lot of effort for uncertain reward. It's inconvenient, it's annoying, it might even be expensive - but if it saves you from spending the rest of your life enraged at your career and great infuriating masses of humanity, it would be a bargain at a thousand times the price.

Now I need to get back to following my own advice. I've got some jobs to find, and a thesis to publish, and a PhD to pursue. I'll let you know how that goes.

Monday, February 11, 2008

In which I breathe great relief and unload a little guilt...

Today has been a good day. I grinned through the Chinese New Year's parade downtown, which was remarkably enough my first ever, a strange feat given that I'm a Vancouverite born and raised. I nerded out on Rock Band for 6 hours. I gorged on Hon's for lunch.

Far more important, I discovered that my friend and former student, whom I'll leave nameless for his protection, has been released from the grotesque Burmese prison in which he has been incarcerated on no meaningful charges for the last six months. With his long history of human rights work, he was arrested returning to Burma from Thailand and quickly sentenced to 8 years in prison for crimes I've never heard elucidated. Burmese prisons are even worse than you imagine them to be. Torture is routine; medical care is nonexistent. Prisoners commonly go without food or the most basic hygienic needs. 8 years is more than most could endure, and for months I've been terrified for his survival. It has been no small source of shame for me that I haven't been able to do anything for him, save for throwing some money (to no discernible effect) to the effort to secure his release.

But now he's out. I don't know how, nor why, nor why now. I spoke to him briefly yesterday, and he's coherent but clearly traumatized (to the extent that one can discern from a Gtalk conversation). I don't know whether or how often he was tortured inside, and I don't know the impact his incarceration has had on his health (though he said he has been seeing his doctor daily since being released on Wednesday). He's with his family in Lashio, northeastern Burma, and hopefully recuperating. He has told me that in good time he'll describe the human rights abuses he witnessed and suffered behind bars. Good for him - it's vital that people understand the relentless cruelty of Burmese life.

I still don't feel he's safe in Burma at all. The government launches vicious, sweeping crackdowns with alarming frequency, and he'll remain a priority target for the jackboots so long as he remains in the country. I can't imagine he'd leave his family inside that wretched country, but I'd still feel better if he were in Thailand. For now, though, I'm beyond overjoyed that he's alive and he's walking free. That will have to suffice for the moment.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

In which I'm abso-frickin'-lutely overjoyed...

Today just became a VERY good day indeed... best by far of this (admittedly crappy) year. I'll blog more about it in the morning as soon as I find out how much I can safely say.
In which I make plans... again...

I'm at (hypothetical) spider-bite plus 10-15 days, and I still don't have any superpowers (other than self-deprecation, and that one I was born with). I've been attempting to climb walls and seduce Kirsten Dunst for most of the day, to no avail. Those movies lied to me.

I've just gotten home from a Jehovah's Witness wedding at the Art Gallery. I was constrained from drinking by the vast quantities of penicillin in my body. So I ate, didn't dance (with the waifish 20-something God Squad in ample attendance) and was a bit bored. But I did get to see Will and Bree and their delightful hatchling Wesley for the first time in months, and bantered briefly on politics and publishing with Will's sister Jocelyn, who is wrapping up her M.A. in Public Health. It got me thinking...

Maybe it's time to re-enter academia. I finished my Masters' almost two years ago and abruptly dropped off the academic map, mostly because I went to Thailand. My ambition of carving my Master's thesis into 2 or 3 smaller papers and publishing them somewhere where potential employers would see them got thoroughly shelved, and I haven't really dusted them off yet. I'm actually starting to fall behind a lot of my rival Men of Mystery because I haven't had much published, academically speaking, and at some point I need to get that done in order to boost my job-seeking chances out in the dangerous world. So I surely need to get in touch with my adrenaline-junkie thesis advisor for some pointers and see if I can get some press writing about suicide terrorism.

But I'm also wondering if I ought to bite the bullet and go get a Ph.D. No minor question, that. It's a minimum three year commitment that thwarts most of the people who try and dooms the bulk of those who DO complete it to lives toiling in academic obscurity. That last bit certainly doesn't sound like my cup of tea. Academia drives me nuts - the infuriating moral relativism; the inane need to treat any idea, no matter how asinine, as potentially valid; the constant pissing contests between nerds of all stripes. These things and more tend to send me scowling from campus after a year or so. Moreover, it's bloody hard work to finish a dissertation, and it pays starvation salaries - I've little desire to re-enter penury so soon after (marginally) escaping it.

And yet.

Terrorism, rumour has it, is a hot topic these days. I have genuinely new approaches to counter-terrorism policy that could be hugely influential if I had much more extensive research to flesh them out. I could make a name for myself in the field with an eye towards policy jobs rather than academic tenure, and probably find my way into a think-tank or (better yet) international enforcement at the UN or somesuch. I could learn Arabic in the process of doing my fieldwork. I'd have the credentials to find work in my field anywhere, even here in Vancouver - no more dicking around with jobs where people ask me "why the hell would THAT interest you?". Most importantly, I could demand that everyone, including my blood relatives, constantly refer to me as Dr. Paul.

I've spent enough time on my hiatus from my true (if somewhat unhealthy) professional passion - figuring out why people kill each other. I think I need to start doing some research on who might be willing to pay for me to go talk to terrorists for a couple of years.

Saturday, February 09, 2008

Nothing today either. I'm still awfully sick and exhausted (shouldn't have gone to work today). Christian, if this upsets your mulligan-meter, so be it. I think I built in exemptions for severe illness. I'll make it up over the weekend.

Thursday, February 07, 2008

Sick. Spider. Bad. No post today.

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

In which I enjoy MY Super Bowl...

... better known as Super Tuesday. As it stands, it looks like Obama and Clinton will come in very close in terms of delegate count, even if Hillary takes California by 10 points. That's not the tie it looks like. If Hillary wins by only a small margin, she's in trouble, because the as-yet undecided states are mainly places (Texas, Ohio) where Barack has either a polling lead or an organizational advantage, or both. I wouldn't have expected it a month ago, but it looks to my ignorant eyes like there's a 50-50 chance for either nominee. It's going to be a long night... and a long year.

I like them both, I really do - either would make a fantastic president, and either is almost certain to thwomp McCain in November. But I must confess that whenever Barack pulls ahead I feel a minor twinge of excitement that was oddly absent when Hillary took New Hampshire. So there it is - I'm an Obama fan. Good luck , Barack.

In other news, I'm again spastically expanding my music collection. Having had my fill of emo rock, I'm trying to dig up tracks with some proper volume to them, and yet enough rhythm to be properly catchy. VAST-style stuff, perhaps. Or maybe some quality new hard rock - any suggestions? I don't know what's new in Canadian music, but I'm in a download frenzy and will happily accept all advice.

Monday, February 04, 2008

In which all partying and no sleep makes Paul a sluggish boy...

Like a civilized person, I was set to leave Grae's birthday party last night at the sane hour of 1AM, the better to recuperate from the previous night's 6AM bedtime. But after I'd done my goodbye walkabout, someone asked me, in all sincerity, "What's your opinion of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict?"

So I didn't get out of there for another 3 hours. Ye gods, I need more politics in my life. Yes, I'm a nerd. Yes, I'm comfortable with that. But running on 2 nights of nearly no sleep, after several unusually exhausting weeks, has left me a wee bit tattered. I'm wrapping up a quick blog post and then going to bed.

In other news, I offer my heartiest congratulations to Graeme and Corinne on their successful production of a parasitic zygote! Way to fertilize, you two!

And I should know about that apartment downtown within a couple of days. I've dropped off all my data, the manager says it's probably mine, and I think it would be a fine place to be. It's walking distance to everything, and a block away from both a Blenz and a liquor store, so I can be simultaneously and perpetually altered by both fermented joy and the stronger-than-crack-and-twelve-times-as-addictive Matchachillo! All the better, Brendan has agreed to take the place (including my TV, XBox, DVDs, etc., naturally) off my hands should I need to abruptly leave the country, as has been known to happen. So I don't need to worry about breaking another lease, nor about whether I've locked myself into a year of professional discontentment. So it appears welcome changes are afoot. And when I move, there will be Rock Band.

Sunday, February 03, 2008

In which I owe Christian more money than he deserves...

Stupid pay-per-blog rule. I'm out $40 while I'm in fairly dire need of apartment-startup funds. My bad, I suppose.

Is there a full moon or some sort of vicious cosmic alignment underway? Seems like improbably vast numbers of my friends are going through trauma of one ugly sort or another right now. Pets are dying left and right, professional dreams are being dashed, and romantic disillusionment rears its foul head at nearly every turn. Too many people I know are having a really bad year so far, almost entirely in ways that I can do nothing about.

That said, this morning I went apartment-hunting, a none-too-meager feat given my 6AM bedtime last night and the accumulated toxins of Sanctuary. 2 hours of treading the West End did clear my foggy head, and I think I even found a decent 1-bedroom just off Davie Street for a mere $995 per month. It's nothing palatial like my last digs in Vancouver, but I've reluctantly accepted that those salad days are long gone, or at least on hiatus.

As for whether and for how long I want to stay in Vancouver... that's another matter entirely and fodder for another post. At the moment, I need sleep more than I need to pour my heart out. G'night.

Friday, February 01, 2008

In which I extend my condolences to Corinne...

On the loss of Themba, her much-loved and too-short-lived hedgehog. I hope Corinne draws some solace from the knowledge that Themba was loved like no other hedgehog in history.

And also perhaps some solace from the Walking with Dinosaurs show we saw tonight! Sure, it's cheesy and kid-focused, but damned if it ain't a ton of fun! Some minor technical glitches notwithstanding (a toppled Utahraptor and a slightly delayed Mama Rex), I was floored by the ingenuity of what they managed to put into a live show. I'm glad I'm nerdy enough to appreciate live theatre about evolution and plate tectonics. Even if I weren't, the big T-Rex (when she finally showed) was just plain mind-blowing. Was it worth 70 bucks a pop? Hrm... maybe not. But it was surely worth more than the nothing I paid for the tickets. Corinne and I happily roared at each other all the way to the Skytrain, mimicking the hyper-enthused youngsters who populated the show. Good fun all around.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

In which human ingenuity both stuns and terrifies me...

I'm not certain whether this represents the absolute peak of our civilization, or is a herald of the coming dark age. Yes, it's a cheeseburger in a can. What will those wacky Germans think of next?

In a related note, I've been scrambling to finish Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food before Erin wrests it from my cold, dead fingers. I highly recommend it, and it dovetails fairly nicely with my attempts to eat as healthily as possible of late. If only my bosses didn't insist on leaving a vast bowl of delicious Jelly Belly beans at my desk. Bastards. Thank the gods for Coke Zero and cheap Vancouver sushi.
In which a twelve-hour day makes Paul a dull boy...

Trade shows are lame. They take away from my time playing in the snow with the puppy.

For those of you sequestered in remotest Vancouver, you should know that Burnaby got a solid foot of the finest white powder in the last 24 hours. Notwithstanding the 45 minutes I waited patiently for the Skytrain this morning, snow remains the greatest thing ever, and I'll never stop loving this weather.

For those of you who hate snow and need to see the error of your ways, the key is to have a puppy. Despite having seen snow only a handful of times in her short life, Tempo sits eagerly at the window after every flurry and stares mournfully outside. Once unleashed, she tears madly into every snowbank, driving her nose gleefully into the frost. She emerges sneezing, bouncing, and wagging madly. She's obsessed with catching snowballs, which explode gloriously when she collides with them. She waits patiently for me, across the yard, to hoist a vast and fragile double-armful of snow, so that she can sprint furiously and careen headlong into me and witness the joyous results. Anyone who despises this weather simply needs to see Tempo at play in the snow.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

In which I'm shuffling on... desperately...

Burnaby ain't doin' it for me anymore. My folks have asked me to stick around for a few months while they complete renovations - all the better for my mom to have an extra pair of functioning eyes around a redesigned house. It's an arrangement that's worked well enough - financial benefits on both ends, and plenty of time to play with the Tempodog. But now I'm fairly desperately needing my own space, hampered as my social life is by both remoteness and lack of privacy. I've targeted March 1st as my move-in deadline for some place downtown or in Kits, but I'd REALLY like to find something decent (i.e. 1 bedroom) for less than a grand per month. I've been out of the market some time, and it looks like things have gotten nuts in my absence.

Anybody know anything about co-ops? Or hidden treasure apartment buildings where I can get a palatial loft for pocket change? I'm in dire need of pointers here. Of course, there's always the entirely probable risk that six months from now, I'll up and move to Sudan. But we'll cross that bridge as it comes.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

In which I still don't believe in karma...

You know I've been sullen over myriad unwelcome events of the young year. But when I tallied up my life scoreboard of the last few days, over an obscenely vast tureen of noodles at Kintaro's, I couldn't deny that this week was vastly brighter than last. To elaborate:

The vicious bout of long-undiagnosed pneumonia I had battled since at least December, which rose up and thoroughly crippled me two weeks ago, seems to have been decisively curb-stomped. I feel great, and I credit my absurdly simple new health regimen: LOTS of exercise, lots of food, and lots of sleep. And the military-grade antibiotics.

I had a hugely productive week at work, well-appreciated and remarked upon by the powers that be, after weeks (at least) of growing dissatisfaction with my unreasonable workload and unrewarding tasks. Meanwhile, the coworker who'd shunted the lion's share of her work onto me got a gruesome two-hour talking-to from the same elder gods, which left her in no doubt that her job is doomed if she keeps slacking off. I'm genuinely sorry for her situation (I fold instantly when confronted with sincere tears, which were in abundance), but the whole scene still showed me that my efforts are more appreciated than I previously thought.

Last and best, I discovered that I'll have a previously unexpected and entirely welcome visitor from New York in a few weeks - news that couldn't come at a better time. Joy! Details to follow.

There's been other welcome stuff, but I'm tired and that's all for now. Cruelly, criminally, I have to work tomorrow morning, so I still don't believe in karma - but I've still felt some scales tilt back towards the center this week. May next week be even better.


P.S. I was planning to write about politics and my love thereof, but sometimes a week well lived needs a little credit too. Politics will wait for tomorrow.

Saturday, January 26, 2008

In which Christian's pestering leads me on some unsurprising tangents...

In wondering why I'm so obsessed with finding work that fascinates me, Christian said of himself:

"My dream job doesn't exist. I'm not excited or passionate about anything. I don't have the skillset to do anything glamourous, and am honestly pretty damn lazy."

I'll set aside the obvious (and probably true) cliche that Christian just needs to find something to really motivate him. Instead I'd like to point out right now that I'm about the laziest sack of turds I've ever encountered. I procrastinate to a degree that would promptly level civilization if one person in ten followed my lead. I've been known to spend ten hours a day surfing Wikipedia instead of doing my paid job. I didn't start writing my honours thesis until twelve hours before it was due. I can (and do) waste time with the very best of them.

That's why I force myself into asinine deals like my current pay-per-blog imbroglio. I love to write, even thuddingly dull blog posts; I cherish how healthy I feel after I've torn around the Stanley Park Seawall on a disintegrating rented bike; I enjoy a hefty sense of accomplishment as much anybody else. It's merely that that alone won't get me off the couch at any particular moment. Lazy as I am, I still curse myself for days wasted and creativity unexpressed - just never enough to motivate me to do anything substantial. The end result is a predictable spiral of slothfulness, foul-tempered discontent, and ill health. So I rely on my (very) rare moments of proactive lucidity to create contracts that punish future inertia. I get jobs (like my current one) where people rely on me every instant - occasionally with more than their profit margins - because then I can't slack off. I make promises to other people that I'm too cowed to break. I enlist your help in forcing me to write daily. Stiff penalties either financial or social usually suffice to spur me to consistent action, while guilt alone at a wasted life rarely does the trick.

I've accepted my laziness, and now I spend my life defeating it merely by rank self-betrayal. It's worked well enough for me these recent years.

But there's one productive pursuit to which I've never needed any trickery to motivate me: politics. I've been thinking a lot lately, lamentably separated from the great game as I now am, about why that should be so. I'll write more about that tomorrow. Not that this is particularly gripping to you - but it's helping me shine lights into ill-understood chunks of my mind, so I'll be on this tangent for a wee while.
In which I briefly procrastinate to save some cash...

Tonight's post might come in after midnight - I'm going to a concert and ain't sure when I'll get home. As long as I post something more substantial before I go to bed, I've posted for the day. Them's the rules 'cuz I says so.

Friday, January 25, 2008

In which nothing has happened...

My perhaps-foolish attempts to hasten pneumonia's departure with daily workouts has yet to cause a resurgence of the dread disease, but it has left me sleepy as hell. I'm not getting home before 10 most nights and I'll be working much of the weekend (a one time deal, methinks). It's left me with tragically insufficient time and energy to undetake the wholesale reworking of the blog I've promised myself.

That and nothing has happened in my life since yesterday - except that I am the proud owner of a tent-like blue shirt emblazoned with an in-your-face Star of David and reading "SHALOM FROM NEW YORK!!!" Thanks Emily! Heehee... it's funny because I'm not remotely Jewish.

Oh, and it's bloody cold outside. The snow that fell last week in Burnaby has yet to melt. To non-Vancouverites, this ain't much of a shocker, but to us, it's vaguely paralyzing. I'll see you tomorrow.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

In which I'm pondering...

Christian asked me, in essence, why I'm not content with a job that doesn't fascinate me. It's a decent and sincere question, and I've been thinking about it in some detail - why do I love the work that I love, and why I am so fucking impatient with every other kind of labour I've ever been asked to do? His question has led me down some well-worn tangents, about which I am far too tired to blog tonight. But I'll have a good blather about it tomorrow, more for my edification than his.

But in the meantime, a counterpoint question to Christian, and everyone else who suffers through work the despise (or to which they merely acquiesce) - why are you content to sacrifice half your waking life just to support the better hours between 5PM and midnight? You'll be doing this work thing for a third of a century, and when that's done you won't get another shot. You can be amazed and energized by your day job, and still draw vast fulfillment from the rest of your life. Why do you think it's somehow undignified or greedy to demand both?

P.S. I need a more private place to blog. I think my coworkers know where this one is. I can't let all my posts be sexless sludge for fear of employer espionage. I'm working on it. Something new comes soon.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

In which I devour the meager fruits of my laziness...

After a hard day at work, and an ill-advised visit to the gym, I got a mite slothful on the way home and didn't pick up anything to eat. I'm paying for it now. The closest thing to a ready-to-eat meal that I could assemble from the contents of the kitchen was tortilla chips with dijon mustard, which, though a tolerable snack, is hardly the banquet I usually try to serve myself. It also seems to be making my throat close up, which might mean I should stop eating, but the taste has grown quite addictive. I guess I need to thaw some chicken.

In other news, I've stopped giving a rat's ass at work. Not that I slack off, but I'm no longer working the nearly-daily overtime I used to - 5:00 sharp every damned afternoon, I now call it quits. Some time ago I noticed that my extra effort wasn't actually making the pile of work smaller, so to hell with it. If I can work flat out for 8 hours a day and still not finish all the tasks gifted to me by the powers that be, then that's their problem, not mine.

Today's photoblog: the Good Friday Procession in Ciudad Colon, Costa Rica, Easter 2006.

Easter Procession, Ciudad Colon

In probably every small town in Central America, where the church is the core of the community, Good Friday sees an active reenactment of the walk through Galilee. Locals play the parts of the Romans, the Pharisees, and many others I'm too biblically-illiterate to name. I was charmed by the sincerity and earnestness of the display, but also somewhat unsettled by the genuine grief I saw. More than a few people weep openly as the procession wends through town, and a handful openly wail at the loss of Christ. It confuses me on levels both spiritual and logical, and I suspect it would even if I weren't an atheist. I don't comprehend having such an intense emotional connection to an event that predated me by millennia. Moreover, I don't grasp how a sincere believer can grieve the loss of someone resurrected three days later, whose death was the central tenet of their faith.

Anyhow, it's still a sight to see.

Sunday, January 20, 2008

In which I revel in geekery...

If you're as nerdy as I am, and much quicker of wit and defter of hearing, you need to spend some time at Zero Punctuation. It's a nearly-new Youtube compilation of 5-minute game reviews written, voiced and animated by an acerbically misanthropic Brit. It's profoundly addictive and worth every instant you can devote to it.

In other news, pneumonia is refusing to vacate the premises (my alveoli). I pray to Vishnu that it does so in the next 8 days of antibiotics, lest I suffer the indignity and uncertainty of a chest x-ray. Also, I've exhausted my sick days at work, so it's fairly essential that I recover before demolishing my finances.

P.S. This is written on Eva's computer, which I have briefly commandeered early in the evening before a prospective bout of Rock Band, merely in order to deprive Christian of my $20. Sucker.

Friday, January 18, 2008

In which I'm weeks late...

Since there are things afoot I dare not yet discuss in digital public, I'll do something I should have done weeks ago - a favorite movies list for 2007! I know I'm hideously late with this, but I had to wait to fill in some blanks before I could make some final choices. So here, devoid of detail or qualification, are:

10. Superbad
9. Charlie Wilson's War
8. The Bourne Ultimatum
7. Zodiac
6. Gone Baby Gone
5. Sunshine
4. There Will Be Blood
3. Ratatouille
2. Into the Wild
1. No Country for Old Men

Honourable Mention to Transformers, Knocked Up, Zodiac, Hairspray and Breach.

'Twasn't a bad year at the movies, all told. No Country for Old Men really took it in a walk for me, but Into the Wild is still incredible and There Will Be Blood is easily the best-acted film of the year. Besides, any year in which Michael Bay makes a movie that's actually a blast is a year where I'm both pleasantly surprised and straining my ears to hear ice crystals forming on Lake Hades.

UPDATE: Oh yeah, I forgot Juno. Throw that in some random spot below #2... my top ten is now a top eleven. Yay for inconsistency!

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

In which I realize I'm impatient...

I've been home sick for the last two days, scarfing drugs and playing videogames. Sounded nifty at first, but I'm now bloody bored. I needs me some proper entertainment, dagnabit, but lately I can't even sit still long enough to watch a movie. I'm not sure why I feel so propelled to get out of the house these days. Probably because I'm in remotest Burnaby, suffering in the wildnerness. Or perhaps I'm showing the first symptoms of my characteristic itchy feet again. Or maybe I just need to spend less time playing video games and start doing grown-up things with my time.

Nope, that can't be it. Probably that my life is not currently supplying me with my recommended daily allowance of fear and chaos and confusion. It's funny how addictive such things are. (Speaking of danger and youthful intemperance, go see "Into the Wild" if you haven't already.)

So I'll talk about US politics a bit. Short version: Clinton or Obama would both make good presidents, they both deserve it, and they'll both very likely beat whatever intolerable fool the Republicans nominate. Sorry, Edwards, you're good too, but you drew the short straw this time around; any other year, and you'd be a shoo-in. I'd be happy with either Hillary or Barack, so I'll give the tiebreaker to Barack's delightful speaking style. But I won't shed any tears if Hillary takes.

As for the Republicans - it doesn't matter who they nominate. Sure, there's an outside chance that McCain could beat one of the Dems, but if the Americans elect yet another Republican after eight years of the worst government they've ever had, then they deserve it. Choosing which candidate they should nominate is like selecting from among a variety of abrasive and spiky objects to be involuntarily sodomized with. There ain't no such thing as a principled Republican; not any more. The party doesn't stand for anything except gaining power, and it hasn't for a long time.

With that brief, detail-light diatribe out of the way, here's another photo!

Picture 093

Midtown Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bridge, from across the river in Brooklyn Bridge Park, kitty-corner from where I worked on my brief excursion to NYC last summer. Good times... and so very expensive. But the city's a photographic gold mine.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

In which I whimper and cough...

It appears that my manifold project - find scintillating new work, get creative, stop schizing out about my boredom - has been whomped in the 'nads by a mild dose of pneumonia. Bah - just means more blogging time (though I'll probably have to go to work tomorrow anyways). In the meantime, I'm trying to learn what sort of new doodads and spiffery have arrived on Blogger in recent years. I haven't blogged with adequate bandwidth in quite some time. Any suggestions?

In the meantime - photoblogging!

Picture 406

The airborne one is one of a pair of buskers Emily and I saw in Central Park, New York, in July. They were unremarkable but gymnasts, but fine entertainers, and they drew (I'm guessing) the better part of a thousand dollars and even briefly mocked my Canadianness. The motionless kid was a fine sport through it all.

My photoblogging will get more voluminous and sophisticated, now that I've purchased a TV with better colour than my laptop screen. I just need a wee bit more gear, and my editing and colour-balancing will begin in earnest, and you'll be flooded with photos of refugess and spiders. Cheers!

Monday, January 14, 2008

In which I return to the fold... with a familiar promise...

On a unique night last March, I fended off stubborn Laotian mosquitoes and greedily devoured a profoundly tasty French ice cream crepe, while reading Life of Pi and sitting on a balcony overlooking the moldering stone fountain in Vientiane's decrepit central square. When I finished gorging myself, I scribbled fervently in my resilient and well-traveled black notebook that my pleasant but unchallenging routine in Thailand had coagulated into a deep mental stagnation. My prescription: a daily dose of blogging, meant to haul my lazy brain up by the frontal lobes and force me to be creative. Ideally, this would kick the cognitive tires and It worked. The next six months (for diverse reasons not entirely dependent on blogging) kicked vast quantities of ass.

But now my brain has gone goopy again. I got back to Vancouver in August, and had a blast reconnecting with family and friends and generally lazing about. But dreaded monotony, a beast with which I don't grapple well, has reappeared most vindictively. I have a hectic but humdrum job that affords me no opportunities to use the skills I've spent many eventful years acquiring. I'm surrounded by friendly and decent coworkers who nonetheless consider my professional interests (chaos and war, mainly) to be quaint curiosities, and my hard-won skills to be amusing but quite trivial. In short, I've been shunted abruptly to the bottom rung of a career ladder which I have no interest in climbing. And, frankly, I'm getting a little tired of being patronizingly "mentored" in the ways of the world by people who repeatedly refer to me as "kid". Seriously, did they even read my bloody resume? I miss being an International Man of Mystery.

Anyhow, back to the main train of thought. Work doesn't truly suck, but it ain't doin' it for me either, and that's unlikely to improve. Few things in a typical life are worse than being sincerely unhappy with one's job. So, of course, I'm seeking work of a more challenging and (if I'm honest with myself) hazardous sort. But in the meantime, I have to kickstart my senescent neurons somehow, and blogging once again must do the trick.

So here's the deal. I'm going to blog at least a paragraph everyday, and any time I miss a calendar day, I pay $20 to the first person who calls me on it in the comments. It worked last time - got me blogging daily, and in turn set the old mental fires burning once again. Anything counts - political babble, personal laments, photoblogging (provided I offer texty goodness to accompany any pics). I claim exemptions in case of hospitalization, total technical meltdown on the part of Shaw Cable, or travels to any place where the web can't reasonably be accessed daily (that happens a lot). I think I still owe Christian $20 from last year. But seriously, I'm good for the money.

So I'll see you tomorrow.