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?