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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sick. Spider. Bad. No post today.

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.

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.

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.