Check Your Head

What the fuck am I doing?

2010-08-28T18:00:00.001-07:00

Iceland, Eyjafjallajökull - May 1st and 2nd, 2010 from Sean Stiegemeier on Vimeo.

Late to the party

2009-08-15T19:39:00.001-07:00

Drock showed this to me at the cottage. Its kind of fun to think that someone with a low rez camera and too much time on their hands (not sure if pun is intended there or not) can post a video that gets watched 33 million times.

33 million... which must make mine the last blog on the planet to take note.

Neat

2009-08-14T10:47:00.001-07:00

I really like this as an artistic medium. It's sand on a light table.

It starts slow, but finishes strong.

Source

Beads are the new plastic tubing

2009-07-28T00:27:00.000-07:00

Does anyone remember the episode of WKRP where Johnny's daughter has that douche bag boyfriend? I can't really remember the quote (or find it on the web), but his career choice was "Plastic tubing" or some such thing, cuz everyone was getting into it. Great episode.

I couldn't sleep tonight so I went on a short walk. I am still down on Toronto so I am a) trying to do more "Toronto things", b) trying to make sure that I look around while I am out and about and c) moving into a place that I can nest for a bit (while reclaiming the best bed in the world - sorry Alison). Mixed results thus far.

Question:

How is it that "Beads" can occupy so much prime real estate on Queen west? Did I miss the gold rush somewhere along the way? Yes, this is was the "fashion" district... but... wow.

Shut up.

2009-07-27T22:32:00.000-07:00

"I will tell you one thing -- if we get a woman president, let it be her. She is a real woman. She knows what a woman is supposed to be. She is pro-life. She is pro-family. She is pro-woman," said Jon Eric Thompson, who attended the Sunday picnic in Fairbanks.

(About the Palinator)

I've been getting a serious hate on for some of the things I've been seeing lately. Source.

Things on my mind.

2009-04-12T11:42:00.000-07:00

I would love to be one of the people who work in mints (not the chocolates). With the economic crisis unfolding I've seen more of these people than I ever would have thought. Every half hour and on every news channel, I see $millions being printed, folded and generally fondled by these people.. as stocks plummet and deficits fly. They are the "Crisis Celebrities". Them and poor middle Americans in front of foreclosure signs.

I watched a special on BBC that was talking about 8 tourists that went on a tour to Iraq. One older women said that she felt quite safe, but it was "very difficult to get any postcards at all".

My spam folder today had some very new and exciting offers. "Give your male member the strength to remember" seems to be a popular hook.

I think that a good horror movie would be firemen that went insane. An evil psychological thriller where you think that the firemen are the good guys, but really its a rogue platoon of evil doers who do unspeakable things to people and then spray their liquefied remains onto real fires. The town would be completely fooled (the mayor would give them the key to the city in one scene). Only one person would be on to them. Terrifying hyjynx ensue. (There may be a movie like this already.. I feel like I dreamt it, but maybe not?)

In Washington DC, 6.5% of African American males test positive for HIV or AIDS. Overall, 3% of the population has it, which is the same as Uganda. [source]

I played Civ4 (strategy game on the computer) for the first time. It told me that I have the leadership style of Dan Quail. I think that Syd Meyers (author of said game) can suck it.

I was watching TV with Ken and someone on the show said, "you can't look at this.. its classified". Ken made a good point. What the hell does that really mean? You can't look at this because it has gone through the process of being categorized?

I am down to 188 lbs. Somehow I didn't gain weight in Lebanon. Its an Easter miracle, cuz boy oh buoy is the food in Lebanon ever freaking tasty and buoy oh boy did I ever eat and drink a freaking lot of it.

This is all fluffy.. and I've got some things to say about Libya and Lebanon. They are rich experiences and I am finding it tough to frame them with words. Thought it would be better to squeeze out 10 sentences of shit that doesn't mean anything than continue to be blocked.

As you were.

A Month in Time

2009-03-11T04:52:00.000-07:00

[EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a long post. Don't read it.]

[EDITOR'S NOTE: This is an old post (Feb 19th). There was about 2 weeks that I wasn't in an environment to keep track on a lot of this stuff. Stay tuned for "next month" sometime soon.]

One day you have "it", the next day it’s gone. "It" can be anything really - cars, cash, people, places, houses, love, health, happiness, fortitude blah blah blah. It’s crazy.

Buddha and his ilk nailed it. It is Impermanence (kind of .. I think Buddha was talking more in a life and death sense). The gist being that you can't tie yourself to these things. If you do, you'll find yourself perpetrating a wildly disproportionate response when they disappear, or in a vain struggle to keep your death grip tight.

Once upon a time, I had my wagons rallied so tightly around myself with such an intense fear of failure that I wasn't able to let anything go or let anyone in. Loosing a big fat client or eating in a restaurant vs. takeout …. I was completely indiscriminate. I found myself holding on tight to shit that really didn't matter - even then.

I was, in a word, rigid.

Rigid materials are usually hard and are often brittle. They are strong, but they don't bend very well. If you put too much stress on them they'll snap if you are lucky; shatter if not. Take a look around you folks. Ask yourself why you are holding on so tight to this or that. "Because it’s important to me" doesn't cut it. I know that I thought it did, but the mental energy required to hold on to it all is startling. Why is it important? Am I a better person for expending this mental energy? I certainly wasn't.

Those whales died. Every single one of them. When I was on Isabella, I smelled them. There are few more striking moments in my memory than of being in the back of that pickup, smelling that fetid carcass smell of those useless deaths. That night the would-be rescuers had dragged one of them 3 miles out to sea by the tail. Imagine the smell of 5 boat dudes mixed with the rotting fish smell of a confused whale's breath in the salt spray. They finally let the ropes go and there had to have been this infinitesimally small slice of time which decided the fate of that great brute. A few muscles contract, deciding whether this being, this energy with its sad and wise eyes, answers some calling to go and beach again, or he comes to, shaking its head and saying "wow that was some experience. I am sure glad for that boat ride which saved my life. What was I thinking? I wonder what's over there? That fish has a fluffy tail". [EDITOR'S NOTE: cheesy boat metaphor redacted]

A fluffy tail indeed.

Now me and the Buddha are homeboys, and the above is a kind of a contradiction on my part. One way to look at it is if it is time then its time. The other, and what I am talking about here, is that a whale had it in its head that it was going to beach no matter what and that there were other options if he just wasn't so damn rigid. I guess what I am trying to say is that I need to work on being more flexible with things. When I hold on too tight, I end up beached.

There is a flip side to impertinence in that it goes both ways. The new age'rs and their ilk also have it right. You need to set yourself up for good things to come into your life. Just know that they might not stay and get it into your head to be ok with that.

My unified theory of life is still a work in progress, but being fluid is something that I have been wishing on for quite some time.

I've also been wondering why I don't keep up with the random nice things for my body. Like eating right, or working out. Little things don't take much to make a difference. I learned this once opun a time, I just need to be reminded every now and again.

So I set out to set a stage for good things to happen to me this month. I put myself in an environment that was simple, removed and well… stable (it has been far too long). And hell, a month is only a drop in the bucket from a time perspective.

The Good News:

I don't operate very well when I am over 200 pounds. Running the numbers, I gained 25 pounds last year.. Yikes. It hurts just to write that. When I was recovering from dengue fever, I weighed 179lbs, which was the result of a nasty piece of illness, but 2 months later I still weighed around 180 and felt pretty stellar. When I left early in December, I weighed in at 205 and change. Argghhh.

I've realized that I have never really lost weight unless I've been horribly sick. So this month I made a concerted effort to eat more better like. I ate about 25 tagines ("tagine" in restaurants refers generally to a type of food and not usually actually cooked - but served - in one), of which 14 I cooked at home. Lots of veggies. Lots of hearty food. I feel great.

Every morning I'd throw on a coffee and do as many pushups as I could in one go. My whole life I've been in the 20 pushup range (if and when I ever did them), but at the end of my kickboxing I could do 30.. Which was a world record for me. Some days ago I did 45. I also did sit ups every morning, but didn't keep track.

Everything in moderation.. Even moderation.

There's some beer math going on here as Moroccan beers are 250ml and 4.7% alcohol, so I converted everything into standard 1.5 ounce, 40% drinks. So all in all, I averaged 1.25 drinks per day.

I don't generally sleep all that much. I used to… a lot. But in the last couple of years I have tapered off on that trait. This month I slept as much as I wanted. Every morning. Some mornings I didn't want to sleep, or I was doing shit until 5am and 10 just seemed to be a good time to get my move on. Some mornings I slept in a ridiculous amount. The apartment is pretty noisy and the bed is lumpy so it wasn't a perfect experiment, but it seems like, all things being equal, I like to sleep an average of 8.5 hours a night. Any Google search could have told me that I need 8 hours of sleep a night, but I digress.

Take joy in the little things

I bought myself a coffee mug that says "I love you" on it. Every morning I'd get a little affirmation. Hahaha... the wit. That and the fact that I tended to talk to my cooking. Like "Look at yooouuu. You are gonna be taaaasty" in a most lascivious manner. Everyone does that though don't they?

Seriously though I spent a lot of time just looking at stuff. My brain has been pretty active and I have denied it no road. I haven't judged it and I've been scribbling thoughts a plenty.

I've tried hard to say things that needed to be said. In terms of being vulnerable, this post is a big step for me. It is rife with opportunities to bashfully write long posts in the future about how things that I learned just didn't stick… again.

There are some simple things that I am doing that I won't bore anyone with. But there are 5 of them, and I did them every day.

Work

I set a goal of billing 80 hours this month, which roughly translates to half time. In this I was mostly successful (72). It was a pretty frustrating project and next month is looking a bit thin, but in terms of testing my ability to work in a beach town, I was very successful. My quality of life has been quite high, and I've made a decent wage this month which is in stark contrast to where I have been at of late.

I continue to vet out a business idea with a good friend which has been fun.. and I continue to learn Ruby on Rails and Linux which has been a huge challenge for me. I have only scratched the surface of each. Baby steps.

The Bad News:

I locked myself into a closet and smoked all of these in one go.

I need to quit smoking. I average exactly 20 a day. That was my cap, but basically I smoked every time that I wanted one and that’s where I netted out. Gross.

I am addicted to caffeine. I love everything about it… in all its forms.

Which leads us to this months goals:

Smoke less. Less caffeine. Standard fare.
Continue to track what I am doing, but annotate my days with a how do I feel?
Likely doing one set of the maximum number of pushups is a stupid way to become proficient at doing pushups. I want to figure out an exercise routine that is a little bit more balanced (and useful)
This month is going to take a beating on cooking at home, but I want to continue to make good'ish choices. Don't get me wrong, I ate some pringles and chocolate bars, but they were treats not snacks. My only bad snack was one macaroon cookie a day. They are soooooo good. Its ridiculous.
Shave
Learn a minimum of one Arabic word a day.
Write a "what I did this month" post... next month.
Kick this OCD tendency that I picked up some where apparently.

And if they don't work out? Well then that’s ok, but I will celebrate the little accomplishments along the path. At least I feel like I have finally chosen to go somewhere.

Cooky McCookerstein

2009-03-10T03:16:00.000-07:00

And i am back into kitchen land again, trying to eat healthily (I know.... it is shocking). Although Ken and I gorged ourselves on Dominoes Pizza a couple of nights ago... and well there was that incident with a grilled cheese loaded with 10 strips of bacon, but I digress.

Tagine Porn for Janette

2009-03-10T03:02:00.000-07:00

(a)lone(ly)

2009-03-07T13:53:00.000-08:00

Garth asked me if I was lonely in the context of traveling with someone else or a lack there of. I thought briefly about it at the time, and then thought about it on a trip I made to the desert and then actually thought about it when I was in Tripoli. And then I actually wrote some stuff about it on layover that I had.

The short answer is yes. The long answer is somewhat more involved.

Saturday I had one of the best days so far this trip, just walking around lost for the day (one of my favorite pastimes). Libya seems to be a good place with a good vibe (as long as you can see through the bureaucracy of actually getting in). I hung out in a junk store in old Tripoli and wished I had another backpack. I have an idiosyncratic view of souvenirs, but check out this phone!! The shopkeeper delighted in showing me that it was actually his shop phone and made a dialing sign in the air (there was indeed a dial tone). I delighted myself by picking up the phone, mashing some numbers and saying, "Hello…. Canada?" Laughter ensued. Ha! Good times. Another highlight was meandering around a pet store that was sandwiched between a fruit market and an abattoir, each overflowing its boundaries to the other. Being a pet would blow in Libya, as would being livestock. Being a carrot or a tomato probably wouldn’t be that bad though.

It is entirely possible that if someone else was there that I wouldn’t have spent the time in these places. I may very well have taken my perception of what they wanted to do and not have dug deep in that pile of junk. It is likely that I would not have had such a gleeful reaction to the day’s events.

Even if that day’s experiences didn't have any room for someone else, there have been a lot of moments that I wish I could have shared. Its experiences like breakfast in the Sahara that has enough room for sharing to drive a Mac camel through. I need to relate with a friend in these places. Then sometimes you just want to have a significant other to keep your head on straight.

I'd have asked if she thought that the sand people found me to be joyless and she'd have asked me if I thought that it mattered. And I would have said yes, because what if I was joyless? and she would have rolled her eyes and reminded me that I have to work on not being dramatic. I would have sipped my coffee and looked out at the dessert, validating both points nicely.

Now not every moment traveling with me would be filled with such fun. There would be hard work, like downshifting through switchbacks, or making sand angels in the dunes, or seeking the maximum sustained speed of a KIA (155), or helping me triage out the fun Berber hitchhikers (some of them are duds), to laugh at the ludicrousness of a day or two here and there and see some really cool shit.

It is a cruel joke that the singular moments that I cherish the most make me the loneliest and the wackiest moments that are the most fun are likely only so for me.

So I guess I'm traveling alone partly as a choice and partly as necessity. I don't think that I am capable travelling with someone else for a long period of time. Although I barely notice when people make me do things that suck, I can't seem to forgive myself for choosing to do stuff that makes others have a bad time. Being with someone else (and actually traveling) comprises of about 150 decisions that have to be made each day. There is a certain responsibility to each other, and to each others "successful" trip (whatever that means) that really could be fulfilling, but may just turn out to be paralyzing. I don’t have enough experience with the subject to run the risk of late (things can change though). It boils down to a mixture of an inability to be vulnerable and an ability to take oneself too seriously, which I think too often, are just the same. Whatever it is, I am afflicted with the condition from time to time.

So I am alone. Lonely? Yes. Would I want it any other way the last few months? No. Although I am short on shared experiences with a palpable desire to relate to someone in a deep manner, I am doing what I need to do for now… without apology.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: It’s funny that I am writing this on my way to crash Ken’s apartment in Dubai. Upon reflection though, there is a huge difference between two people spending most of the day working in the Las Vegas of the Mideast and 2 people sitting around a strange town asking, “So what do you want to do now?”, 10 months in a row. Does that make any sense?]

Anyways. I wish you were all here to share some things with me, and then disappear :)

Fun things to look at on my way into the Medina from my apartment.

2009-02-06T07:12:00.000-08:00

This is kind of the antithesis of hard traveling, although there are certainly better ways to live. I needed access to capable Internet for some work that I am doing and settled into a touristy town for a month. Things have been pretty good, but I am getting bored. Moving on soon'ish to something thats a little bit more wacky before my next work push requiring a tether to the Internets.

Its been a good place for me though and its quite clear that while I have transplanted some trappings of reality (like the need to make some money), Toronto it is not. Like yesterday when I walked past a woman in a severe, blackest of black burka reading a newspaper while laying out in a beach chair.

Parcour is quite popular here, but I haven't seen anyone who is adept at it. Kids like to try out various moves and I've seen some good wipeouts. One kid who can't quite get his front flip around repeatedly tries and lands flat on his back in these low bushes. I think he did it about 10 times that I saw.

(You will have to click on these photos to see them) I am resisting actually taking a proper photo of some of these guys as I don't want to contribute to the wheel chair fund when things inevitably went bad... a stupid tourist with his camera at the ready when some 10 year old lands on his head.

Parkour is about getting from a to b efficiently and navigating whatever happens to be in the way. Its quite an interesting slice of sub culture. Its also very French, which is why its so popular with the kiddies here I guess. It can actually be quite beautiful and very fluid, or like all things, it can be taken to extremes (take a look at David Belle here or here - the guy is an animal).

While we are talking about committing yourself to an action without a plan B in sight, take a look at Dan Osman. Unfortunately he liked to bungy jump with rock climbing ropes and died. Or these guys BASE jumping with wing suits.

Half empty... err missing.

2009-01-30T13:19:00.001-08:00

I have figured this place out a bit more.

Its not whats here that counts.. Its whats not here.

And that my friends is one of life's great lessons...... and the biggest problem in Northern Africa to me right now.

(In case you don't know what I am referring to, it is here)

From Nicole's blog.

MAS*H

2009-01-28T07:10:00.000-08:00

In the "I did not know that" column:

"“Goodbye, Farewell and Amen” was the final episode of M*A*S*H. The episode aired on February 28, 1983 and was 2½ hours long. It was viewed by nearly 106 million Americans (77% of viewership that night) which established it as the most watched episode in United States television history, a record which still stands." Source.

A 77 share. Nice.

Obama

2009-01-27T09:18:00.000-08:00

"Upon taking office, Obama ordered all secret U.S. prisons
closed immediately, and the detention center at Guantanamo Bay closed within a year; he stopped the torture of American prisoners; granted access to all U.S. detainees to the International Red Cross; ended the practice by which detainees could be sent to countries where they might be tortured; froze the salaries of all White House officials making more than $100,000; ordered all government agencies to "adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure" regarding Freedom of Information Act requests; ordered all administration appointees to take an ethics pledge; ended a government ban on funding for groups that provide abortion services or counseling abroad; and revoked Executive Order 13233, which placed limits on public access to the records of former presidents."

(from my Harper's weekly newsletter - join! Its good.)

I think a lot of this is to make it look like he has had a progressive start, and well, it looks like he has had a progressive start. Its low lying fruit though.

The whole idea that the US would revoke funding to nations or organizations that offered abortions (or even counseling of options) has got to be one of the more twisted republican platforms. Its like a church and state porno movie.

(If anyone is a Boston Legal fan, they argued a case on this issue quite well)

And I didn't realize, but how's this for craziness with a capital K?

"It was widely anticipated that Obama would sign the executive order yesterday, on the 36th anniversary of Roe. In 1993 former president Bill Clinton had revoked the policy on that day, while George Bush reinstated the policy on his first day in office in 2001, the day before the Roe anniversary." - Source.

Order 13233 was instated by The Dub to prevent Ronald Reagan's papers from being released to historians. Read this link, its pretty fascinating.

I think its going to be fun watching the political intrigue uncover over the next year. Then some sort of scandal will make for depressing fixation as it all unravels again.

Hey hey good looking, what you got cooking?

2009-01-20T06:25:00.000-08:00

If there is such a thing as reincarnation, and if you are only able to be reincarnated as cooking implements, then I want to come back as a Tajine. It brings so much joy to people in this world.

Yesterday I realised my 2 week long dream of owning one. For the astronomical price of 25 dirhams (just shy of 4 CAD). I purchased this comely specimen at my local store.

So beef is expensive here and well, there certainly are better cuts of it in this world. Apparently there is a slaughter house here somewhere where you can pick out your chicken which I need to find. I think you are also supposed to use a broth in these things instead of water, so boiling down some bones is the goal for tomorrow.

Spices are cheap and fresh, but vegetables are kind of hit or miss. Couple of carrots and potatoes, garlic a plenty, some browned beef, some curry and some chili powder, olive oil and some water and BAM! 1.5 hours later Mike is a happy guy :)

In other news, I haven't eaten dinner in a restaurant in 7 nights, and that's a record for me since I was 18 or so.

Movin on up.

I hold these truths to be self evident. Obama: The end of an error.

2009-01-19T07:01:00.000-08:00

I'm pensive today. and happy. I was a total pessimist on election day and totally said the sky was going to fall and I am glad I was wrong (or rather I am glad that it wasn't close). The world needs some relief. They may or may not find that in the new president. Good luck today Sir.

Ani Difranco is one of my favorite songwriters. She does spoken word from time to time and I have always found "Self Evident" (2002) to be the most powerful of her works. I'm thinking about this today, it wraps up some sentiment from a crazy time in history.

So once again, I can't find a place to share music legally on this blog. (Is there some sort of personal radio site that I can join or create - does anyone know?). I am limited to sharing posts on YouTube where people have spliced images over songs. This one is better than most though.

Did anyone see the Dub's last press conference? Or he and the Missus Dub on Larry King? I don't have links for them, but he defended his administrations response to Katrina in each of them (among other ridiculous claims). How they reacted quickly. 30000 people pulled off of houses and all that stuff. Too bad they had no water to drink, nowhere to go, no law, no order and no medical supplies.

Gooooodbye.

AND to end on a happy note, I got to see Ani a couple of days before I took off.

"Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country."

2009-01-18T05:51:00.000-08:00

Some thoughtlets that I am mulling over, other than I can't wait for the dub to disappear:

Wikipedia: One of the most well entrenched informational websites in "the Internets", has an operating budget of only 6 million for day-to-day operations: servers, hosting, bandwidth and a staff of only 23 people! I am fascinated by wikis in general. People are calling for 2009 to see a shift in social networking and I think the "Borg collective" attributes of sites like Wikipedia are a way more logical lineage to the next big thing than the largely exhibitionist / voyeuristic attributes of something like Facebook.

Portugal has a drinking age of 16

I fear setting off fire alarms more than I fear setting off fires. My new place has no fire alarms. Yay me!.

The domain name America.com is worth several million dollars and once was for sale for $30 million in the hay day of domain craziness (and was actually only registered in 1994, a time when I was actually on the Internet which is depressing. If only we knew!) and it looks like it was for sale last year. I can't actually find if it sold, due at least in part to my laziness. I found an interesting site while looking this up that rates values of domains. Based only on traffic and ad revenue, they say its worth $12723.9 USD.

If you do some quick math, this valuation is only a multiple of 2 against yearly gross revenues. (this is less important as America.com is an obvious brand, but as a simple site that is only supported by clickable ads, it has 5000 and change pageviews daily and makes $17. If you do some reading on the boards, people find that a couple of bucks a month for a domain is perfectly reasonable.. They just host a 100,000 of them.)

Sounds crazy to me, but in a way, people have found a way to estimate the bricks and mortar of sites supported by ad revenue, using publicly available information, it just still doesn't matter.

Wedding videos.. If I ever own one with me in it (the possibility of which seems to be dubious these days), I never want to look back on that day thinking that that time was any better than the now. Sure its a special day, but I think a lot of married people pull that tape off the shelf once a year and aren't wistful of the day, but wistful of that time in their relationship. A time when things were better. I've got enough regrets in my life, I really don't want the start of a marriage to be the pinnacle of the most important relationship in my life.

I am remunerating on the difference between "culture shock" and "shock to the system". At times, I think most people (including myself) get the two confused. People land in a place like Marrakech and its dirty and noisy and smelly and they say, "I am reeling from the culture shock". But its not really culture, its a condition. Its shocking yes, and aspects of that condition are a result of culture, like those derived from architecture.. but the fact that you need to walk through a backed up sewer to get to your hostel isn't culture.. its just because the infrastructure sucks. Yet back home, people sit over a glass of chardonnay around their warm and cozy living rooms and show pictures of a backed up sewer and say things like "it took a long time for us to get over the culture shock".

Words and sayings that I've been liking (not all new, but in my brain for the now):

modernity
feculent blather
platitudes
Accidental hobbies
"Great contrasts, ponderables, insolubles" (thanks Bob)

A man walks down Main street with three live bunnies in one hand....

2009-01-17T04:16:00.000-08:00

Its tough sometimes. I try to ask myself questions that will somehow serve to enlighten. I search for the answers.. but sometimes I realize that all of the questions have already been asked. The worst ones are the ones that I remember asking myself, that I had already figured out in a past life and just plain forgot.

Take this for example. I was so excited. like it was new, like it was a key to unlocking my greatness. I just needed an answer and all would be right. Then I realized that it was just another question that has dogged generations since protoplasm was knee high to an amoeba.

I think that Plato posited it the most succinctly in one of his lesser known Socratic dialogues. It goes something like this:

"Dear man with 3 live bunnies in one hand,

What do you have in the sack, son?

Regards, Socrates."

The search goes on. *sigh*

Israil v. Gaza Strip

2009-01-09T04:11:00.000-08:00

I know this is a terribly complex conflict and that its been going on for ever, but....

First the UN meets and fails to come up with a STATEMENT on the conflict. Why? The US wields its veto power. A statement!

Then the UN comes up with a resolution saying that everyone must stop and sort things out. The US abstains. Israel now rejects this pretty much meaningless resolution (but I think Hamas did as well).

At this very moment, there is another 3 hour "relief cease fire" to allow UN humanitarian aid. I am watching as bombs fall into Gaza live on the BBC.

The last "cease fire" saw 15 minutes of no attacks. A UN convoy gets shelled. Source.

The UN has charged Israel with bombing a civilian safe house. A place that Israel troops escorted Palestinian civilians to gather and to be safe. And then it got repeatedly shelled 24 hours later, blowing it to smithereens and killing 30-60 people. Source.

I know that Israel is trying to teach a lesson here. That they want to turn the people against Hamas, so that people in Gaza will renounce them, "look what they have brought?", but the flip side of this coin could very well see all of Gaza uniting against Israel. From what I can see this is a disproportionate response in the extreme with no end in sight.

This won't be a popular comment, but the timing of this war is very suspicious to me. They may very well have seen that the last 2 weeks that the Dub would be able to give them his unconditional love was their last chance to kick some ass.

Hamas obviously shares the blame here. Maybe all of it. They even keep saying that "Israel will die" blah blah blah. but something has to stop here. This is ridiculous.

I am very sad by whats going on over there. I am sad that Hamas continued to fire rockets over the last few years. I am sad that innocent men women and children are dying as a result (on both sides and over all of the years of this conflict).

Mostly I am sad that the international community isn't really able to do anything to stop it. I am sad that the UN no longer seems to have any power in the world stage.

One more expectation for Obama. I wouldn't take his job for anything. I have no idea how he can possibly succeed.

UPDATE (2:00pm GMT): Palestinian medics report 778 Palestinian dead, 200+ of them children. Israel officials will not comment on death toll. UN is charging Israel in specific instances of ignoring wounded women and children in direct violation of the Geneva convention. Israel denies attacking safe house as they were not in the area. Hamas fired 6 rockets during 3 hour humanitarian cease fire, 2 during today's. All as reported by BBC.

A letter

2009-01-08T03:01:00.001-08:00

Dear Mosque,

First time caller. I have been around you before, but I am now making a concerted effort to understand you. I recognize your importance in a way that I had not previously. I have several questions that I am hoping you can help me with. To start:

1. What is that you are saying so loudly to me 5 times daily? Are you praying?
2. What are these pillars on which the faith of those who attend you are built?
3. Who is Fatima? Why is her hand on many of the door knockers in town?

Any help that you can give would be much appreciated.

Regards,
Seeking Understanding Please

Dear SUP,

First off, the idea that I can reply to you is somewhat odd and may possibly be offensive. You are but a child though and have no knowledge of absolutely anything around you. It is obvious to me that you are trying to write a readable blog post, so I will entertain you this time.

1. I am certainly not praying over my loudspeakers. I am calling all Muslims to prayer. It is called the Adhan and is heard at dawn, at the midday, about the middle of the afternoon, just after sunset and at nightfall (about two hours after sunset). The Sunni version (the predominant religion in the country you are in) goes something like this:

Allah u Akbar, Allah u Akbar
-- Allah is greatest, Allah is the greatest,
Ash-hadu al-la Ilaha ill Allah - Ash-hadu al-la Ilaha ill Allah
-- I bear witness that there is no divinty but Allah
Ash-hadu anna Muhammadan Rasulullaah
-- I bear witness that Muhammad is Allah's Messenger
Ash-hadu anna Muhammadan Rasulullaah.
-- I bear witness that Muhammad is Allah's Messenger
Hayya la-s-saleah - Hayya la-s-saleah
-- Make haste towards prayer, Make haste towards prayer
Hayya la-l-faleah - Hayya la-l-faleah
-- Make haste towards real success, Make haste towards real success,
Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar
-- Allah is the greatest, Allah is the greatest
La Ilaha ill Allah
-- There is no divinity but Allah

At daybreak, I also say "Prayer is better than sleep", because as you know, that is true.

2. As you are starting to see, Islam is pretty complicated. Just like there are 1000+ Christian groups, people do things differently depending on their flavor of faith here. Grossly simplifying things appears to leave us with (one source):

Sunni's have:

Shahadah (profession of faith)
Salah (ritual prayer)
Zakat (almsgiving)
Sawm (fasting during Ramadan)
Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca)

Shia's add three more:

Taharah (cleanliness and purity)
Walayah (love and devotion for God, the Prophets, the Imam and the dai)
Jihad (meaning struggle or striving in the way of Allah)

So depending on how you look at it, there are 5,7 or 8 pillars of Islam.

3. Fatima is the daughter of the prophet Muhammad from his first wife Khadija. As for the hand, remember when you were cooking dinner with that dude Kamaal and he said that there were too many stories regarding this history? Well that appears to be true. The going theme of all of them though is that she wards off the evil eye and can be found on jewelry and yes, door knockers.

SUP, I may not be able to speak to you again, but I wish you good luck.

Ma’a salama,
A Mosque

Bad Day

2009-01-06T04:11:00.000-08:00

Do you ever feel like you are having one of those days? Like when you are just standing around your yard, the sun is beating down on your leather coat. There is a nice breeze to whisk away the flies. You're just hanging out, eating some grass, maybe you're contemplative? Trying to think about why you were made so damn useful to the higher ups, but your little brain is only able to contemplate how fucking tasty that grass is.

Then some dude comes along, makes you face Mecca, slits your throat and bleeds you out. He chops you head and your legs off, spills your innards into a bucket to be sold for parts. Your skin gets made into gaudy shoes. Someone puts a meat hook through your anus and hangs you in the Medina. A henna tattoo is not so carefully done on your dick.

You can only hope then that you get a good price per pound before you rot, but all you have is some stupid tourist trying to take a good picture. He doesn't even give you the dignity of being able to capture the detail in any decent way.

I'm with ya. I have those days all the time.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Although cleansing your recent and not so recent sins in the ocean at the birth of the new year is poetic, everyone should remember to leave their camera behind lest it fill with sand and salt water. She was a good soldier and I will miss her.. and take photos with my phone until I can source something else.]

[EDITOR'S NOTE II: It looks very tattoo like, and I have seen it in other stalls. However, nobody I talk to has heard of such a thing.. maybe its just burst blood vessels masquerading as a symbol of some sort.. Anywho, this is the last time that I am going to be staring at a cow penis in a market for any length of time. Not the first of course, but you know.]

Don't ever eat anything that looks like this: (Some village on the way back from Sevilla, Spain)

2008-12-30T14:21:00.001-08:00

Trust me, you WILL suffer. Although I am happy that I have stayed true to a life long devotion to the try anything once philosophy.... I sometimes question the wisdom of such a course. That sometime is right now. bad bad bad bad.

Reminders

2008-12-14T13:15:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while, I get some not so subtle reminders that I am not in Kansas anymore.

The Canta GLX.

Gas station coffee to keep me awake on the road - the strongest, smallest, sweetest espresso shot in the world.

Sympatico

2008-12-14T12:46:00.000-08:00

I have never been in Europe before, aside from a week in Holland with Corina and Seyhan after finishing school. I've tried to actively avoid it as there are too many places to see and I felt that it would always be there for me (its also stupidly expensive). I think that mostly that is true, but this policy probably made me miss some pretty great times before Eastern Europe got all un-eastern like.

So I'm in Amsterdam. I like Amsterdam, i want to live here. but I liked Amerstfoort 10 years ago. I wanted to live there then too.

I took the obligatory trip to the Vangough museum, which I really enjoyed. I took the obligatory walk through the red light district. Bleh.

Its less about hot girls for hire for me, hell - most of them aren't even hot. Its more about trying to wrap my head around why it matters. I don't judge people who make the choice, I just have never really understood it. I've seen some pretty insane examples of prostitution and it is certainly a sliding scale, but I really don't think that Amsterdam is at the top in any way shape or form. So why do men choose to wonder into these little basement dens of sin simply because they are on vacation?

[EDITOR'S NOTE: this entire thought is solely John facing. The discussion on the sliding scale as it applies to the prostitute side of the equation is more worthy of a book, not a 300 word rant.. and its way too depressing. Even here. I have heard anecdotal stories that some women here take GHB every day. Essentially date raping themselves to get through each night... and one might think that from the prostitute's side this might not be a bad place to ply their trade. Depressing.]

Take a walk through the area during the day. Women talk on their cell phones. Smoke. Eat sandwiches and play with their hair in the little display windows. They glare at you through the window, its kind of like a dare. And maybe that's it in a nutshell - if everyone was jumping off a bridge...

So why do the legions of British bullies choose to dive right in? I guess its less seemly. No chance of cops interrupting your 5 minutes dalliance with the warm body of your choice (you'd almost hope that something exciting would cap it off, instead of the comely lass just getting back to that sandwich). Some idea that its safe I guess. Statically it is I would say. Compared to a place like Cambodia, where 50% of prostitutes test positive for HIV (those who are _tested_), but there is no guarantee to be sure. Is that part of the thrill?

And Jeez, you would still end up with that smell. Cheap perfume, smoke, half eaten sandwiches, stale sweat and sex. Its like scratch and sniff porn mags for Christmas. Good times.

I don't see anything different here than somewhere else. I guess a critical error on my part is assuming that guys are sleeping with women here and only here. That they somehow are just checking off an item on their Amsterdam walking tour, but really - these are likely the same guys who are negotiating Boom Boom in the back alleys of Vietnam, they just don't want to spend that long on an a plane. The sex trade here is still about power, loneliness and adrenaline... and sex. just like it is everywhere else. Whatever. Its just not worth the hype in my humble opinion, but then what the fuck do I know?

Iconic pictures are prized to me. They are not necessarily good pictures, but I get to attach all kind of meta data to them for the rest of my life. They encapsulate a whole area, a time frame, a feeling.. a friendship.. or a day when I go lost for hours on the streets of Amsterdam. [As an aside, I remember a seminar I took on memory... Haha.. I can still think of 3 word pairs that he gave me to remember off the top of my head. It was along this same idea: association. It was just that it happened in 1990... which was a long time ago for my little brain]. So these iconic pictures are little Hans Brinkers of my mind, this picture is holding a flood of a 100 memories. This is lame prose, but I promise not to make any dike jokes in recompense.

So pictures of slobbering dudes running in and out of basement brothels are kind of tacky. Pictures of the canal don't really mean anything to me, pictures of pot are what everyone takes, and well.. wooden shoes are kind of funny, but disjoint from the perspective of an icon from my time here. Disaster! And then you see it. it happens. and it makes me all a flutter. What it must feel like to be a real photographer and to capture a moment of real history... my god.

I'm not even sure that this guy is a panhandler. At least he didn't ask for any money from me.

I have never really associated Holland with Amsterdam, tulips, windmills (or loose laws for that matter). I have always associated Holland with Hans and Natasha.

They just bought a fantastic flat. Hans has a fish tank. I want to live there.

We haven't seen each other for 10 years, but the time didn't mean a thing. Hans and Natasha are those friends. Those friends that you would talk to about shit. Or sit down over a drink and tell them that you are expecting a child the day that the stick turned blue. They are good people and gracious hosts. They deserve happiness and they seem to have it, which makes me happy. Hans took me to some popular Dutch band (Let me tell you folks - the bike ride was fun there, but its a LOT harder to ride back.. and Amsterdam is flat flat flat). Natasha took me to see Technotronic and some other DJs (wow that was screwed up. Talk about 1990.. pump up the jam indeed).

Good laughs beginning to end. Stellar start to the latest walk about.

I read the news today, oh boy.

2008-12-01T07:49:00.001-08:00

Looking forward to it. (sorry about that destructive to humanity thing though)

Palin gives thanks

2008-11-23T13:20:00.000-08:00

Not really as gruesome as the website says, but still pretty funny. Thanks to Vinh.

Some mornings are strange and wonderful

2008-11-22T16:06:00.001-08:00

some, not so much.

This is a test post from my phone.

2008-11-19T16:35:00.000-08:00

this is a picture

wait... There is no way to upload a picture. This is kind of weak. The typing is also incredibly laggy. Hmmm. Is there some sort of iPhone app to do this stuff? This kind of sucks actually.

"I'm kind of Bitter" - Hillary Clinton votes

2008-11-04T14:01:00.001-08:00

(Also kind of saying nothing)

blahblahblahblah - Sarah Palin votes

2008-11-04T13:58:00.000-08:00

(She flew to Alaska for an hour to cast her vote - and said nothing that means anything - GAD)

Hehehehehe - Homer votes

2008-11-04T13:47:00.000-08:00

Stocks

2008-11-04T10:14:00.000-08:00

The market seems to disagree with me.

Major indecies seem to think that things are going to go smoothly.

Dow, Nasdaq and the S&P are all sharply up (around 3% at time of writing).

I don't know. If there isn't a winner declared tonight, I think its going to be a blood bath. Having never been what I would call a "successful" trader though, I think its safe to say that I have no clue of what I speak :)

Train wreck prediction - US Election

2008-11-04T09:18:00.000-08:00

There are expected to be about 140 million voters in this election. (About 80% in some states. Historical national turnouts here)

Awesome!... but only if a candidate wins by a larg'ish margin... if not - there are going to be some problems:

Inconsistent rights: Some states (but not all states) will let you vote, as long as you are in line to vote come the cutoff (which I think is 8 o'clock). Some states (but not all of them) allowed early voting under state regulations which are different in each.

Delays in results: So (if its even close), I don't think they will be able to "call" states based on statistical samplings. i.e. how can you declare a winner when all the votes haven't even been cast yet?

Disenfranchisement: Some people inevitably won't be able to vote. There may be a huge number of them. Almost every state has, in part, deployed new touch screens (The Diebold debacle is well publicized, but I think this quote says it all: "In March 2007, it was reported by the Associated Press that Diebold was considering divesting itself of its voting machine subsidiary because it was "widely seen as tarnishing the company's reputation" - source). For that matter - check out here, here, here and here. Some have paper backups, some don't. If it is a close race (anywhere) expect lawsuits.

Lawsuits: Class action suits are going to fly as are cases from all candidates and all special interest groups. They have already started. McCain is suing Virginia to delay the election results for 10 days due to military votes not being sent out in time - source. Also in Virginia, the NAACP sued because (the republican state) didn't provide enough voting machines to neighborhoods that are predominantly black - Another source.

Some polling stations have already run out of ballots. Huge lists of voters get emails and letters that say they will have to pay parking fines before they are allowed to vote - don't even bother lining up. Misdirection, lies and dirty deeds from both sides are going to play out today.

I'm being a bit cynical here, but I think this is going to be a huge mess - at a time when the US needs anything but. Lets hope I am wrong.

I have a dream

2008-11-04T06:59:00.000-08:00

No, not that dream.

My imagination has been running wild at night. I've been having the strangest, sometimes terrible and sometimes wonderful dreams. Some of my friends get married. Sometimes they solve immense social problems. Sometimes they die. Sometimes I die. They are epic and involved. The acts of the play meander on as I drift in and out of sleep. Last night I was part of a rally bumper car race that ended up at a farm. There I continued my pilots training and haggled over hay. I bought a good bale that didn't contain too much moisture (from this very crazy looking, multi level processing plant) and set it down on a huge hill. I sat on it and watched the sunrise while drinking something green and bitter. Odd.

Most of this is very private of course, but one was just too funny to not share:

I had a very long and involved night where I dreamt that dinosaurs had enslaved the human race. Why? Because they were making us find a way to prevent them from going extinct. It was kind of the Matrix meets I Am Legend. It was very theatrical with protagonists and antagonists.. even had a love interest. There was a moment where the chief human scientist had a crisis of conscience... time was running short and she could have let them all die - The human race would be free! There was a big standoff with the head dinosaur and they somehow achieved a mutual respect. The (now not so evil) dinosaurs were safe and the human race went back to doing normal human things. I was quite proud of her. I guess that's why I loved her so much.

I have to get that dream diary beside my bed again. Crazy stuff.

I'm just Joe the Junkie

2008-11-03T11:03:00.000-08:00

Thank GAD that this whole election thing is finally coming to a close. Every four years I become obsessed with what is going on south of the border. I always know more about the American political sphere than I do of my own, which kind of makes me angsty. This time around though I am simply exhausted. Tomorrow marks the close of the dirtiest, dare I say filthiest, campaign that I have ever seen. People who know me will already know that I am a huge supporter of the democrats, but I have to say that I am not proud of anyone in this election. Take a spin through www.factcheck.org and revel in the lies and misdirections.

The Canadian election wasn't all that full of integrity either. Harper really stuck it to the Liberals in an uncomfortable place. Its kind of depressing. The US is leaning left and Canada leans right. US citizens are going to turn out in record numbers to vote and Canada had the weakest voter turnout in for ever. Everyone lies to the public, everyone knows it and nobody gets there feet held to the fire. Iraq again anyone? Hell in a handbasket.

I hope that the white US voters don't leave Obama high and dry. I hope that this woman is forced to crawl back to obscurity where she belongs.

Lets get on with living our lives again.... right after I watch one... more... day of election drivel. Tell me how I think, American media.. just one more time for old times sake.

I am a bad person

2008-11-02T17:34:00.000-08:00

Thanks Janette!

Art

2008-10-19T02:47:00.000-07:00

You know, I always plan on going to burning man. I think it it would be a hoot. Another year gone, another man not burned by yours truly. I have not burned the man... the man has burned me. Hardly seems fair.

The most compelling reason to go to this festival is that the people who _actually_ go, do nice little art bits that make me happy. Like this:

And I am a little bit perturbed that this thing has only been seen by a 1000 people at time of writing. If only there was a blond bimbo socialite seducing a 13 year old... then it would have been seen by 10 million folks. Really... 10 million views? Are you kidding me?

Something is gravely wrong ladies and gentlemen.

Living with Vinh isn't THAT bad

2008-09-25T11:56:00.000-07:00

At first I was a bit worried about moving into Vinh's place. Things seem to be going pretty well, although I could use more room in my bedroom for my stuff and my computer is a little bit worse for ware.

Source. (Makes how Garth used to live look like an operating room!)

I was having lunch today... (Hell in a Handbasket - HIAH)

2008-09-22T17:36:00.000-07:00

CNN was on. A pastor of a cultish thing near the mighty missisip was being interviewed. His ministry has been searched due to an investigation of sexual abuse (minors).

"In an interview Monday, Alamo spoke of the allegations with a mix of denial and defiance, saying he never promoted sexual abuse but that he believes there's a mandate from the Bible for young girls to marry.
"In the Bible it happened. But girls today, I don't marry 'em if they want to at 14-15 years old. Because we won't do it, even though I believe it's OK," Alamo said.
In an AP interview on Saturday, he had said that for girls having sex, "consent is puberty."

Source. Through Google News. Tried searching for it on CNN. Palin, Palin, Palin... no creepy dude who thinks that the bible is literal and that if the hormones of young girls start to change then its open season on a rape'y type of marriage.

Not that I expect much from CNN, but should this at least be reported above the No Gas or the snake stories (which, for the keen observer, was reported before the one about 9 Iraqi dead?)

Awesome article about the Palinator

2008-09-22T16:58:00.001-07:00

"Pray for the construction of the $30 billion natural gas pipeline, Palin told them. Pray for the military men and women overseas, "that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for -- that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan."

Later, senior pastor Ed Kalnin -- with Palin standing at his side -- spoke about tapping into Alaska's natural resource wealth to fulfill the state's destiny of serving as a shelter for Christians at the end of the world.

"I believe that Alaska is one of the 'refuge states' -- come on, you guys -- in the Last Days," Kalnin said, raising his arm to underscore his point. "And hundreds of thousands of people are going to come to this state to seek refuge. And the church has to be ready to minister to them."

Read it here.

The democrats could point out the fact that her religious upbringing does not "sit" with America (just like Obama's didn't), but the GOP will claim that they are picking on her children.

And.. well.. her religious upbringing appears to "sit" with America more than I want to admit.

Cool Google RSS reader attached to my Blogger dashboard

2008-09-21T21:18:00.001-07:00

I like the subscription thing that Blogger has added. (which apparently is just the Google Reader)

Fascinating

2008-09-21T21:03:00.001-07:00

I'm spending 30 minutes a day doing research around why I think we are all going to hell in a hand basket. Mostly political messes, but not exclusively.

Anywho, couple of fascinating developments in the Palin-ator's quest. Here and here.

Wow

2008-07-03T19:18:00.000-07:00

Dear Applicant:

Within the context of the Astronaut Recruitment Campaign, we made a first sorting in the 5351 applications we received. Following the information you provided, the pre-selection committee is pleased to inform you that further consideration is being given to your candidacy.

Therefore, for the continuation of the recruitment process, we will require additional information. We ask you to complete the second electronic form that will be available on our website on Wednesday, July 9th 2008 at 8:00 Eastern daylight time (UTC - 4:00)

You have until Monday, July 28th 2008 at 18:00 Pacific daylight time (UTC - 7:00) to complete your online application. It is in your best interest and your responsibility to answer all questions as best and completely as possible.

If you do not answer in the foretold delays to these demands, we will consider that you voluntarily withdrew your candidacy from the present selection process.

The pre-selection committee will review all candidacies and will identify high-ranking candidates for the astronaut's position. The results of this second sorting will begin to be disclosed by wave, from August to September. The selected candidates will be invited in September to interviews that will be held in October 2008.

We wish you the best of luck.

Sincerely,

The Astronaut Recruitment Pre-selection Board

Astronaut Recruitment Campaign
Canadian Space Agency

Anyone see anything wrong with this picture?

2008-06-17T16:49:00.000-07:00

Me neither. I think that all officers should have monks robes. It was probably just Halloween.

[EDITORS NOTE: the LONG rant about the IOC, "most favored trading nation", the US govt, Clinton, Bushes, Iraq, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Darfur, Cambodia, Cuba, Burma and Iran has been redacted]

[CHIEF EDITORS NOTE: Only half of that rant was actually written, but it was getting a bit "name call-y" and juvenile]

I know these are complex issues. I know that I don't know the whole story of anything around me. This picture might be photoshop'd. I have to say though (outside of the above), that I am sick and tired of duplicity: of doing the right thing as long as it doesn't cost too much; of deluding one selves and those around them by pretending to do the right thing, but doing only for personal gain; of defending blindness to the sighted, and of feigning righteous sight to the blind.

I cast this damnation inward at times. I am not above reproach and the principle is not lost on me. Its just the pure evil and grandiose scale of some of this shit is mind boggling to me at times.

What kind of world is this?

How do you solve a problem like Alison?

2008-06-17T13:07:00.000-07:00

Alison made it to the top 10 of "How do you solve a problem like Maria?" on CBC!

This is a really big accomplishment for her and I think that it is incredible. I'll be spamming everyone to remind them on how to vote soon. Mark 5 minutes on your calendar for Sunday between 8:00pm and 3:00am EST to throw down some votes for a good cause. This is already a life changing experience for Alison, but if she were to be cast in this role it would be just about as good as it gets.

[EDITORS NOTE: Above is the CBC widget for the show and you can click around it to get more information on all of the Marias.]

Funny email that Todd sent me

2008-04-09T08:58:00.000-07:00

Dear Sir,

I recently purchased an xbox controller from your store.

During a particularly frustrating game of NHL 2K7 I became enraged and smashed my controller into this configuration:

Please advise the cost of repair.

Yours truly,

Todd Knight

And the reply:

Dear Todd,

Thank you for contacting GameStop.com.

We do not repair items. Unfortunately it sounds like you will need to
purchase a new controller to replace the one you destroyed.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

Best Regards,
John
Customer Service Agent

bwahahahahahaha :)

A quest for a good chicken wing (Duff's Wings - 558 College, Toronto)

2008-04-08T19:28:00.000-07:00

I cannot deny.. I like the wing. I like the stupidly hot wing. Me and Pinto went to Duff's Wings. I had really high hopes that I would be running out of there with steam coming out of my ears and frantically looking for a wax candle to pour all over my tongue. I know that the equivalent of Guatemalan insanity peppers exist (awesome Simpson's episode by the way), but there has never been a suicide wing sauce that I couldn't eat. I'm going to be sorry one day, but I generally order suicide or hot with a side of suicide on the side that I liberally dip through.

So there is something called the Scoville Heat Unit and there is this place called Duff's. I'm calling bullshit.

I approached the first opportunity to peg my diet in SHU's with trepidation and a kind of a strange giddiness. Duff's try really hard to scare the crap out of you about spiciness and without a reference point, I stupidly bought into their propaganda. We ordered "Hot" wings with a side of "Superhot". The wings themselves were pretty good in terms of meat and level of cooking, but the sauce was garbage. The hot sauce tasted like Frank's sauce and vinegar and the superhot sauce was like vinegar concentrate. Garbage. You could barely put your nose over it (like a saucepan of burning vinegar might smell, I imagine). So we skipped over "Death" and got a side of "Armageddon". My big chance to "see through time".

This was the only sauce of the three that we tried that actually tasted anything near what I would call "good". It was rich, not butter based and taste-eeee. .... and ouch-eeee. It was really hot. It kind of snuck (Snuck is one of those words that I look at these days and ask whether or not its right) up on me, but I couldn't stop eating it somehow. I was shoveling the stuff into my mouth and making stupid sweat stains on my hoodie as I wiped my brow. (well for 6 wings or so).

So they were the hottest wings that I have purchased from a restaurant, but this was not the hottest sauce that I have had by far. I guess thats where the BS call comes in. It would be almost impossible for me to eat a wing that was heavily doused with Dave's Insanity Sauce, for instance ("rated" far less than these sauces). Or read this review of a 300,000 SHU sauce - "Pour it on a buffalo wing and go for it! If your butt doesn't bleed the next morning, you didn't use enough."

So either Scoville units are so unreliable that "spicy" and "bleeding out your ass" exist on the same stratum, or I went on a bad night to the wrong location, or, or, or.

I'll go back, I will order the armageddon off the top and maybe find out that I think that I am cooler than I really am. ....

Or maybe Duff's is a lying sack of scoville optimism.

So I want hot, tasty wings in Toronto. Who's buying? Who's selling?

A note on west coast snowboarding

2008-04-08T16:40:00.000-07:00

Wow. I had kind of forgotten about snowboarding. Historically the problem was partially due to my cheap and outdated equipment. Part of the problem (actually most of the problem really) was that the closest and bestest "mountain" from Toronto features long lineups and a staggering 720ft of vertical. It isn't all that inspiring and its easy for me to find something else to do with myself on any random winter weekend.

I boarded at Grouse Mountain, Whistler / Blackcomb and Cypress while I was in Vancouver a couple of weeks ago.

The first thing to notice is travel time. 15 minutes from Matt and Meghan's place (NorthVan) to the local hills and about a 2 hour drive to the resort. The second through seventh things to notice are the overall quality of terrain and breathtaking scenery (even though visibility was pretty crap by local standards). Then there is the snow. Its ridiculous. Grouse has a base of between 15-20ft (FEET!) of snow this year.

It was a powerful reminder of how easy it must be to take for granted the good things in life around you. I wish I was better at not doing that.

Anecdotal points in no specific order:

1. When the sign says "Experts only due to extremely bad visibility in Whistler bowl" - believe it. At times I couldn't see the snow below me and at times the powder would run up the face giving me a false sense of speed. Kind of scary. I caught some bad edges and banged my head (making the whole situation worse).

2. My favorite run on Grouse was "The Cut", a green run straight down the centre of the hill. You can bomb down it while watching the cityscape and the barges in the harbour doing whatever barges do on sunny Wednesday afternoons in Vancouver. "Or, if gentle slopes and easy-going turns are more your style, head for The Cut..."

3. Blackcomb? Ridge Runner. A beautiful and long blue run from the Blackcomb peak. "Ridge Runner, incidentally, is one of the best cruising runs on the mountain".

4. Whistler? Peak to Creek. Again, I tended to really like the long, intermediate style of run (mostly because it is so foreign to me when it takes an hour to go down a mountain once). “With over 5,020 feet of vertical and seven kilometres of variety, there are no other runs like Peak to Creek around.”

5. Cyprus? First Sun. We went down this a number of times. We went to Cypress when we did because they had just got 20cms of fresh snow overnight. It still seemed like we had the chair to ourselves on this side of the mountain and I didn't see another single person on this run all day. It was advanced and just about as steep as I could manage, but there was SO much snow that it didn't really matter. Cartwheeling in 3 feet of loose snow kind of makes me giggle. There where also lots of places that I could drop in through the trees and pretend that I was hardcore. "But I'm looking down beyond my boots and snowboard at the black diamond run called First Sun ..... The depth perception is so bad halfway down that I reach up and shove my frosty goggles onto my head without stopping. And this stuff isn't really powder, it's not that light and not that dry. But we score clean tracks 90 percent of the way and it's knee-deep, magical and mesmerizing, like riding an orca on a tidal surge." A little bit dramatic perhaps, but pretty accurate for the day I was there (although I missed "first tracks" by about 3 hours).

Matt kept saying, "You won't believe how big Whistler is". Whatever - I am a cynical bastard of late and it would take a pretty big mountain for me to be awed. I have to say though.... "You won't believe how big Whistler is". The sheer immensity and vertical there is awe inspiring and the stuff that dreams are made of. I now understand how people can live there for a winter and feel like they have not truly explored the pair of mountains. One guy we met there was talking about a book he has that charts 200 runs that aren't included in the 200 published runs. I get the feeling that this is just the beginning.

I'm back to loving boarding, but somehow its been wrecked for me. Blessed and cursed... again. Crap.

Small maintenance note

2008-04-02T09:54:00.000-07:00

Not that it really matters, but anyone can post comments now - not just people with Google accounts. We shall see how that goes :)

D. B. Cooper: Imagination spark and general bad ass of the day.

2008-04-02T09:44:00.000-07:00

Fascinating little piece of history here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._B._Cooper

I remember hearing about this guy a long time ago. I found it quite entertaining to read the history again / for the first time? Who knows. The mind is the first to go. Read the "suspects" section if nothing else.

This was triggered by an article that I read in the newspaper. It was about the kid who found some of the ransom money, who is now auctioning some of the $20 bills.

Darth Vader aka Dick Cheney

2008-03-24T10:41:00.000-07:00

Just reading the latest Michael Moore newsletter. "Darth Vader". Rich.

Excerpt from an interview with the Dick:

CHENEY: On the security front, I think there’s a general consensus that we’ve made major progress, that the surge has worked. That’s been a major success.

RADDATZ: Two-third of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.

CHENEY: So?

RADDATZ So? You don’t care what the American people think?

CHENEY: No, I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.

Take a look at it or check out more of the interview here.

God help America indeed.

Just a quick note on "construction".....

2008-03-14T03:09:00.001-07:00

If you are doing plunge cuts into sawdust and glue composite molding with a skill saw that has a dull blade in a space that has a fire alarm tied into the adjoining stores and the condos above your working space...... heed this warning as told to my "friend" by the fire department: "you should really cover the smoke detector while doing construction. Get a new blade. This place smells."

The last piece. "My friend" was so close. The condo folks seemed nice though?

Seriously... things that I know... and you should know if you help a friend doing light construction:

Know whether or not you can disable the fire alarm through your electrical panel (generally you can't)
There will be a central panel for the building - know where this is (I did not know that this mattered, but I should have; we had tonnes of alarms at 90O).
When your neighbors talk about sprinklers going off and wrecking their "X" thousands of dollars of goods... tell them to relax (sprinklers are heat activated - no flames? no problem).
Call the fire department to let them know that there really isn't a fire. No reason to get priority over someone who actually matters (dumb construction guy should always take back seat to "there is a fire in my house" guy).
Only fire people can make the loudest alarm on the face of the planet stop being the loudest alarm on the face of the planet by waving their magic wand at the central panel (you might be tempted to forget the stated rule above).
Smile to the crowd of displaced condo folks. Try to stop kids from crying if possible.
When cocky 25 year old fireman points out the one gap in the recently put down laminant flooring and smiles.... punch him in the arm and call him a jerk. Laugh.... he lays flooring for a moonlighting gig... and is a jerk.
When the business owner you are helping comes back from shopping trip - smile... its not your problem any more.

Anniversary

2008-03-12T22:43:00.000-07:00

Its been a bit "full circle" for me of late. I had my one year anniversary of leaving for Peru (March 5th) last week. The fact that I was in Vancouver (the first trip I took by myself when I was 18) was somehow just; that trip marked a whole bunch of firsts for me. The fact that I realized it while getting a sunburn on a mountain top made me smile. It was the first time I had been snowboarding in 5? years. Maybe less, but a long time. [EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm splitting hairs for effect in this statement. "Myself" is literally by myself. Todd and I went to Key West when I was 16. Go liberal parents!]

I'll be here for another week. I still feel shame. I will be missing Garth's bacon party. The bacumentary will not happen which I am actually pretty sad about. It was going to work out to $1000 and missing a weekend in Whistler to make it happen. I don't love bacon that much. I really should have got my act together on the return flight sooner.

Matt and I have sampled a bit of the night life. Its pretty rough in parts of this town which I have always known, but never fully been immersed in. Its odd to want to get back into the sketchy club where things make sense and away from the East Hastings fringe. The scene is small, but people are FRIENDLY. Its kind of refreshing and fun.

Building, building, building. The store is starting to look pretty good.

Why I would never make money building out retail space (Vancouver, BC)

2008-03-12T22:29:00.000-07:00

It takes me a long time to build things. This wall shouldn't take anyone a day plus to cut and assemble. There were some things that were not in my favour, like the lack of any real tools, slot wall that is only sold with the slots running the wrong way (why is that?), a million little measurements, random electrical and mechanical bits of unknown purpose that needed to be abandoned or moved or remounted or buried, metal stud construction that is mysteriously off centre and at weird intervals. Did I mention the 1 by 3 inch level that I had to work with? Still. Frustrating. Long. I again am shocked at how heavy sawdust and glue can get in big sheets.

The good news is that I have stricken another potential job off of my list. The bad news is that this day happened.

"I haven't fucked much with the past, but I've fucked plenty with the future." - Patti Smith

2008-01-11T17:00:00.000-08:00

I always kind of wondered about her and I am embarrassed that I know absolutely nothing other than she was a formative force in music and off the rails for most of her career. Looked up her rant which was on the Natural Born Killers soundtrack today. I didn't realize that it was actually a truncation of something she did called Babelogue.

"I haven't fucked much with the past, but I've fucked plenty with the future. Over the skin of silk are scars from the splinters of stations and walls I've caressed. A stage is like each bolt of wood, like a log of Helen, is my pleasure. I would measure the success of a night by the way by the way by the amount of piss and seed I could exude over the columns that nestled the P.A. Some nights I'd surprise everybody by skipping off with a skirt of green net sewed over with flat metallic circles which dazzled and flashed. The lights were violet and white. I had an ornamental veil, but I couldn't bear to use it. When my hair was cropped, I craved covering, but now my hair itself is a veil, and the scalp inside is a scalp of a crazy and sleepy Comanche lies beneath this netting of the skin. I wake up. I am lying peacefully I am lying peacefully and my knees are open to the sun. I desire him, and he is absolutely ready to seize me. In heart I am a Moslem; in heart I am an American; in heart I am Moslem, in heart I'm an American artist, and I have no guilt. I seek pleasure. I seek the nerves under your skin. The narrow archway; the layers; the scroll of ancient lettuce. We worship the flaw, the belly, the belly, the mole on the belly of an exquisite whore. He spared the child and spoiled the rod. I have not sold myself to God."

You can listen to it here, but close your eyes cuz someone spliced photos of their friends into a video around it.... kind of lame, but this is the only mainstream outlet that I can find for it. *** Not work safe for obvious reasons *** Sounds like that night around 1978 was pretty out of control. I was 5 though, so I probably wouldn't have been allowed to go.

I can't really find out what the "Log of Helen" is. I found it in a book from 1929 called Magnificent Obsession, and they were actually talking about a log of Helen (as in a historical list of sequential events). It might be Helen of Troy, but it sounds biblical somehow. I can't seem to find in a search against 5 different versions, so maybe not. Gotta get on to my fairly critical pursuit of reading that thing. Reading the God Delusion at the same time was a bit unfair to the project though.

Anyways... Go Patti Smith... I like people who are out there these days.

Choke on it.

2008-01-11T12:58:00.000-08:00

Talk about paralysis. I'm trying to sum up the last year of my life. I'm trying to be poignant, poised, insightful and succinct. I've got several thousand words of snippets and thoughts and memories and fear and hope and promise and delusion and wonder and you name it - can you say "not succinct"?

Life moves on though and I'm setting aside my grand wrap up for the sake of random pulp. An attempt to dislodge the furball of despair that has been preventing me from writing.

I love LEGO. My mom knows I love lego. She sent me some pictures of what a crazy lego person can accomplish to, in part, express their faith.

How long to build it? It was about a year and a half of planning, building and photographing.
How many pieces of LEGO to build it? more than 75,000
How big is it? About 7 feet by 5 1/2 feet by 30 inches (2.2 m x 1.7 m x .76 m)
How many LEGO people does it seat? 1,372
How many windows? 3,976
It features a balcony, a Narthex, stairs to the balcony, restrooms, coat rooms, several mosaics, a nave, a baptistery, an altar, a crucifix, a pulpit and an elaborate pipe organ.

Its funny you know, this kind of makes me feel better of myself for not accomplishing more in my 2 months in hell. That being said, anyone want to join the "Adult Lego building community" with me and build something spectacular? I'm serious.... unfortunately :)

There's something coercive about the way some people smile...Wide open as if to say, "Come on in and browse a while."

2007-12-07T12:36:00.000-08:00

Lowest of the Low, The Horseshoe Tavern

This band holds a healthy dose of nostalgia for me. I've seen them a bunch of times over the years, with new friends, old friends, best friends and random acquaintance types. It was a little bit disjoint that I found myself checking them out alone last Tuesday. Although there have been a couple of false starts, this time was to be their last show in Toronto and I tend to believe them this go around.

Generally everyone looks to have been youthful in their aging, but the backup guitarist seems to be mostly shunned from the band and looks like he's been to the bottom of every bottle between Buffalo and Brandon Manitoba. Thats a lot of drinking in case you were keeping tabs.

Concert going has changed a lot in the last few years. Not that I have seen a lot of shows in this time frame, but I now expect to gaze past a sea of small LCD screens while watching any band these days. I was reminiscing over an encore where they played "Subversives" (which I think is a pretty striking love song by any right) and was disappointed that there were only two instances of the video recording from the night on Youtube and both were of pretty poor quality.

There's nothing conclusive in this whole world
'Cause flags can change and martyrs die and there're many towns left to burn
But somewhere between there and here, for one night, hold me near
And sing my shallow tears
And we'll drink but not to forget
But to remember instead
All our happy years

R.I.P. Lowest of the Low.

Whatever, it twas a good show and it brought back a lot of memories for me. Jay, Corina, Janette and Sey - would have been great if you were there :(

One yearning satisfied

2007-12-05T13:32:00.000-08:00

I'm starting to eek out a life. Starting with the purchase of the best bed that my money could buy. Yes.. it is the bowling ball bed. I love this bed, as anyone who has spent more than 5 minutes with me of late has heard at least twice.

I just took a second look at this picture and find it both humorous and horrifying that my passport now serves as a coaster. I also find it distressing that it is supporting my sixth cup on the day.

Anywho. My bed rocks. That is all.

How Inconveinent

2007-12-04T10:20:00.000-08:00

There are few better places in the world to catch up on the backlog of TV and movies that is created by 8 months of abstinence than Garth's couch. Weeds, Heroes, Southpark, 24.. you name it, its there in all in all of its scintillating, mind numbing glory.

I watched An Inconvenient Truth. It made me angry. For my part, I find that my thoughts are shifting from nebulous nothingness back to science where they belong (don't even get me started on Dawkins). This isn't a blind subservience, I am just in a position where I want to reevaluate everything around me. I am surrounded by inconvenient truths and am trying to find the strength to face them. Logic is the one thing that can lend its power to me, but its so easy to slip. I like it but am scared. Its fresh and daunting after spending five years of my life with my head in the sand. Whether the science of this movie is good or bad, or it was a complete partisan piece of shit, or Al gore is an alien sent to colonize earth in the name of Lothar is completely inconsequential to me. The world is warming up. Carbon dioxide emissions, at the very least, are a contributing factor. Although there may be a natural, cyclical process at play here, the evidence that I can find makes a pretty strong case for the fact that humans are accelerating the process.

I am also using this downtime to catch up on my Harpers subscription. [EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a kick ass publication.] In the "Harper's Index" from April, 2007:

"Percentage of GOP House and Senate members in an April 2006 poll who believe humans are causing climate change: 23"

"Percentage who believed this in January 2007: 16"

What? Are they privy to some sort of scientific data that I've missed somewhere?

Those who want to protect the status quo should be summarily rounded up, given a lollipop and some building blocks and be tucked away in a room somewhere to play "big man" house with all of their friends. Starting with this guy.

I feel like everything I hear around me these days is being spoken directly to me. Its a bit unnerving sometimes, but it gives me a lot to think about. Winston Churchill was quoted in the movie:

"The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequence."

Mr. Churchill, I hope that it will be fair to apply this to me in the coming months. However, I have trouble applying this statement on the large scale and for the today. I think that most people of consequence are choosing to put their head back in the sand. Please let me not be one of them.

Way back to 2004 in more ways than one.

2007-11-23T09:37:00.001-08:00

I'm finding new and creative ways to not pour through every piece of paper that I've touched in the last five years.

Listening to some old tunes. Eminem's track "Mosh" once again doesn't disappoint. He's not really my favorite artist, but he is brilliant and this song strikes an important chord with me. Free speech is ill, but not dead.

"Back To Reality, Oops There Goes Gravity"

2007-11-17T17:51:00.001-08:00

So I missed my daily post ideal by a _long_ shot. I tripped on my way to a beach in southern Cambodia and woke up on Garth's couch. Some things in my life were causing me grief and not everything can be taken care of from 12 time zones away.. as much as I will it to be different.

So I'm back, reality is taking a bit (a lot) of getting used to. The blog lives on, just need a couple more days to deal with a nagging feeling in my head that I am in hell.

One good reason to not live in Cambodia

2007-11-04T10:22:00.000-08:00

You will have to look at these two pictures in tandem unfortunately. They are out of focus and poorly lit. So was I obviosly. WiMax is surprising, but Cambodia also had one of the fastest and highest cell phone adoption around in the early days. I guess when you have no existing sunk cost of infrastructure, you are free to adopt newer technologies as a cost savings (ones that don't involve burrying billions of dollars of medium).

Lame post in my quest for daily thoughts.

2007-11-03T17:36:00.000-07:00

I've been a busy boy; leaving scant moments to think about blogging. I am also cheating a bit with my daily posts, me being 11 hours ahead of the blogger clock and all. Its actually the 4th where this comes from.

I'm about to hop into a boat for the day to go fishing with my new best "friend" before slipping back into Thailand for the 50th time.

The Time Traveler's Wife (Yet another book report)

2007-11-02T08:25:00.000-07:00

I lost my copy of The Trial. I got rudely awoken from a coma on a long bus trip in Thailand. It was 4am and time to switch buses. How rude. I left; witless and bookless. I guess it could have been worse. It was a great story, or at least the first half. In perhaps the biggest swing in reading history, I picked up a love story called “The Time Traveler's Wife” at a used bookstore. Selection is generally limited in such places and I tend to find myself picking up anything that I’ve heard of and this title had recently received a glowing recommendation from a friend. I always try to read books that people recommend to me, so it was a better situation than I would normally find myself in.

Book’d but still witless, I powered through this delightful tomb in short order. I found myself hopelessly in love with Claire (the female main of the book - someone or other’s wife) and sympathetic for the time traveler and all of the issues that his affliction causes. The author nicely side stepped the whole time line pollution / what comes before what / space time continuum / collision / infinite number of timelines or 5 timelines… or whatever… that usually dogs time travel stories. She just didn’t talk about it which was actually refreshing. As soon as a story tries to address the proposed “science” or philosophical implications of time travel it either becomes impenetrable or so full of holes that you spend too much time trying to fill them. Anyone recently watched “Back to the Future”? They kind of explain part of the problems of time travel (Marty McFly meeting his mother etc.) which makes you start to be worried about polluting / changing events in the future, but then they do things like Marty (from the future who doesn’t even exist yet) being the impetus for the guitar sound of Chuck Berry. How did Marty know how to play Johnny B Good if Berry never found his “sound” without the help of Marty? There are a bunch of points that regress infinitely or circle back on each in these types of stories. In any event, Back to the Future isn’t a stunning example of theoretical time traveling wisdom. Neither is “The Time Traveler's Wife” I guess, but I didn’t even think about the chronicle ins and outs. I was more than happy to just agree that this was how it was and to wonder along with the characters about what was going on.

Not quite like Stienbeck’s uncanny ability to devote 3 pages to the colour of dirt, but the writing style of Audrey Niffenegger definitely indicates that her topics are very well researched (or well experienced). I didn’t know anything about making paper but there were quite detailed and enjoyable descriptions of the process. She didn’t say “they played a game of pool and a ball was sunk”; she described the play by play in detail. I’ll call it a pleasing compromise between sparse and ad nauseum.

I’ve rewritten the following 10 times. I didn’t know the name of the author until I was done the book, didn’t even look. By the end of it though, I was convinced that the author was a dude. I really don’t think that I am predisposed to assume that about something that I am reading, but maybe I am? I’ve never really thought about it. I hope that there is something in the style and content that made me start to feel that way and that I began this book with a completely neutral opinion about it. I have never read 500 pages without knowing the author, so I don’t have a lot of data on how my brain works. How do I identify with the author of fiction that I read (and what role does their gender play in this?)

Does it matter?

Looks like it is going to be a film. I look forward to it.

Off the rails in Phnom Penh

2007-11-01T01:21:00.000-07:00

Hmmm it has been a while. Updating ye old blog hasn’t been top on the list. I’m trying to write more, but haven’t been successful. I’m going to update something here every day of November to try and keep me a bit more regimented. Only time will tell whether the following tidbit of info is fortunate or not, but this month will also see me updating from my old stomping grounds of Canada. Yikes.

D and I headed up to Bangkok and on to Cambodia. It came down to a choice of staying a week in Thailand waiting for the full moon or moving on to something a little bit more “active”. I was hesitant to come back here. It had been almost 10 years since my last visit and it is abundantly clear to me of late that you can never go back. I had also heard some distressing things. A friend who I have a strong attachment with (and also just happened to bear witness to my less than stellar start to traveling) had recently been to Cambodia, knew how I felt about my time there and told me in no uncertain terms that I should never return. That the place had turned into Disneyland and that whatever it was that I had found back in the day, it was not to be found here today. Five starred, air-conditioned bus ferried, sweaty, conical hat sporting tourists running amok in the most intense and favourite of the countries I had visited. This is the stuff that nightmares are made of. So I had to steel myself against coming back. In reality it was more an exercise in dissociation, around which I was mostly successful. So now I have two different visits to two radically different countries that just so happen to occupy the same geographical borders. There will inevitably be some posts around this, but my thoughts are still somewhat immature.

My self honouring kick took a little bit of a kicking. We somehow found a way to drink ourselves heavily across Cambodia. Hank became the villainous mastermind for everything from our debauchery to making a chair particularly uncomfortable. He did introduce us, and if that hadn’t of happened then we wouldn’t be nursing such ravenous hangovers. Simple logic really. Damn you Henry.

It was fun to travel with someone for a bit. Shared experience isn’t something that I have been having a lot of and we saw some strange shit together. When you assess the wreckage of countless beers, snakes on sticks, beef/goose/liver/??? lok lak (basically plates of quick, stir fried meat) and 5 drunk Khmers its nice to have someone sitting beside you who at least knows how to pronounce your name. Well, for most of the night anyways (sorry highschool). If I was out by myself that night then I would have brought my camera instead of relying on someone else. Henry – thanks for nothing. Why do you hate me so much? See? Its kind of fun :)

The caveat to having someone to talk to and share perspective is that some of my weaker moments were also born witness to. Like my lack of any sense of direction and poor haggling skills. Like leaving the door ajar to the room in our guest house one night and my resembling anything but a 'guide'. Or this fun late night diversion - hunkering down with some street side locals for a round of gambling in a card game that I didn't know the rules of. I always feel like there is a material cost for learning new games. It just so happened that there was so little English available to me that I spent $3 on learning almost nothing. Paying out mysterious odds and needing help to organize my hand against the house does not bode well for raking in mass amounts of cash. Derek says that I got robbed. I say that I was just the most unlucky tourist in the country. The truth is probably in between those two extremes, likely closer to Derek's estimate than I would like to admit. We ended up gambling more than I would have thought. Betting on baccarat, drinking bathtub gin at a casino in Cambodia is not something that you get to do with just any old friend. Do you know how to play baccarat? Neither do we. All said, I was able to keep my very surprising and perfect, 20 year in the running, every country I have ever been in, record of breaking even while gambling. Phew!

D doesn’t pull punches, shares the same humour as me and is one smart dude. I guess what I am saying here is that I didn’t really know him at all :) Good times, but remarkably unsustainable.

My name is Michael and I have an addiction to Google. I hope. I fear. I rant on a Wednesday afternoon in Bangkok (Book report)

2007-10-29T04:50:00.000-07:00

[EDITOR'S NOTE: I wrote this awhile ago. I was trying to write something that I could send outside of this blog. I realize that I have a bit of a ways to go, that this really is more linearly derivative of the book than I thought and that nobody officially cares about a two year old book. It was a good exercise for me though. Sorry for the length - its long.]

I've finished the Google Story. Although not "sanctioned" by Google, the authors gave the company a last read of the manuscript in order to ensure "fairness and accuracy" in the project. This sounds a little bit too much like "Authorized" to me. For the time, and by whatever understanding, it allowed the authors unprecedented access to people and information and I am glad. I found it to be very readable and interesting; it is just best enjoyed through gray, salt grained glasses. It left me with healthy beliefs that there were turmoils, tribulations and ruthlessnesses that were only glossed over in the book while describing the company's meteoric rise. At two years old, the account is also somewhat dated. All said however, it is a great success story and it makes me happy. I like to think that a company went from the garage to $200B with nothing but a good idea and some integrity.

I would subtly shift the praise of the Google Guys away from their dedication to "anything is possible". They excelled in one trait to set them apart: their ability to think big. Crystal ball, divining rod in their hands, Shiva gearing up for some ass kicking big. It is the ability to anticipate growth and usage patterns - to define the future, to solve a problem on a scale that doesn't exist today (but will tomorrow) that led to their greatness.

The ideation for traditional search engines came out of a time when there were a manageable number of websites. If there were only 30 websites on a topic that I took seriously, then I wanted to look at them all and be grateful that they all appeared in a single list. Yes, it became unmanageable and websites began to game the system. I remember a lot of crap results on searches in AltaVista. I remember being shown the World Wide Web for the first time when there were no search engines, or none that I knew of. I also remember abysmal "Wheat to Chafe" ratios while using Usenet and in Google itself when sites temporarily found a way to manipulate it. (I also remember gopher. I am old). I am sure that there were ways that would have come out of the woodwork to rank pages on metrics other than their content; ideas that would have resulted in acceptable results in the short term. "Search" is an automation problem begging for some smart, ivory tower champions, but if Sergey and Larry didn't divine that search was THE problem leading to subsequent monetization of the Internet then it would have died on the lab floor like it did at *insert player at the time here*. For the masses, tight and efficient information gathering begets usefulness and lack of frustration. Happy web users beget paying customers. Yahoo had their own take on the problem of a low W:C ratio. It was a highly effective (for the user), personally touched, not comprehensive and expensive way to approach it. This was fine for the time, but faltered in the face of the mind bending growth of the World Wide Weeb. Google solved the problem for the then, but also solved it for the foreseeable future. I don't think it is accidental that they approached this problem in the "n state" which is a strong indication of their mathematical roots. Their "special sauce" was scalable in a time when scalability wasn't as crucial as it is today; a situation requiring minimal incremental cost with no degradation in, and vast improvement to, the user experience against a logarithmic growth of a subject. They were the first to strive for and apply this seemingly impossible set of criteria to the web experience. Everyone else said it wasn't worth it or couldn't be done.

So they were smart. They solved an increasingly annoying problem through automation. BUT they were successful because they suspected both the magnitude of the future problem and its subsequent, inherent, dampening effect on a random user's exuberance with a new medium. They improved and continue to deliver a high level of user experience. Although this appears to have been done in a purely "for the good of the world" manner, I don't think that they were blind to the money making potential of the Web that their work paved the way for. Simply put, Google enabled average users to access goods and services on the Internet in a time frame that their patience could endure. It just so happened that Google was also there to monetize on this trend on a scale that is unprecedented to date. Maybe this is accidental. Maybe I give them more praise then they deserve. It just seems so perfect to me.

One of the main hurdles of the day was user retention. If you didn't lock a user in then what was stopping them from flocking en mass to the next "ivory basement" incubator that came up with a better way to search? Google is free. You can go into any crap ass Internet cafe in the world and it will be set as the homepage (if your luck is like mine, then it will be in one of the least comprehensible languages of the 100+ Google has on offer). In any event, I think this discussion is one area that shows the age of the book. Today - Google, through its superior product offering, is solving its onetime angst over the issue with an increasing number of people who are hopelessly "locked" in. They keep building it, and people keep coming. No longer will someone merely need to be a better search portal to win the right to quarterback my Internet experience. They will need to provide me with a high quality web mail service, blogging, financial reporting and tracking, customized news feeds, website tracking tied into advertising campaigns, tell me where to go because I get lost a lot, entertain me through sites like Youtube, telephony and instant messaging, fast and efficient desktop searching, image searching and a decent personal photographic repository, website hosting, free Microsoft Office-like tools, social conscience and innovation, millions of searchable books and on and on.... One stop shopping never looked better. If Google buys Facebook, they will own everything that I do with my computer these days, except surfing (which they already own the start of).

[EDITOR'S NOTE: M$ just threw $260 mil to buy 1.6% in facebook. Thats a $15 BILLION valuation. It doesn't make sense. They must simply be trying to keep it out of the hands of Google which doesn't bode well for the state of desperation in Redmond.]

I've had privacy concerns about Google in the back of my head for some time. My main criticism of this book is that it didn't go deeply enough into this topic which I believe will become an ever alarming one as Google continues to deepen their online dominance. To be fair, I need to divulge that I sometimes have a paranoia bent. I also need to say that I am predisposed to like Google and I continue to be a huge supporter of their efforts. They have greatly improved and accelerated my Internet experience for years. I'm conflicted.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: I want to work at Google. Their approach to innovation and employee retention is the best that I have ever heard.]

Google keeps EVERYTHING. Every piece of data it can. It's smart. Who knows what artificial intelligence efforts are going on in the bowels of the Googleplex to create the next best engine? Stuff like that needs data. Patterns existed since the beginning of time, long before the science of pattern recognition's ability to mathematically "find" them. History and behavior is important for future innovation. The more comprehensive the data, the better. Even if you don't know what to do with it now, it better be collected because you can't go back in time (I'd love to see an estimate of the value of the Google historical database - $Billions I would think). Assuming the Internet and its contents cannot be destroyed on a grand scale, we finally have in place a method to maintain the summation of human knowledge and keep it cataloged to boot. There will be no dark ages of 2100-2400. It comes with a price though, don't mistake this point. Google as a service has always come at the cost of handing over an increasing amount of personal data about thoughts and behaviors. It started with mostly anonymous search patterns and is bound only by what information the masses are willing to concede (or know that they are handing over). New and exotic products will entice me to give them even more personal data. Would I take an intensive personality test to better understand why it is that I do the things I do? Would I like Google to find my perfect mate out of 100 million possible candidates? Probably. All I would have to do is tell them more about myself. It would be free; the only noticeable affect would be that I would find the ads beside my email or during my searches that are strangely more compelling. Wow, today's the day that I need to shave and I'm out of condoms. Isn't it amazing that someone is willing to FedEx me a combo pack overnight for the low, low price of $5.99? How fortuitous. [Suckers. I haven't had sex in forever and I use an electric razor. But Google reads my blog... the gig is up. Probably a more likely marketing prize pack would be a "How to Pickup Women by Liking Yourself" book and 25% off coupon from a local makeover hut. You get the point I am making though.]

In the beginning, to tie a user to their searches, you would have had to merge two databases (I use this term loosely). An ISP would need to divulge to Google that I was at a specific IP for a timeframe, and Google would have to correlate that to a search record. When I signed up for Gmail, all of this changed for me. I tied a more traceable identity to substantially everything I do on the Internet. I no longer sit down to anonymously search. Before I do anything, I put my hand up to Google and tell them where I am through checking my mail and then spend the rest of the time doing whatever it is that I do. Google has access to every single communication that I have had for the last 16 months. It knows how much money I have in the stock market. They know what I did in Toronto on a given night in 2006 and what I did in Jakarta last Friday night. It knows every symptom of my health (good and bad) that I have ever had (imaginary or not). Google knows every prescription drug that I have ever put, or thought of putting, into my body. They know what I search for late at night...

Not some random collection of octets... ME. This isn't the science fiction work of an author with a premonition for us to look at 30 years later and muse "how did she know?" This is today and it is real. Maybe the idea that someone will mine through this data about me is far fetched, but the data is there for the taking. At the time of writing of the book, Google was anonymizing everything that is 18 months and older. I'm not sure where they are at right now. But this is a PR move. 18 becomes 24, 24 months becomes 24 years. It is whatever the populace will stand for at the time.

I have strong opinions and an inquisitive mind. I am also going grey. Maybe one day I decide I should bleach my hair to pretend I was still virile. In searching for peroxide, I remember that it was the main ingredient in the failed London subway bombings. I get side tracked. I start trying to figure out how they actually tried to do that. I'm searching from Bali, I'm going to Medan. I search on the Sari club (what type of bomb did they use there I wonder?). What other clubs are there in Bali? An hour later I am searching God knows what. Under the umbrella of "war on terror" the States subpoenas Google for all users who have done searches for these X words / ideas, who has demonstrated disapproval of the president, who has traveled through X countries, who has searched for X music and these eBooks, who signed an email petition against the prisoners in Guantanamo bay, who is disenfranchised and jobless. I'm taking it pretty far here and I don't believe that the jackboots are about to kick down the door, but it is a very accessible slippery slope. I don't think it would be too hard to raise "flags" if all of my historical web data was laid out for all to see. I actually don't know under what circumstances Google would have to divulge this information to a third party. Google is just a company though, so in the end they might fight the good fight but they will lose if someone cared enough.

Google is heavily involved in science and is blazing forward into understanding DNA and low level genetic makeup. This will revolutionize medicine and understanding on what makes us tick on a biological level. It isn't a stretch that my computer will know everything that there is to know about my DNA (if I really wanted it to, I could probably make that possible right now). I will search Google with my DNA as a search term. Personalized medicine is a result (shipped to me directly overnight) and alarm bells will ring if there are risks that I need to be made aware of.

Once the information on Facebook (or subsequent "social utility") is integrated, they will know that my wife and I will have a child with blue eyes and that my grandson will be bald. That we should have aborted 1 in 5.6 pregnancies due to a risk of Downs Syndrome. That I like the smell of gasoline and I lived in a time of lead additives. That I love sushi and that I have spent a lot of time in the sun. That my friends from Caledonia are 7.3% less likely to develop breast cancer than the national average and that I need 5% more iron in my diet. This isn't THAT far fetched.

I currently trust Google with my data, although I wish it didn't exist. I don't want to be accused of being overly Orwellian here, BUT this is the first time in history that thought policing is starting to become possible. Most of my thoughts exist in a single, distributed database which I have no control over. I no longer own my contributions to it, nor can I query its contents. A "Patriot Act" on steroids, a shift in company philosophy of one of the largest corporate entities in history and a shift in the legal definition of "premeditated" and I am in jail for the rest of my natural life. If someone said to you 10 years ago that the US was going to pull your library card, tap your phone without a warrant and hold hundreds of people in jail without charge for 6 years, wouldn't you have called them insane? "Oceania" I say in a masking cough. Hardy har har ... no, not really.

Google.. You have a MASSIVE responsibility to the world right now. Take it seriously from today until the day I die. Then you can let everyone know about my sexual proclivities, my penchant for bacon and the fact that I sometimes like to investigate the unsavory.

It was a good book.

Interesting breakdown on the thumbupyourassitis of partisan politcs

2007-10-19T06:35:00.000-07:00

Bit too much formage, but that is not the point.

Thanks Michelle. See? I do love you :)

BANG (Veg Festival - Day 2, Phuket Thailand)

2007-10-19T03:36:00.000-07:00

Just so you know that I'm not exagerating about the firecracker safety part, I posted a video. I was covered with shrapnel today.

Derek and Jim came down after their case of the climbing Krabis. Good to see a friend from home. More craziness at the festival, I'm glad it didn't disappoint cuz then I would have looked like a big fat liar :)

Currency redux. Or is this just a bunch of lunatics? (Vegetarian Festival, Phuket, Thailand)

2007-10-17T21:58:00.000-07:00

I believe this to be the best photo that has ever been taken, although tough to call. It left a very deep impact on me from the moment I saw it and continues to affect me in a profound way to this day. I even remember busting out the dictionary to look up the word "immolation" (oh dictionaries.. those where the days). The strength of conviction, the commitment to a greater cause, the passion, the command over ones body and the power of self during what was a terrible time in a history of another part of the world. This frame captured all of it and is the distillate of complex emotions during a very complex circumstance (and the cover of the first Rage Against the Machine album - whats not to be moved by here?)

[Read the story of Thich Quang Duc, or Malcolm Browne (photographer, not a lot of info on this link), or David Halberstam (writer) if you are interested.]

My entire life I have wanted to believe in something this strongly. The fact that I am striving to temper this and its derivative thoughts fills me with great angst and regret. I am sure to spend multiple sessions on a couch one day over this photo and what it represents to me.

Today:
I wish that I knew more about the meaning of today. Some of the below may be naive and incomplete. I'm going to do some research and talk to more folks so that I can hopefully shed some light on it i.e. this is what I saw and I will back fill with some info soon.

A group of us went down to a temple for the Vegetarian Festival. It is a turning over of sorts, where you "creatively" atone for your sins of last year and bank some luck for the one coming. Like me, you may think that a morning hanging out with a bunch of vegetarians would leave you wanting some excitement. I mean, how odd can things get? They don't even eat the pig! Snore fest here we come.

I milled around waiting for something to happen from about 4:30 to 5:30 and then things started to get pretty strange. Really strange. Loony Tunes having a bastard child with Lewis Carrol strange. Dudes where coming out of the temple shaking like a leaf. They would present themselves to an altar and snap a whip that was wrapped around their neck with 30 or 40 incense sticks in their hands. I'm guessing they were possessed, which you would have to be to subject yourself to what comes next: piercings. Extreme facial piercings. You could drive a Mac truck through some of the holes that got cut in these cheeks. A big conical spike of stainless steel is used to make a hole which is sufficiently large for the individuals preferred adornment. Normal stuff mind you, like metal rods, glass rods with cute little figurines on the ends, radio antennas still attached to alarm clocks, swords, axes, guns, chrome bicycle chains, parasols, tree branches.... Like I said: Boooring. They do all the piercings in front of the crowd and pictures are not only tolerated but seem encouraged. Less blood than you might think, but I somehow felt like I could taste iron all day long.

I went inside the temple (the smokiest place on earth) to see what was going on. People sitting around amicably with lots of music. Boring. Then the great Croupier of Nothingness calls out someones number and they are off like a shot. They dance and twitch and talk like a bird or moan or scream. They get fit with some ceremonial garb and get led out to mutilate for the masses.

Once everyone was sorted there was an exodus into the streets. It was a 5+ mile walk to the end of the parade route. There were porters who carried mini alters to I am not sure what (one of the things I need to figure out) and everyone on the streets threw firecrackers at them (and me). Startling lack of firecracker safety going on during this thing and some of the blasts were large and in charge. After all was said and done and we were waiting for a ride back, we actually got in a firecracker fight with four 10 year olds from across the street. Everyone throws firecrackers AT you and they rain down from long poles overhanging the street.

We were here to support this fine young man, sporting an axe and knife / gun combo. All the rage for spring. I am embarrassed to say that I don't even know his name. By the time I caught up with the group after the initial mayhem, introductions were impossible for obvious reasons. The participants were often stopped for photos by Thai and foreigners alike. He needed handlers to keep the crowd from nudging something painfully and to apply antiseptic and what appeared to be an oil to keep the cuts clean and moist in the burning sun. It was HOT, I had trouble walking the length. I can't imagine doing it with 15lbs of steel through my cheeks. He wasn't even spared the firecracker rain. It was exciting and perplexing. D-rock is coming in tonight and we are going to go again tomorrow. Frankly, it will be tough to stomach a second time.

While the sun rose, I found myself locked in a stare with a guy for a second or two. This was before we got rudely interrupted by a spear going through his cheek and his eyes rolling back in their sockets. Fear - animalistic, raw terror is what I saw. I don't know how to process it. Fear is so imminently understandable given a circumstance such as this, but I was surprised to find it somehow. I wonder if a moment not unlike this one was shared in Vietnam circa 1963? Different stakes, odds and payoffs, but there has to be a moment when the brain is able to elucidate the worldly consequence of ones devotion to an ideal.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a currency that I am not equipped to trade. However, I am not ashamed to say that I admire those who are brave enough to save it up and spend it on something that is important to them.

I took a stupid number of pictures:

One of the porters. They blew him up reeeeeal good. Check out the firecracker remnants in his hair.

I was very disturbed by this guy. Yes, those are real guns.

This was the head dude. Notice the firecrackers going off around him.

Nothing like a little self hatcheting to start the day off right.

Meaty badness

2007-10-16T22:31:00.000-07:00

I've taken another take on my vegetarian aspirations. Yesterday I had no meat at all. I thought about it and really I am only one meal off from being in line and only that by an hour and a half. That fact has given me new vigour and I owe it to the guy I am supporting. I CAN do it. Its only today and half of tomorrow. The fact that my meal consisted of half of the chicken skewers that a cart had to offer doesn't make it a "miserable" failure... right?

I think its funny that in presenting myself clear of no "meat, sex, drugs or alcohol", meat is the only thing I am craving.

Matter cannot be created or destroyed, but may change form

2007-10-16T22:02:00.000-07:00

I did a little bit of a science experiment yesterday. At 3:15pm I weighed 82.00 kilos. At 7:30pm I weighed 83.25 kilos. I went pee once, but not a lot. The only thing I put into my body was 7 litres of water, which weighs 7kg.

Although sometimes I feel like Shiva and that I can destroy worlds at whim, this has yet to be proven in practice. Further, the law of conservation of mass states that my ability to make nothing out of something is extremely unlikely (outside of the stock market of course). I can only sweat, breathe and urinate; which it appears that I did, to the tune of 5.75 kilos of water.

I am pretty shocked and I'll do it again just to make sure that I am not confused. That is a LOT of sweat, but then I am in the tropics and terribly out of shape. Yikes.

Culture as currency

2007-10-16T05:34:00.000-07:00

Kris asked me when we were in Peru why I like to travel. We were taking a lovely walk down from the Pisac ruins and having a conversation about what we want to do with our lives. If I were to sum up the trip so far in colours, it would be the blues of the Pacific Ocean and the greens and browns of the terraces that day. My answer was quick. I said that I travel to experience new cultures and be humbled by rugged beauty. In retrospect, that wasn’t really a complete answer as I would have to say that realignment and healing is certainly why I am on this particular trip. Her (paraphrased) point was that “Why do you feel that these passions can only exist during your sparse vacations? Why can’t you have that in your everyday reality?” I didn’t have an answer to that obvious contradiction at the time and I still don’t.

I think that the most striking thing that I have seen in the rugged beauty category is the face of Annapurna II (I can’t remember which side) and the time I climbed down from a high part of the west coast trail, sat by the ocean while watching a pod of whales pass by. The stark white snow and the deep blue of the high altitude, Nepalese sky; the brownest browns of those rocks on Vancouver Island that day. I’ve realized that I am deeply affected by colour. I suspect more so than most, but that’s not something that you can really gage. The Pacific Ocean at night, seeing all the shades of blue-y black and grey in the moonlight. Gazing at Macchu Piccu while sitting by the Inca bridge and looking down at the Andean mountains. I pour myself into these landscapes. I merge. I become beautiful and raw. That’s what I’m talking about. This is one reason why Toronto is so dangerous for me and one reason why the cottage is my favorite place to be. This whole thing is a tangent mind you; I want to talk about culture.

I went out with a bunch of the guys from the camp on Saturday night. We went out to a restaurant opening and then across the ridgeline to a few bars on the other side. It’s pretty fun to walk around with a pack of fighters. I started to think about the word “currency”, in that this group trades in a currency that is so foreign to me. Stitches, bruises, broken ribs, their fight records and the quality of the pain they have inflicted on their opponents all carries clout. A yellow-black eye here, a bandaged head there. I couldn’t figure out why one of the guys had words tattooed upside down on his forearm. Then I put myself in the place of a guy on the ground with elbows raining down from on high and it made more sense. All of these aspects are traded and they all carry prestige in these parts. I had a thought that night “Isn’t the essence of culture simply a different predominant currency?” Politics, religion, passions and ethics – it is all just what people value and are willing to trade and for what.

In Toronto there are a tonne of different cultural divides. Everything from hot dog vendors, tattoo artists, cabbies, all kinds of churches and religions, club culture, the service industry, teachers, the gym, the cube farm, the College St. clique, the Kensington market crowd, etc. It is just so close and seemingly accessible that it feels banal and yet these types of cultures exist overseas and somehow feel exotic if you are exposed to them more than in passing. Take from each what you will, but they are culture in their own right. Just like prostitution, haggling, bribes and street markets. Faith and politics, sailing or Muay Thai camps.

While riding back there was an awesome electrical storm in the valleys. Just the sound of the bike and the empty roads to fly through, the rain and the pitchest of blacks hiding who knows what. It was a pretty incredible space to occupy. The night met both my yearnings of travel, but I guess it could have been anywhere. Even Toronto, but I never would have had the inkling to be exposed to it. Why?

Michael Cleaver - domestic like Molson Canadian

2007-10-15T21:37:00.000-07:00

My neighbour is a farang, but a local. We went for a run up the island to a place that he was a member of. It was kind of like a Cosco. My big domestic moment! I hated to do it, but I needed to get some clothes. I had bought another pair of shorts, but my 2 tshirt rule was becoming a little bit of a problem. For $15 I got 4 white tshirts, 3 litres of pineapple juice, a jug of milk (I'm actually going to have cereal once I can find it! Joy), 6 tubes of toothpaste (you know how Cosco type places are), some big tins of fruit and 4 mini coconuts that we enjoyed on my front deck the other night. I've had tonnes of coconuts this trip, but these were surprisingly the best, the milk was so freaking good.

Yes I have a fridge and I have stuff in it. It feels so luxurious.

I'm dialed in a bit more. I found a better road stall to eat at whose fried rice is less oily than at the camp and half the price. I have a new ride. I've called him Billy. He's all flash, green and boring. I have a TV and I watched FoxNews one night. Horrific, but its good to know how the enemy thinks I guess. I fell asleep with it on though and the next day I was telling everyone that Clinton was a flip flopper and Bush was just a guy who was trying to do right by God and country. I also have a strange fear that someone is going to snatch my baby. It could happen to me! I'm no longer kidding myself.

I've started drinking soda water instead of pop. I am trying very hard to not eat meat, out of respect for my participation (kind of) in a vegetarian festival this Thursday. Its tough going though and I am failing miserably. My body is craving meat right now more so than ever in my life. I'll have to fake it I think. I hope there isn't an exam.

I worked it out once, sailing on passages was about a 65 hour a week job. I have a new job these days which isn't nearly as long but 100 times as physically demanding. It has been really good to have my options limited for the last week. Which sounds odd, but just having planned events to focus around is somehow comforting to me right now. If I go for it, working out is my new unsustainable, 40 hour a week job. I am still calling in sick for the mornings though and it will likely stay that way.

I decided to go for a massage on Sunday to try and ease my aching bones. I don't know what the hell I was thinking, but she asked if I wanted a Thai massage and I said yes. I've had a half dozen of them before and I like them. Soothing they are not. She and my dentist should open up shop together. She was particularly adept at inflicting pain and suffering. Working those feet into an already sore back and bruised rib and pounding on my temples must have been a wonderful way to start her day.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: I found a box of SHREDDED WHEAT! This after hunting through every store under the sun and passing by 100's of Lucky Charms and Count Coco Sugar Bombs of Destruction. Comfort food with a capital K. Cereal had become my new Bacon obsession, I don't know why. It is odd what I crave sometimes.]

This ones going out to you...

2007-10-14T08:49:00.000-07:00

You know who you are.

"My life is sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, That's how this refrain goes...."

Step Six: Post Coitus

2007-10-13T23:05:00.000-07:00

I am pulling out of sparring indefinitely. A broken rib or a snapped jaw would be quite a sour end to something that is supposed to be a positive and spiritual pursuit. Maybe if I had more skill then I would feel more comfortable in the ring? Maybe some people need to take less testosterone injections?

It will be another blow to the ego and there really is no better way to learn than by doing, but right now I am just an accident waiting to happen.

So I am no longer going to stay up at night daydreaming of smashing this guys teeth out the back of his neck. Oh maturity... I resist your lessons so intensely.

Thanks to Matt once again for his amazing command of the obvious. He is like a general, with an army of little obviousites to do his bidding, riding around the world to vanquish delusions wherever they be found.

Maybe this is more than I can chew?

2007-10-13T20:48:00.000-07:00

I got kneed in the ribs hard yesterday. They are really sore. I can't sleep on my left side and its a painful joy to smell the roses deeply. I never really liked roses much though, so I guess its ok. I couldn't do any ab workouts. I am lame. I also got clocked in the jaw without a mouth guard on after I FUCKING TOLD the loser that I didn't have it both before we started and AFTER the FIRST time he clocked me in the jaw without the aforementioned safety equipment. He told me that his ribs are tender. "Hey buddy", I stupidly say, "no problem!". "I'll not drive my shin through that gaping hole in your defense", I think. I was livid. I'm trying to be a peaceful man these days though so instead of it turning into a slug fest I just stopped and said that I wasn't prepared for this. Yay Mike! Went and bought a mouth guard. This guy worries me a bit. He has something to prove. I am a spaz with the gloves on and hey - I don't want to hurt anyone. But if he keeps doing this then its going to go from brawl to street fight and that's not really productive. I hate sparing with people who don't know what they are doing (I am one of them). The trainers will give as hard as they get. The rule is 50%'ish power and speed. Nice.. controlled.. technique.. learning... if you want to take a knee to the face then all you have to do is give them one (if you can). Sparring with my fellow plebes isn't very controlled because we simply don't have any yet. Fighting will become more and more a part of my daily life which I can get over, but this is the same guy who was 2 inches from front kicking me hard in the balls when we were working on a technique for blocking a DIFFERENT KIND of kick. Argghhhhh he makes me mad. Its the sudden and unexpected intensity that is tough to deal with. Its like going out for a nice relaxing meal with your girlfriend that turns into a wicked fight out of the blue. I'm just not prepared for it.

So now I am a suck because I didn't want to hurt someone and I don't want to get my teeth snapped in half. Maybe fighting actually isn't my thing? Never really thought about that. hmmmm. I am going to take today (Saturday) off from training and rest up a bit. I am suffering from an 'itis of 5 years of sloth to working out pretty hard.

You know that day when you wake up and you suddenly realize that you won't be an astronaut or a firefighter? Or that the likelihood of climbing Everest somehow drove to zero while you weren't looking? Its not like I always wanted to be a kickboxer. I've never been much of a fighter (or a lover for that matter, but I digress). I'm not tough per se, but I always thought that I could be all these things. Today my body and mind revolted, picket signs and work to rule and everything. I know - gotta be realistic of expectations blah blah blah - but still, it pisses me off and its somewhat depressing for me. Actually, let me change this statement up a bit. I could climb Everest (when I say climb, I mean climb - not being short-roped up by some poor Sherpa), but the sacrifice to do so is no longer worth it. I guess the lesson for Mike today is to use it or loose it. If he doesn't, the available options narrow to a point that isn't that far on his immediate horizon. Its that idea and realization which is the most maddening for me today. "Random nice things for my body" is a little bit late in coming.

Thanks for being forced to read as I rant.

Thats gotta hurt.

2007-10-11T20:25:00.000-07:00

I remember me and Vinh talking one night about the viability and usefulness of kickboxing in the real world. His point was that its kind of useless because a shin to anyone who isn't trained to take it would pretty much kill them. I agreed then and I believe it now. However, I have to say that I fear the shin less than the elbow. The advanced folks practice a move where they essentially run up the side of an opponent, leap up and power their elbow through the top of their head. They can split coconuts with it as a party trick. Elbows in general are more close range, but I think far more gruesome. Debatable, as I am sure it will be.

Step Five: "Pass the purse to the pugilist" (Phuket, Thailand)

2007-10-11T19:06:00.000-07:00

Man I miss Rage Against the Machine.

On Monday I checked into the camp. "Weighing in at 82.5 kilos, the punching bag from the north, he puts the chuck in Canuck, he once fought a man for.. wait no he didn't...Michael... ".

I am in the "cruiserweight" division. Never even heard of it. At least I am not super heavy weight, cuz that would suck. I guess it doesn't really matter in the end as even though I outweigh some of my trainers by 20 kilos or more, they are so fierce in the ring that I have nightmares about them. Whats another 45lbs of muscle on top of that? Might as well be a hundred.

The trainers are a mixed breed. There are people who want to train fighters and people who want to keep tourists happy and gasping for breath. They tend to ask how long you are staying to gage your goals. If are here to just work up a sweat then they aren't so picky on technique. If you are here because you want to learn everything you can then they tend to berate you for, and correct, your poor form. They are also looking for fighters. I think I am somewhere in between. I know where my goals are, just not sure what they think. One of them gave me some smelling salts - "just so you know what its like". Some don't speak English, but they are very adept at copying the bad things you are doing and then doing it right a few times so you see the error of your ways.

There are a hand full of Thai fighters, but I don't want to give the impression that I am in a dark and dingy Thai fighter factory. There are three rings. Beginner (me) which might have 5-12 people in it, Intermediate (advanced fitness and technique folks), and Advanced (people who are active fighters and UFC types). The instructors are all hard core and are fairly accomplished fighters in their disciplines, but I train with mostly western expats and long stay tourists. Sometimes there are kids, but they get whisked away after warm up. There are a surprising number of folks who are here to FIGHT though. It keeps the vibe mostly intense and no nonsense, but like a lot of things, it is what you make of it.

The organized daily work schedule is (Monday - Saturday):

7:00 - 8:00am Yoga or running, or skills workshop at 7:30
8:00 - 11:00am'ish stretching, skills and fitness
3:30 - 4:00pm skills or running
4:00 - 7:00pm'ish stretching, skills and fitness

Its fairly consistent if you want it. You could work out from 7-7 and have no trouble finding someone to partner with.

Which brings my battered body into focus. I've been trying to keep it not too crazy to make sure that I don't blow myself up in the first week. My forearms go from fine to not in a seemingly random pattern. On Tuesday I did the full meal deal, but had to cut it 45 minutes short in the afternoon as I just couldn't do it anymore. I realized that I was going to hurt myself... on purpose... to make it stop. So I have worked out 5 times in the first four days (20 hours or so). I eat rice and noodles with chicken or pork. I've had one drink-drink (a tall can of Heineken, almost frozen) and some Cokes, but I generally drink only water and that by the truckload.

I don't know how many punches and kicks I throw in a day, but me and my whole family would need to take off all of their shoes and socks - to work all the abacuses that the problem would require to tally.

Clinch training isn't my favourite. Its the really close quarters stuff in Muay Thai. The idea is to keep your opponent close and set him up for some good old fashion knee sandwiches or a take him down while preventing him from doing the same to you. Its very much like stand up wrestling. There is almost a certainty that your opponent will not be wearing a shirt and will be sweating as much as you. You lock up and squirm around trying to get the advantage while trying to ensure that you don't get wrenched around the ring by your neck (It really hurts, but its kind of fun when you wrench someone else around). This might be too much information, but if you get out of the bath or after a good sweat and rub your arm hard back and forth - do you get little rolls of dead skin? Well I do and so do my fellow combatants. I end up with bits of someone else's skin sticking all over me. After the day is done and I'm taking a stretch and trying not to throw up from over exertion I think, "what is that smell? Where did I smell that before? Oh.. of course.. its that dudes sweat sticking to my shirt. Awesome!"

Random thoughts:

a) I hurt everywhere. Its exciting when you feel the muscle areas that are getting worked. I wish that I wasn't feeling each little fibre so acutely, but exciting all the same.

b) In my limited experience, gloves and wraps either smell new or like rot. I know no in between.

c) Tough tough chicks are are training here. One of them is a tall blond who is the toughest woman I have ever seen. She's a local champion and fights with a serious intensity, but is nice.

d) I want the body of a Muay Thai kick boxer, not the MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) guys.

e) I thought that maybe I'd dabble in some MMA while here. Little bit of jujitsu, little bit of a wrestle here and a touch of submission hold there. Hahahahahahaha. Sometimes I am so unrealistic it hurts.

f) Rings are much smaller than I had pictured in my minds eye (even though I have been to Lumpini stadium to see a card in a previous life - actually in looking at that photo, I think maybe we just have smaller training rings). There is not a lot of room to hide, the corners are kind of soft comfy places and the ropes really do bounce a la WWE.

g) I've felt the "runners high" and I understand how someone could get addicted to it. I wrote on Wednesday - "Today, I rule! Well I didn't rule this morning when I couldn't get out of bed due to incapacitation, but I had the best workout of my life... ever. I've been high for 3 hours so far."

h) If you have someone locked and throw them to the ground and you think that it isn't going to hurt if you follow them down you are wrong. Got DDT'd into the mat with my teeth clacking together with a resounding snap.

i) Humidity is not kind.

All said, they do take care of you here. I mean its not a chess camp and shit happens, but I've heard some pretty scary stories about some hardcore camps in other parts of Thailand. They take cocky tourists and pump them up like they are the next champions, get them on a card and throw them into a ring with a real monster. Serious broken bones (bones I didn't know get broken like eye sockets). It pumps up the fighters record with a KO, everyone from the camp bets heavily on the obvious winner and it hits the highlight reel for Thai TV that fighter X demolished Farang (Thai word for foreigner) Y. I am far away from that stuff here. That being said, if I wanted to fight they would be happy to oblige and push me as hard as I could stand before entering into a ring on some future night. I'll be staying away from that thank you very much. Even if they pair me with another beginner, I don't need my jaw wired shut with a rusty coat hanger. Although, betting on fights is legal here. I could place a huge bet on myself in some smokey Thai stadium and pay for my entire trip and.. and... ...... How much fun would that be?

[EDITOR'S NOTE: This all started with an effort to do "Random Kind Things for My Body", which is here]

Little vacation within a vacation.

2007-10-08T20:28:00.000-07:00

I had a little breakdown in Bangkok. "What the fuck are you doing" and all that. One moment I was fine and the other I was physically nauseous from brain race. Couldn't get out of it. If there was a bus waiting at the door to take me on a 400 hour journey home with no washroom I would have hopped onto it in a second. Decided to take a break from the Internet world for a while to strip off some complexities.

I feel better. I think that it was a wake up call of sorts that there is still some old thought processes and skeletons that are lurking to do a dance all over my happiness if I am not careful. Some of the things I was thinking about made me question whether I have healed from anything. Reality is also not going anywhere, it waits patiently in the wings to wrap its harsh arms around me when I am done with this jaunt. Gotta start thinking about... stuff. and cash and a job and a life and a home and a city and cold and wearing real shoes and and and.

A setback. Stay diligent Mike, eye on the prize and all that.

Moving on.

2007-10-04T22:37:00.000-07:00

Fixed up the passport issues (I think). I will know in 21-28 days how successful I was. I could calculate the amount of time and money that I wasted by not solving this problem before I left, but I am trying to be happy these days. I used my time in Bangkok to get put together. I replaced my shoes that were stolen (yes someone stole my shoes), I mailed some stuff home, did some laundry, and had a shower and put on deodorant. Threw out lots of stuff. I have become obsessive compulsive about throwing stuff out lately. I take great pleasure in purging even a little of piece of paper that I don't need anymore. I did a bunch of reading. I've started washing my face everyday and doing stretches, crunches and push ups. My arms still hurt though. Daily massage is the next step. We shall see. Ever since I started reading the Bible, I started drinking beer again. I am sure that I will find a causal relationship as I continue reading through the scriptures. 28 days wasn't the plan, but we will see what the future holds for this little bit of my "good for my body" endeavors.

I am waiting for a bus to take me to hell for 18'ish hours. Good times. My last stop will be the chemist to get some little helpers OTC. I will not be updating the blog (or on Facebook) for a week. I've got some thinking to do. Stay well.

He takes a mean landscape

2007-10-04T01:12:00.000-07:00

I met Stephen Tapply in Indonesia. Fairly interesting guy. Check out his galleries.

This is kind of fun

2007-10-02T10:25:00.000-07:00

http://play.blogger.com/

Info about it to be found here. It is a real'ish time stream of all of the photos being uploaded to peoples blogs. If only I had an office to waste time in.

Gotta love that Kafka

2007-10-02T08:03:00.000-07:00

I've read a couple of things from Kafka. I like turning to him when I want to have an argument with myself.

A telling quote from a letter to his then fiancee:

"It was certainly not my intention to make you suffer, yet I have done so; obviously it never will be my intention to make you suffer, yet I shall always do so."

He later continues:

"Felice, beware of thinking of life as commonplace, if by commonplace you mean monotonous, simple, petty. Life is merely terrible; I feel it as few other do. Often - and in my inmost self perhaps all the time - I doubt whether I am a human being."

See people.. things aren't so bad after all.

Top 5: Funniest google searches that have led to this blog (to date)

2007-10-01T10:51:00.000-07:00

#5: im 14 and my back hurts
#4: hookers at new bangkok airport
#3: "full toilet" ny
#2: sex little india singapore

AND... drum roll please... The number one, funniest google search that has led to Mike's blog:

#1: my back hurts when i go number 2

Ba dump bump.

David the king begot Soloman by her who had been the wife of Uriah.

2007-10-01T02:18:00.000-07:00

Those crazy Gideons. Leaving their Bibles all willy nilly in predominantly Muslim countries. This book has been on my to read list for quite some time and I decided to finally see what all the fighting is about. Instead of cramming this space with all my millions of questions and findings, I am dumping them all here: http://mikeandthebible.blogspot.com

If you are reading this, then I find it unlikely that you will want to wade through the drivel of a religious neophyte. If you DO want to read any of it or, better yet, if you have any knowledge of such things then you know where it is. Anonymous posting is allowed and encouraged :)

There will also be a mikeandthekoran blog, but let me get this out of my system first.

Scrabble (The agony of defeat)

2007-09-28T00:52:00.001-07:00

Facebook has its ups and downs as anyone who is on it will tell, but I like the Scrabble app. I just lost the best game that I have ever played. It was a complex board, interesting and we got to use cool words like "anal". It would have been totally impossible to have played in person though. I don't think that Matt would have enjoyed watching me stare at the board for hours on end (literally).

Good game Matthew.

"good game. especially the last part where I won."

Too bad you are a jerk.

Thoughts I am mulling over today:

2007-09-27T19:07:00.000-07:00

"Change is inevitable, growth is optional"
This is a great quote. I tend to be enthralled with other people's thoughts that make me say "Of course. I believe that. Tell me something I don't know." It is only when I think on it do I realize that although I may have been on the same track and I immediately agree with the component parts, I have been beating around the bush my whole life. I realize that I have unwittingly made a whole bunch of caveats to a simple rule. A more honest criticism of me is that I tend to take a seemingly complex rulebase, some anecdotal and empirical evidence, come up with a loosely organized and complex way of thinking about it and totally miss the point. The resultant doesn't distill and its no axiom, I can assure you. Life is complex. I need to strive to break it down before I build it up. Once again someone wiser than I in life beat me to the punch line and I am the better for it. Simple and succinct. Universally applicable. Today I trimmed a whole branch from my tree and that squirrel with the fluffy tail and mental energy siphoning fangs was still on it. This isn't a new thought, but I will pretend that it is. Thanks old surfing lady.

Rigidity (again)
I had another "of course" moment when I was talking to a friend about arguing. We were talking about those people who love to argue. To debate and more importantly to win those debates. They feel that the more confused their fellow combatant is - the better. My comment was that this is a total bullshit way to approach conflict. This person isn't seeking mutual understanding or striving for forward movement. The only possible outcome is a momentary self pat on the back and of only frustration and resentment on the other side. It is born out of a fear of the vacuum; the unknown of not being rigid, of letting go. I had a sudden flash of self hatred. I sometimes used circular argument as a coping mechanism for my not knowing how to deal with change. Internally and externally.

The Brick
Even with no job, negative cash flow and unsteady brain, important things in life can still be put on lay-away. I'm glad.

Email is Bullshit
A concise form of communication it is not. Said, unsaid, simple or complex, each word carries the heavy burden of history... and imaginary, criminally insane half brothers.

Knocked Up
It’s a funny movie. After the earthquake when Katherine is giving Seth hell for not protecting her and the cop drives by. Seth (an illegal Canadian alien) is trying to act all nonchalant after throwing his bong away and says "California.... eh?". Its so Canadian.

My Bali washroom (a decomposition).

2007-09-26T20:00:00.001-07:00

The place I am staying at is really nice and mostly clean. There a bunch of ants in my room, but they seem more interested in eating all the furniture than making my life miserable. I'm not sleeping very well though, so maybe they are and I just don't know it. There are a few cockroaches and I killed one last night in the bathroom that was about 2 inches long. I was tired and was thinking that I should take a picture of it in the morning to gross everyone out before I stuffed it down the drain. I couldn't sleep and an hour later (almost exactly an hour), I went to the bathroom. It appears as though the ants in this place also eat the flesh of the fallen. My award winning pinup model, "Miss Roach, September" was only half the size.

Then I started a 100 minute time lapse of what was going on and went to sleep.

I am still learning on my 4-5? year old Cannon S50. When you take a time lapse, it refocuses every time it takes a shot. It makes sense, I just never thought about it. Next time I will set it to manual focus and make sure to get all the action (and set a more appropriate aperature). Even if I knew, I probably wouldn't have cared because I didn't relish lying on the floor of the washroom at 2am, a foot from Antstock 2007. I should also have brought a mini tripod instead of propping it up on two 500 rupe coins. The camera shifted at one point in the night. Maybe the ants tried to carry it down the drain? The last frame is a picture from 9am this morning. I'll see if I can get some more food for the drain dwellers / construction crews and get a better set of shots. You get the point that I was trying to get across though I am sure :)

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Check out the matchstick that is inexplicably on my washroom floor and strangely moving.]

Blogger template edits (footer font size, post widths)

2007-09-25T05:01:00.000-07:00

Did some maintenance on ye old blog. I found the footer to be a bit oppressive, which led me to this link which was very helpful.

Another thing that drove me around the bend was the default behavior of wrapping words around photos. I like to wrap text around photos sometimes. Small photos are too small. Medium photos allow you to still get the point even if you don't click them to enlarge. Large photos are too large (and don't wrap text). With the font size and layout, I always get these orphaned words and blank spaces beside photos.

I made the following changes to my default template - "Minima".

Made the whole thing 60 pixels wider:

#outer-wrapper {
width: 720px;
(from 660px)

#footer {
width:720px;
(from 660px)

#header-wrapper {
width:720px;
(from 660px)

And soaked it up in the posting container:

#main-wrapper {
width: 470px;
(from 410px)

We will see if it sticks. Maybe I will be lucky and the new width will be the same as the "new post" preview... don't get me started on that.

Indonesian five.. oh crap.

2007-09-25T03:29:00.000-07:00

I've learned a little bit more about the workings of the cops here. They have a strange rule that is kind of like double jeopardy in the US (wow.. I didn't know that was also a valid defense in Canada): You can't be charged for something if you have been charged for it in the last two weeks (IF you have a receipt).

Lets do some learning through a hypothetical situation with my imaginary friend, Billy. Oh Billy.. sometimes! Oh mon dieu! Lets suppose the following set of circumstances were true:

1. That Billy doesn't have an international license and is driving illegally while on vacation.
2. That he thinks that this fact is of no consequence where he is, because nobody ever checks for such things.
3. That on Billy's morning commute for breakfast there is a sometimes manned, sometimes not manned Polisi hut.
4. That once in a while they try to wave Billy down and he pretends not to see them and heads on down the road.
5. That he thinks that they must just be waving hello as he knows that the police are very friendly on the island where Billy is on vacation.
6. That one day (for the sake of argument and for the purposes of this exercise, we might as well say today) they seemed SO eager to shake his hand that they stood directly in front of him while Billy was doing 50.

So he needs that receipt so he can be all like "diplomatic immunity" and shit. He has been told that one can be had for 10-20k for locals.

I have to warn the class that in my imagination, Billy is a stupid head causing all kind of angst and self doubt and that there may be more optimal and predictable attacks. That said, if this were to happen in real life, he would recommend an approach that is similar to:

1. Say you have a valid license at (imaginary, medium distance away hotel) and you would be happy to go and get it and bring it back. Yes? Find new breakfast place.
2. No? Negotiate hard on the bribe option and then say that you might as well get a receipt so that they don't "check" you again on the way back.
3. Smile.
4. He doesn't have any real knowledge of it, but in this particular, hypothetical case, 2 x bribe equals receipt. Results may vary in real life.
5. Shake hand of man in charge and say the people of your vacation island are really quite nice.
6. Ask if any more "random" checks will be necessary for this particular tourist sucker (you).
7. Start wearing too small, leather, do-nothing helmet.

I hope that there is no more learning to be had for any of us in this particular oddity of life in Bali.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Now this is WAY too funny. I've learned even MORE about what goes on here. Locals pay a 10-20k bribe, or get a ticket to wait 2 weeks to pay. The gist of what I did, was not get a receipt that I thought I was getting, but paid to be ticketed. The old bait and switch. Hahahaha They must love me in this place. NOW I know how this things works and at least I still can't get another ticket for no license. I think.. hopefully no more updates.]

I'm not surfing, but loving the surf movies

2007-09-24T08:20:00.000-07:00

These guys take it a little bit far, but the cinematography is superlative. IMDB entry that doesn't say much here. These are BIG waves. If you ever want to feel little in the face of the oceans immense power - watch this and feel the fear.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: I had originally linked the image from another site. They swapped it for an ad. I'm not sure who owns that material. Although limited, that site would have got SOME traffic at least. Subsequently, I have downloaded and posted the movie cover from here.]

Random updates on life in Bali.

2007-09-22T05:30:00.000-07:00

Surfing, beer, waxed thread and flying.

I stopped surfing when I left Kuta. I pretend that it is geography, but I am hurting. Actually I am hurt. I was involved actively in two sports that are pretty arm centric and I strained a tendon in my left arm from getting my bulk up on the board. This arm is also the one that I use to pull up the front of the glider at launch which incurs a reasonable amount of strain. As I get better at it, it becomes less and I am not doing 5 hours of ground handling a day which took its toll back when I was a rank amateur instead of just an amateur. I decided to take a little break from the water which was sage, but my little on camera antics reminded me to be more careful (pain). I am at a point that I can generally pick waves that don't suck, generally get up on them, generally follow them along and steer and do all that good stuff. I've hit the pause button on my surfing career. This makes getting sponsored pretty difficult which was my plan to keep me out of a job until quite recently ;)

I haven't had a beer since labour day. The hard part is still the heat and camaraderie. A man can only drink so much pop, water and fruit juices during the day while folks are laughing and bonding with each other over a Bintang (tasty and cheap local brew).

I am hesitant to update on flossing cuz thats kind of trivial, but in the spirit of Garth, I need to come clean (haha). I have some work to do to insert it into my daily routine and have only about a 50% adoption rate at the moment.

Flying. I love flying, but I am coming off a 2 day hiatus for physical and mental reasons. I really didn't understand what happened during the diabolically bad session which kind of scared me. Being dragged around is one thing, flying fast 1 foot off the ground is quite another. Its surprisingly speedy and there are a lot of hard things like people and bamboo huts to be found that low to the ground. "Mentor" is the only adequate word for Basil (which is not his real name - Garrit bwahahahahahaha). He is a retired guy who is staying at my hotel and I think one of the best pilots here. He is very giving of knowledge and he has a wealth of experience to draw upon. We talked a lot about it and I understood better why things broke down the way that they did. Mostly he helped to fill in some missing information about cause and effect, aerodynamics and smrts.

Two days ago I had my best day of flying yet. The glider lifted off like it was carefully placed above my head by a kind and caring lover (the kind that actually loves you). It was smooth and gentle and as close to ideal as I have had so far. My second launch has been regarded as 95%, but I have a careful optimism that I am back on track. I flew for a total of 2 fantastic hours.

[EDITORS NOTE: Today I also had a meaningful day and made a few mistakes, but I'm generally happy with the process. After my first couple of hours of flying, the sky was crimson with inconsiderateness and the landing zone was covered in peoples crap. I was frustrated, the radio wasn't working and in my haste to get on the ground and apply sunscreen to my nose I kind of pushed it. A terrible landing, but a good learning experience. Sometimes Basil over does it on the "mentoring", although he had some good advice today. "If you are so frustrated with the BS that went on here today and so eager to get on the ground, you might get onto the ground a LOT faster than you intend. Take a ride down the coast and breath. Don't come back until you remember why you are here". I landed pissed off about getting cutoff (a million times in every which way possible), went and sat by myself for a while and then was back at it. I did a few rounds of approaches and took four and a half out of five good landings with no input from my instructor. A good finish. Learning learning learning. 16 or 17'ish hours to date. I should make my 20 goal before I wrench myself away from the hill and onto the traveling thang again.]

Economics.

Once I left Kuta, the economics of this country got great. By my earlier definition of "living" I could easily pull it off for $10 /day. My room is $6, 2 beer at a cafe costs $1.25, Internet is either free or $0.30 / half hour, an awesome rice and meat cornucopia of flavour from any random stall is $1.00 and more incidentals than you could shake a stick at rounds it up to $10. The problem is that my requirements have changed slightly. I need a motorbike ($3) and I need to feed that bike to the bank breaking tune of $0.50 in petrol daily. I am no longer a heathen and beer is the work of the devil, but if I drink wine then they are "fermented in a stained bathtub, doubling as a toilet for a family of 13" tasting and $3 per. Another mango lassi please. Yum! a breakfast omelet. You get the picture. Renting gear at the hill is obscenely priced in comparison which makes my quest for living on the cheap a farce anyways, but I pretend that that isn't happening and therefore don't need to account for it. If I am honest, I am probably spending 20 bucks and living like a king. Well, my crown got knocked a bit askew last night during a fight with the most enormous cockroach that I have ever seen, but thats neither here nor there. Why is it then that I have spent so much money while here? Right... the thing thats not happening. I have adopted an expensive sport to learn and dream of every night. I do... every night I am flying for at least part of it. If I am awake, I instant replay every good and bad flight. One night I woke up flaring. Too funny.]

Food.

I haven't talked much about the food on this trip overall, but it has been (almost) universally good. Food needs to meet one of two criterion for it to be eaten: it has to either smell good; or be spicy as hell. There are only two meals that I've been burned on. One was a gut wrenching chicken surprise in Thailand (the surprise being food poisoning) and the other was a nasi goring in Malaysia when all of those tasty looking little bits of meat ended up having eyes and tails (deep fried anchovies - who knew?). I couldn't get over the fishy taste or all of those beady little eyes staring me down. I hate anchovies.

There is a stall across the road from my hotel, unfortunately named "Mercury Seafood". Kind of like the shoe stores called "Athletes Foot". Well intentioned; poor connotation. I try to eat there often and have either the chicken with chili sauce, rice and vegetables or the whole fried fish with the same ($1.00 or $1.25 - yes this meal cost me $1.25). I have a running joke with the guys there that they can't make it hot enough for me to not eat. So far I am winning, but a few days ago it was neck and neck, a laugh fest as beads of sweat ran down my face while I continued to deride their chili infusing abilities.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: I am sinning a bit. There is a place a few kms down the road which makes an amazing pizza and has free wireless Internet. You can sit there and watch awesome surf videos and catch up on whats going on. Arghhh 3 days running.]

Dreamland.

Aptly named, there is a beach 10 or 15 minutes down the road that is kick ass. It costs 50 cents to get into it and that is money well spent. The first day I went down I was pretty excited as I thought it mightn't not be a bad surfing destination for me. The next few times that I went it was pretty fierce (no camera). The entire coast is being raked with some heavy surf so I hear. One time I decided to go swimming for a bit and boy did I get demolished. You wade out to waste deep water and then a set comes in and the rip almost knocks you forward off your ass. Suddenly you are standing on the beach again and you can look left and catch a crazy view of surfers doing their kamikaze thing on 10-12 foot faces at what seems to be eye level. Then you realize that 6 feet of churning white water is coming in fast. If you jump too soon, you end up dragged across the beach (the best case. Worst case is the incoming surf nails your legs and you do a subsequent handstand). If you jump too late then you end up.. well, dragged across the beach. Lets just say that I had to buy Q tips to get all of the sand out of my EAR! which still hasn't cleared. I'm still picking bits of sand out of weird places. Definitely the biggest surf that I have been swimming in. Good times.

Travels.

Crap. My 25 day, cross Indonesia tour is kind of screwed. I dropped Java off the Itinerary a while back and now if I want to keep my connector flights to Bangkok I have to leave... tomorrow. Thats not gonna work. SO. I am leaving October 1st before my Visa runs out and I still plan to spend some time in Sumatra. You can get stamped in and out for $150 (before negotiation) to get another 30 days here, but I've drawn a line in the recently poured concrete. There is too much that I want to see and do, no matter how cohesive I feel while flying and surfing. Fluidity knows bounds. Also complicating is the fact that if I don't leave now and sort my passport issues out then I might be stuck in whatever country I find myself in on Oct 21st (6 months before my passport expires). If I were a betting man, I would say I would be in Bali for another 3 days. My instructor is taking a day off and wants to go flying with me in Chandi Desa and there is some surfing that I want to do to leave on a good note. I'm happy, but every day that I spend here I am blowing more cash on paragliding when I could be seeing more of an inspiring country. It is tough to balance. Sumatra is also my most likely target for a $5 day... AND I don't want Sumatra to become my new Burma (an area that I haven't been to yet, despite repeated attempts to do so). Will keep you updated.... If its December 1st and I am still talking trash about people cutting me off at the hill don't think any less of me. It is, after all, "recently" poured concrete.

Morning of the earth.

2007-09-21T06:38:00.000-07:00

Watch it.

Some of these beaches I've been on. I CAN'T believe how much they have changed. Its a beautiful "period piece" through its age about surfing.

Kitty.

2007-09-21T05:09:00.000-07:00

I'd grown accustom to her eccentricities a bit, but she was getting unnerving. Even incense couldn't make her get into the spirit with 75ccs? of raw power and 33,000 kilometers to her name. She had taken to stalling unexpectedly and at all the wrong times. I went for a ride up the west coast of the island one day and a local at one of the beaches I stopped at actually was feeling the front tire and laughing. The nail in the coffin (thank got it wasn't mine) was when a bike cut in front of me, to the inside of a dump truck and tossed a pop bottle poorly into the back, missing miserably. A real hazard at 60km/h, no real breaks, bald tires and a machine that is operating at its diminished limits. Not really a relaxing way to spend my afternoon. I missed it barely. One day it took me 2,5 hours to get home. She also got a thorn in her back paw (thankfully only a few hundred metres from a handy tire fixit stall - only $2 for a new tube, installed in 20 minutes flat). I was happy to say goodbye to her limp, physically and mentally challenged body. My distrust had made me timid and THAT is what was going to surely end up in my premature ticket home.

There is a new bike in town. I've affectionately called her Blu; less of a donkey and more like an ox. You can rent anything up to a huge Harley here if you have the money and the skill, but I had shied away from manual bikes because I figured that I had enough to concentrate on and I am a far cry from an "expert". I didn't realize that most of the "manual" bikes here are actually "semi automatics" where you need to select the gears, but there is no proper clutch. Her brakes and gear selector are in the proper places, her brakes brake and all!, she has compact car sized tires, two mirrors that actually work (I am not simply checking to make sure that my left love handle is still where I think it is). American hard iron power of 125ccs (the extra power is much appreciated and it is heavier. It doesn't get buffeted in the wind to the same extent). I still find myself reaching for for a phantom clutch at shift time, but being able to down shift if needed is probably safer in the long run. A huge improvement to what the death trap had on offer. My commute is a reasonably pleasant drive with about 30% of the traffic. There are no Polisi huts and I am SO safe that I am "remounting" my role as Peter Fonda in Easy Rider, with my greasy locks swaying in the breeze (sorry mom).

Head south, young man.

2007-09-21T04:40:00.000-07:00

It was surprising hard for me to leave Kuta (about 7 or 8 days ago). I had become surprisingly installed in a place that is the antithesis of what I think I am looking for. It was a gross town, but I think I just really needed to stay in the same place for a while.

They have a bar there with drinking contests. A wall of fame and all. One guy wrote "Scottish. We invented drunk". He drank 8 shots in 49 seconds (shortly after that I puked and got thrown out). Seriously though, this beach is like Daytona during spring break. Every night, all night. I've driven to Daytona, more than once.. well three times actually. One time I even took a bus. Now that's dedication to the cause... and embarrassing. Here its less embarrassment that I feel and I see it more of an opportunity to make some serious fun of whats going on. I saw a 40 year old man in dockers and tucked in dress shirt (loafers with no socks... yes I'm serious) rolling around on the floor because he couldn't get up, grinding against pillars and then fighting the boyfriend of one the hottest girls in the world (boy did I ever get a thrashing that night :). Its fun, but gets tired. If I open up my encyclopedia of clichés I would find Kuta under "a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there (for long)". There are also some of the hottest bodies that I have ever seen in waking life parading around in almost nothing, which is more tortuous, but somehow doesn't get tiring. Strange.

Most of the tourists on Kuta beach are from Australia. I guess its kind of like me going to Daytona for a holiday. The touts pick up on that type of thing and tend to say "mate" a lot. Their Ts tend to come across as Ks to the uninitiated. "You want to buy a Tshirt Mike? Transport? Hey Mike, massage? Woman Mike? You want a blow? Marijuana Mike? You like Charlie?".... I don't even know the man... How do I know you? It was a serious problem. I kept taking double takes at touts, hawkers, drug dealers, whores and legitimate massage types alike where a single take is too much to offer in most circumstances. It is a sign of weakness; of interest; of certain infestation to a man who thinks he just heard his name and a special kind of hell for a man who absolutely HATES being hustled. I once got pulled out of the window of a truck like bus by a throng of very hungry and enterprising taxi drivers in Laos at 3am. I didn't like it before that night and especially don't like it now. Its also part of traveling alone and I've inherited oodles of behavioral expectation from those lonely male travelers who have come before. I am a freaking magnet walking down the street past 2am (in any country). We (tourists) created this in a culture which is otherwise deeply spiritual, honest and timid (at least from what I have seen during my limited time here).

It did feel strangely like bizzaro land home though. I had wheels (decrepit and dangerous wheels, but wheels all the same), I liked my hotel (although it was too expensive for what it was), I had a dude who I rented my surfboard from in the morning, I knew where to go and get good, cheap coffee, I knew how to get around the one way roads and back into town (I went days! without getting lost). If I wanted to spend a $1 on some delicious nasi goring, $2 on a whole red snapper, or $3.50 on some great pizza it was all there. I knew the name of the guy who checked my bags for bombs when I went for my free Internet glut in the evening.

It was kind of creepy staying almost directly across from the previous site of the Sari Club, but they have a nice little memorial. The locals say that they are about 65% recovered from the mayhem, but the last 35% will take quite a long time methinks.

As soon as I left I felt good about it, but I had dug myself in with a fair bit of inertia. It was definitely time, although tough to get away. The commute was taking way too much out of me. Its not the physical side of it (although I was generally exhausted from a morning surf), but it was concentrating so intently all the way there, concentrating so intently 400ft over the ocean for the afternoon and turning around and doing it again. My brain just isn't built for that type of thing these days and I would arrive back at my room twitching, covered in pollution with contacts that where glued to my eyeballs with a heady brew of noxious dust and goo. Then there was that fucking scooter, forged from the depths of hell.

Speaking of larger than life,

2007-09-21T04:20:00.000-07:00

check out this setup.

You get some cool perspectives in flight. This is some rich Australian dude's place that you can rent out all or part of for some serious cake I am sure. Check out the open air chill out lounge (with loft), the infinity pool with the skylight to the room below and the palm trees with the glass railings that are planted on some sort of garden deck underneath. If you get lower you can see all this stuff more on the level. At that point however avoiding the cliff and catching lift is a little bit more important than blog worthy photography :)

And this is their view. I've never actually seen anyone there, just a gaggle of minions doing menial minion type of stuff. Hard core rich folks, although probably not as rich as you might think (not necessarily so at least).

Drama and blogging. Ackems Razor.. sort of.

2007-09-21T03:42:00.000-07:00

I was out on the patio of my hotel chilling when two of the paraglider folks came in and asked if I wanted to head up to Chandi Desa for the night and do some flying there the next day. It was a great opportunity and I wanted to check it out as it is meant to be a stunning site. I called my instructor and asked if he would rent me a wing for the trip and what he thought of the whole idea. The launch is really tricky at the top of the hill (you have to be perfect or bad things happen) and even the lower launches off a myriad of peanut terraces are a bit dodgey (picture of one of the guys taking off below, "Basil"). He decided it wasn't really wise and I was happy to concede. Trusting a guy to keep me safe and then overriding his call is a bit ridiculous. I decided to go and observe and I trudged up the hill to check it out after a couple of hours worth of driving. I had a really good time.

I remember me and Jeh sitting in Wide Open one night and I was trying to explain a problem that I have with the act of blogging. I'm a little bit paranoid that this thing is overly dramatic, but just the act of writing something down as an attempt to describe it automatically makes that happenance 100 times more dramatic than in real life. "The dingy and poorly lit bar was as it should be. A hundred details that make me like the place were immediately apparent. Comfort. A good friend at my side and my favourite bartender doing what she does best; charm. The stereo plays some guilty pleasure for the 1000th time. Life is good." Its all true. I felt it all. Dramatic as fuck. "I went out for a beer with Jeh and it was fun" is also true, but it doesn't convey anything about how I felt or what was around me. So anyways, I'm in Chandi Dessa and we stayed in an awesome place for $5 including an egg sandwich breakfast and coffee. I was struck by this place and I paused at the door to my room that night. I need to tell people about this door. Its beautiful. There is a problem though, as the act of describing this door to any extent would have made it the door of a palace, of mythic proportions and incalculable worth. A picture is worth a thousand of them,

but it was a great door. It was a great place. Why do I feel like I can't describe them without making them larger than life? Its strange and I don't really know what to think of it. I am enjoying writing for the first time (this thing is my first foray into writing for joy). The primary purpose of this is to keep a diary for later years while keeping loved ones informed (my first attempt to do so that has ever stuck for more than a day). Everything that I write about has happened and is as factual as I can make it. I'm not sure why I feel like I can no longer write about stuff and when I do, it feels like I need to tone it down. Which kind of feels like lying to me. This door was awesome.

I have come to the conclusion that my inner critic needs to take a Valium. I need to get back to the who gives a toss Mike. For better or worse. Dramatic or not. He just keeps rearing his ugly, deformed head.

Almost (in)famous(ly incompetent).

2007-09-17T08:01:00.001-07:00

So I thought this post should really be a narrative between all of my personalities in my head, but I don't really have a clever name for my ego and writing a dialogue about today would be a) a lot of work and b) kind of stupid. Besides, Mike's Ego (Mick?) has had a tough enough day already without everyone laughing at his expense.

I was selected as an ambassador for the school for a segment on BaliTV. My progress has been good and I'm a tourist.. Go Bali! It was a stunning day and the hill was all a buz with activity. The camera crew was there and a beautiful Balinese woman was doing the commentary. All the pros were doing cool flyby's and there were tonnes of great footage of people gently soaring over the ocean like poster children for some sort of serenity foundation. I was getting my gear ready and it was time for my big brush with local fame. - Enter Mike stage left - I was asked a bunch of vanilla questions about my experience and why I was here, about safety and what flying was like in my country. Well... I'm not really sure how flying actually is near Toronto, but I faked it all the same. I also lied and said that "it has always been a dream of mine to paraglide", because it seemed like something someone magnanimous would say. The story of a desire to surf and a succession of seat sales bringing me eventually to Bali, resulting in my accidental passion for paragliding seemed something that my adoring fans did not want to hear ;)

Ok.. time to fly... I can hear her talking to the camera in Bahasa Indonesia, but I could hear "michael" being said a lot. "Watch now as Michael, superstar student, readies himself to launch off this here cliff and realize the dream of the ancients; to soar among the birds". Both camera angles ready. I leaned down to get all of my risers sorted out and a "brush with fame" it was as my face went right into the seat of a very tight pair of designer jeans. "Watch now as Fido the Canadian tourist performs the sacred preflight ceremony, paying homage to all of the God's of Doggie Flight". This was going to be one of those moments that my fragile ego dreads.... I can tell, I'm keen like that. I was finally all set, although already blushing, as I pulled the wing over my head to get this show on the road. "Road rash" is more accurate as my poor launch caused my sorry ass to be dragged all over the launch site. I tried again and still couldn't get it. The camera crew moved onto more camera worthy material. Perfect! However, they set up in the corner of the site and I can just see myself in the background of her commentary, being dragged into and out of frame. Left to right, right to left. Repeatedly. Like 10 times. I eventually had to take a break and it was getting a bit ridiculous. I felt bad for my instructor, but I couldn't help but laugh my ass off. This was funny stuff. Way too funny.

It was a gnarly day on the hill and I saw some more tree landings, ripped canopies, near collisions, my first "crevat" and random scary stuff. One guy who just came in from Singapore really struggled and smashed into the side of the cliff, breaking his leg. The wind was pretty strong and as such you need to do a reverse launch... it's the rule. He didn't know or couldn't do one and insisted on playing it forward anyways. He barely escaped with a scary looking launch, lost some altitude while he got himself settled, turned directly into the cliff, caught some suspension lines on a tree and smacked with brutal force into a very large, bone crushing rock. He awaited rescue, dangling by his canopy two feet off a ground, only slightly above another imposing and sheer rock face. He was actually trying to climb out of his harness, which in this case (I am told), could have easily caused his death. Scare-yeeeee.

The wind picked up and I decided that I was done for the day. Not a great day for the sport from a publicity standpoint, as it was a bit of a gong show.

I really don't know what the hell went wrong with my launches - gotta get that nailed.

"Learning to fly" and there is a lot of learning going on (an update)

2007-09-16T06:45:00.000-07:00

I have finished my course and continue to learn as I go along. I have 20ish flights (about 10ish hours in the air) and I hope to log 25 hours of flying time before I leave. I am top landing each time (landing in the same spot from where I took off) and have done about 30 landings of this type so far (when it isn't busy on the hill, I touch down and then take off again for practice). Top landing is good; beach landing bad. It's a hellish walk up that cliff along the steep goat path. I am getting better and I continue to have the utmost trust in my instructor and he has started trusting me more. We have a little bit of an understanding now and although he watches me like a hawk, he only uses the radio when he thinks that I am about to cause (major) harm to myself or those around me. The approach is a bit unnerving in a strong offshore breeze as you need to start the baseline leg about 20-30 metres lower than the lip of the cliff. You don't catch the lift until you are quite close to it and then you shoot up the side, up over the lip, across the landing site, into the wind and down. This happens fairly quickly and sometimes I feel like maybe this time the magical elevator is going to be out of order due to servicing and I'll smack into the side of the cliff. Sometimes you come in too low and have to abort. Sometimes you come in too high and the lifting force causes you to overshoot the height by 10 or 20 meters from where you want to be. Its kind of funny as every once in a while I look down to see this 140lb Balinese dude smiling big as he gives a little point to the left or the right when I am off course and not "ideal", but not "running with scissors". I find comfort in knowing that if I am being a total dumbass that there is someone who will override my call and prevent me from unwittingly pushing through with an impossible or dangerous situation. My first top landing was a cacophony of instructions. Left, right, slow, smooth, hands up, down, more break, less break, 1 centimeter more, less, quarter breaks, half breaks blah blah blah. "Too high, we try again - o.k. Michael?". Progress.

I am on my fourth different glider as I continue to learn and can safely handle a little bit more performance in my flying. It allows me (with considerable respect for the dangers involved, guidance and tutoring) to know whats out there and faster, more responsive wings allow me fly in a wider range of wind conditions. For instance, in the wind today the first wing I was under would have done nothing but fly up... and straight backwards (which really isn't cool). I think I am committed to the sport enough that I will be purchasing my own kit (once I have a source of income of course :) and now I'll be a little bit more informed / experienced through the opportunity to leach knowledge and demo equipment here in Bali. Its also very educational to take a break from flying and watch different gliders / pilots approach things differently. I've learned a massive amount from sitting myself down next to some of the wizened old timers and asking a million questions with live, contextual examples of what and what not to do.

I am having some sublime moments in the air and wind and weather patterns are becoming a little bit less random in my mind. I am starting to understand where the best lift is to be found from the landscape with differing wind direction and speed. Yesterday I spent the afternoon skirting around a temple and at one time I was about 15m away from this guy as we shared some laughs and had a casual conversation about how freaking great things were. Today I had the entire coastline to myself for an hour in some beautiful wind and sunshine. After that though, the sky was thick with 10 gliders, but even thats a good opportunity to learn and apply the rules of the road practically (although annoying as hell).

From the air I've seen two people land in the ocean, one guy do a harsh downwind landing on the beach, another guy hanging upside down in the trees after a pretty weird looking launch and another guy plow directly into the lip of the landing site after doing everything wrong that he could (everyone was fine). Its helpful to see good and bad takeoffs and landings from all angles. If I don't know why things went bad, I ask to make sure that I minimize the chances of the same happening to me. Some of these people are "expert" pilots and have logged an impressive amount of hours and this in itself is a sage lesson to be learned.

Anyways, I love it and could go on and on. I am really enjoying the active learning and although its not like running a marathon, my body is loving the different activities. I'll save everyone the ramblings... I have a book to read... and an exam tomorrow morning. Wish me luck.

Far away from it all

2007-09-12T07:31:00.000-07:00

Didn't even feel it.. No big wave to worry about apparently.