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Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Bring the Africans to Kansas Philip Greenspun was just in Africa doing some assessement on technology related stuff. It's somewhat interesting, the post which resonates the most considers the cost of getting things done in Africa as opposed to Kansas: African Internet has already been discussed in these pages.  Basically, it doesn’t exist and, where it does, the costs are 10-100X higher than in the rest of the world.  A handful of insiders make some good money from the telecom monopoly, but the effect on business is devastating. Until these issues are resolved, it is hard to see how foreign aid to Africa will lead to sustainable growth.  Currently, it would be much cheaper to bring skilled Africans to Kansas than trying to do business in Africa.  Housing costs in Kansas are about the same as in Africa.  Security is free in Kansas.  Telecommunications are basically free.  Getting around by airline to see customers will cost 25-50% of what it would cost from Africa.  If capital investment is required, the cost of capital will be much lower in Kansas since investors won’t fear a Zimbabwean-style expropriation or disintegration. If you haven't read Greenspun before, his dry sarcasm may be a bit of a downer, but in many ways I think it rings true.  The one thing he leaves out of the post is that not only does this drive growth and investment away from Africa, many an African with a fighting chance is exported to the first world as well.  I think it's the loss of people that hurts the most. I'm going to be bold and solution oriented. I'll tell you what I'd do if I became an African president: 1. Privatize all telecommunications infrastructure. (Angering telecom cronies) 2. Privatize physical mail. (Angering postal cronies) 3. Privatize air transport by allowing competition. (Angering transportation cronies) 4. Eliminate tarrifs on all imported commodities excepting luxury items. (Angering that guy in customs who makes his money off of bribes) 5. Take money from countries that have a human rights priority, with the understanding that everyone looks out for themselves but still believing that money from kleptocracies, dictatorships, totalitarians, and terrorists must be avoided. 6. Tax free businesses, incentives with government money for foreign companies to set up shop. Mental note: I'll be keeping an eye on what ideas TED has to offer. posted in [home], [prattle] 9:27:21 PM    comment []

Sunday, May 06, 2007

Myself, The City When we were in Los Angeles in March I reacquainted myself with the mixture of emotions I feel in that place I used to call home.  Los Angeles for me was never Los Angeles proper - it's the name that people recognize for the cities I'd float between in my life in southern California.  When you make it more granular it was a series of cities, amongst them Pasadena, La Mirada, Fullerton, Whittier, Irvine, and Hollywood. Between these cities there's the unison of that large "metropolitan" connection while each maintains its unique identity.  It's not perfectly correct to say that Hollywood is Los Angeles (although it used to be), but the lines between are so blurry that they operate as a unit - like the invisible barriers between cities that let a person claim one city from the jurisdiction of another. I hated living in Buena Park, so I'd always say Fullerton in response to questions of municipal origin. And it goes without saying that southern California has problems.  The way I prefer to think about it is that they are problems of a true democracy, expressed well in a recent exclamation at my picture of houses in Manhattan Beach:  they're all different; anyone can build what they like there! The mix of people, ideas, economic statuses, and values make a picture that would disconcert any person committed to deliberate structure, unless that structure was lack of structure. So while we were driving around I thought of southern California and its problems.  My acclimation for driving in traffic is gone so it only inspired these thoughts while we sat in idle traffic at odd hours of the day on the freeway.  The conclusion I reached was obvious: you can't really fix southern California.  But I thought that was the type of cheap negativity I prefer to stay away from so I thought bit more and made the connection that even though southern California is an unfixable problem, it wasn't without problem solving. Rather than tackling the whole, one could see pieces of beauty in the mix of the whole - changes in small moves,  little green spaces, gathering places of thought.  The experience is uneven: at one point is Norwalk, a place I never would visit on purpose and at another point is Hollywood, a place I consider personally to die for. But that was March.   After a rough week ending I was looking at the pieces of my life and thinking it was in an unfixable state.  There's no particular thing "wrong" but there is a lack of balance that's been growing - something I pondered and wanted to put a finger upon.  In moments like that I switch off the radio in the car to experience silence and make space.  I'm so used to noise that when I'm confronted with a longer period of silence, it tends to make time since I can no longer be distracted or entertained as time passes by. In that moment, south on I-29 just crossing over 12th street, I thought of myself as a city like Los Angeles - a place that's been built over time with disparately connected centers: my job, my marriage, my body, my spiritual life, my past, and all of the other things that wend their way outwards from an origin labelled "David Seruyange."   While I'm thinking about all that's out of balance I'm thinking of freeway bottlenecks like the golden state freeway (I-5) in Norwalk or how I the hazy sky prevents you from seeing the San Gabriel mountains until you're right up next to them.  Or how strange it feels when I'm observing the mix of orange county high rollers and the Latino day laborers that live such a different life in the same space.  Neither could I tear out and start over than officials blast away a city and redesign it.  Your life, your city - it just grows organically.  I envy the way some people "design" their lives but my envy is based on limited perspectives; on the whole I'd assert that none of us is really in control. You can wear that nice suit or organize your sock drawer if it makes you feel better, but reality is like that deer I hit in winter - invisible until airbag discharge. And from this I extend the problem solving of Los Angeles: the small spaces, the little nooks that get reworked; urban redevelopment that happens a street at a time with a transitory period; a garden that seems out of place until its surroundings change; the visible silhouette of a downtown that is the public image of a place, as stretched as it may be. My spaces are a little scrapbook of beautiful things that I can look at when a day is dreary.  It's when I stop multitasking to spend time with K uninterrupted.  At work, it's the small hack - some code I wrote and can be proud of, even if it's a part of a tower of Babel that doesn't make me particularly happy. At home, it's the places I read my books while drinking coffee. My conclusion is that balance is not about time or priority management as much as it's about those rejuvenating places that I protect with my best fierceness. posted in [home], [prattle] 10:50:13 PM    comment []

Sunday, April 29, 2007

Trips to Minnesota We got back from a quick trip to Minneapolis today. As time has passed the drive has gotten easier and landmarks are starting to impress themselves in my mind. Along the way shortly after crossing the South Dakota/Minnesota border we pass Palisades Park, where I got my camera on a day I won't forget.  At this point we are heading east into Minnesota and don't turn north for the cities until we get to Worthington, Minnesota.  What I remember most about Worthington is the gas station on the exit that turns you northeast on highway 60.  The bathroom wall is a political sounding board that's almost conversational.  The immigration issue seems to be the most recent with a memorable quote: "Jesus died for Mexicans too."  Soon after turning north we hit Brewster, Minnesota which has enormous grain elevators and no visible town after which the next landmark is Windom, which I remember for the name of an sci-fi author I liked as a child, John Wyndham.  The next landmark for me is Madelia, Minnesota, "Pride of the Prairie" - it may be shortly before that but a farmer in those parts has something on the order of 40 light and heavy trucks arranged on his (I'll say "or her" here to sound gender saavy but with the thought that it's pretensiousness comes from the fact that there really isn't a question that it's a he) land near the highway.  From Madelia I start counting down miles to Mankato - a city I'll remember for the following reasons: I got a flat tire there on my first South Dakota/Minnesota trip and it was the first and hopefully only time I rode in the back of a police car as the officer took me to a gas station to call for help (no spare). Mankato is where you really start going north as opposed to northeast as highway 60 becomes 169.  The physical geography changes from prairie farmland to more woodsy hills. On the east side the Minnesota river flows - at first I thought it was the Mississippi River, and even though it's slightly disappointing that I can't write that into this trip I still get a picture of Huck and Jim floating on a raft towards Minneapolis and St Paul.  The last place I've bonded with on the journey north is St Peter, home of Gustavis Adolphus college, and arguably one of the more "pretty" towns I've seen in these parts.  The school is on a hill, with the chapel's steeple marking the high point.  The town also has a "central park" with a gazeebo that orients your eyes towards the hill and the college.  This is the last waypoint for me - after that you can tell you're really close as you hit the suburban sprawl of the cities and franchises start to litter the sides of the highway.  posted in [home], [prattle] 11:45:58 PM    comment []

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Fan Failure I know I'm a Los Angeles Laker fan.  On nights like tonight, as I watch them play with a 26 point deficit against the Phoenix Suns, less the semblance of a game and more a bloodbath, I'm sure of it because being a fan has more to do with pain and perseverence when times are not good than elation and gloating when times are good.  This year has been a bit turbulent - part of the quiet on this blog is my own mental battle with personal failure and writer's block as I'm trying to figure out what happened to my voice.  I've struggled with hitting limits of what I can do that still fall short of the desired goal. I've been fighting the sort of wistful nostalgia that keeps people locked in the past and paralyzed with the present. But perhaps life is like fandome - it's more about what you do when things are rough than when everything is going your way.  The mantra from ZAMM was focus on the journey over a focus on the destination. In moments like this I can stop shouting at the television, or stop being a busybody, and try to figure out exactly how I feel and exactly what is happening.  posted in [home], [prattle] 11:56:52 PM    comment []

Monday, April 23, 2007

Monocle Love Ever since the minivan incident I've been more particular about my input. As my life wends its way down the suburban path I'm focused much more on making sure my cultural exposure contains more nutrients than junk.  When, last month, we were in California and I saw a magazine with a cover story on the Japanese military interspersed with design and architecture, I knew I had to have a copy.  More than once in my life I've experienced what I call "the confluence of good things." I do remember the first time: going to a Bjork concert and seeing a person with a Massive Attach t-shirt and wondering how those two things would collide (yes, I was green at the time).  But this time it's that the magazine I saw, Monocle, has its roots in a magazine I used to have a similar affection for, Wallpaper. Not only that, but Dan Hill, who I've linked to for a long time (actually, since an amazing series of posts he published on Shanghai) is involved as well as a contributor. I just finished the cover story for the second issue which covers (of all my favorite places, more confluence of good things) Norway.  One thing that is exciting about Monocle is the mixture of online and print media; you can find a lot of the stories referenced on the site as well as supplementary material and interviews.  Back to regulating input. posted in [home], [prattle] 12:39:34 PM    comment []

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Seruyange Ecosystem ... in which I write thoughts that I could never have had in my twenties. I can't get over the fact that I own not only a shed, but the wagon wheel propped against it. Although this event is an abrupt change in my residual self image, it's funny but not amazing.  What is amazing is the life around the house now that winter has finally been replaced by Spring. Perhaps two weeks ago we saw the female duck on our front steps.  She was joined soon by her courtier - a drake with a multicolored neck and bright feathers.  He wasn't a permanent presence at first; he'd swing by, like a guy who's testing the water with the girl he's chasing.  A few weeks later, we figured it out: a nest below a bush where she's sitting, presumably on eggs of little ducklings we'll see in a short while. I wonder if it's just me but these days I'm confronted all the time by things I've always known in a logical sense but have never seen naturally.  Out of our western window I looked once, then twice before realizing I'd seen a woodpecker.  I was still, as though my movement might scare it away or shake me out of a dream but there it was: a woodpecker. In a manner similar to the flashbacks people have when they are dying, it was a moment that seemed to last for a long time while I tried to recall what I knew about woodpeckers concluding that it was in its pathetic entirety from the cartoon Woody the Woodpecker. That and some people considered them pests although the motion of the bird was hypnotic. As I get older and become a bad birdwatcher, I wonder if birds live on a different timescale; in the microsecond it takes for me to scrunch my nose or blink an eye, the bird hops several times pecking on the tree. Rabbits run free in the backyard.  It seems as though they make their nest below an evergreen back there, but I'm not sure.  I don't mind too much but I know that K's love for them will be killed when they start eating what we plant in the garden.  Seeing rabbits isn't new though; I saw them all winter and wondered how they stay alive in temperatures that kill off so much.  I understand fur and burrowing, but when we have stretches lasting in days where the temperature remains below freezing I still have to wonder. What I like best in the Seruyange Ecosystem, however, are the two massive trees in the front of our house.  In the prairie that so many characterize in their minds as treeless, flat, and barren it's a form of defiance that I'd like to relay. I live on the prairie, on a hill, with 50 foot entish trees as argonath for my driveway. posted in [home], [prattle] 11:51:03 AM    comment []

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Missionaries This is my small ode to the people who leave you with something you'd never have had that lasts for the rest of your life. Mrs. Ostendorff who loaned us scratchy tapes of classical music, in which I heard Bach for the first time and learned to try to whistle fugues.  I always liked Bach and I never got Mozart.  And to this day I hear Bach and think of those poorly recorded tapes. Jason, who made a skater out of me even though I never did skate. I watch them on television and exchange lingo with the skater/punk kid across the street.  He's baffled that I'd know anything but happy that I appreciate his attempts at kickflips in his driveway.  Back to music, Van Halen's 1984 is a special album. A kid down the street in Portland had it and I won't forget listening to Jump for the first time. Trust me, I'm not into "classic rock" further than the extent of that experience (and some others like it - Pink Floyd moments lets call them), and yet because of that time I always smile when I hear it. A guy named Scott - "xars" - who told me on listless summer days stories out of The Lord of the Rings. It was because of him that I chose Tolkien's book over a caligraphy set for my 13th birthday. It's the reason why I name a lot of my software by picking similar things from Middle Earth.  Another guy, John, many years ago when I was working in Hawaii, took me to the top of Olo Mana and away from the tourists in Waikiki.  Before I die I want to go back to that mountain and climb it again. Authors like Helen Dewitt, who made me believe in books and reading as a grown up. M.H. who taught me that you can be better at what you do by simply having higher standards. My mind pops full of experiences like this - people I encountered and left an imprint for me to carry as I'm hauling life around with me.  I try to take no small notice of the fact that the small experiences I have with people can turn out to be mission work with a good book, a nice riff, or an attitude towards life. As time goes on, I'm more and more open to the missionaries around me.  Most of that is due to the experiences of looking back and feeling ministered to - refreshed, rejuvenated, venturing into a world that I didn't know existed.  So it's with a bit of shock that I realize that as I get more and more open, there are a lot of people around who began closed and become more so as they move forward in life.   "Closed hearts, closed minds" is what I put in my personal message on MSN while thinking about this.  Depressing people; toxic people as Milton Glaser may describe them.  Who are your missionaries?  Do you do missionary work?  If you can't answer either question, I'd ask that you stay away from me. posted in [home], [prattle] 10:23:49 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2007 David Seruyange. Last update: 5/15/2007; 9:27:28 PM.