David Seruyange: Prattle

Wed, 16 May 2007 02:27:21 GMT

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]

Mon, 07 May 2007 03:50:13 GMT

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]

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 04:45:58 GMT

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]

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 04:56:52 GMT

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]

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 17:39:34 GMT

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]

Sat, 21 Apr 2007 16:51:03 GMT

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]

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 03:23:49 GMT

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]

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 04:48:09 GMT

The Irish Are No Longer Poor

J was saying that Pogues tickets are something like $90 a pop. My interest in them really stems from a folk song they covered, Poor Paddy. I'm trying to find the history of the song which seems to have permutated and combinated as time passed. The first version I heard was done by The Cottars, whose lyrics were different as well.

In eighteen hundred and forty-one
My corduroy breeches I put on
My corduroy breeches I put on
To work upon the railway, the railway
I'm weary of the railway
Poor Paddy works on the railway

In eighteen hundred and forty-two
I didn't know what I should do
I didn't know what I should do
To work upon the railway, the railway
I'm weary of the railway
Poor Paddy works on the railway

In eighteen hundred and forty-three
I sailed away across the sea
I sailed away across the sea
To work upon the railway, the railway
I'm weary of the railway
Poor Paddy works on the railway

In eighteen hundred and forty-four
I landed on Columbia's shore
I landed on Columbia's shore
To work upon the railway, the railway
I'm weary of the railway
Poor Paddy works on the railway

In eighteen hundred and forty-five
When Daniel O'Connell he was alive
When Daniel O'Connell he was alive
To work upon the railway, the railway
I'm weary of the railway
Poor Paddy works on the railway

In eighteen hundred and forty-six
I made my trade to carrying bricks
I made my trade to carrying bricks
For working on the railway
I'm weary of the railway
Poor Paddy works on the railway

In eighteen hundred and forty-seven
Poor Paddy was thinking of going to Heaven
Poor Paddy was thinking of going to Heaven
To work upon the railway, the railway
I'm weary of the railway
Poor Paddy works on the railway

In eighteen hundred and forty-eight
I learned to drink my whiskey straight
I learned to drink my whiskey straight
To work upon the railway, the railway
I'm weary of the railway
Poor Paddy works on the railway

posted in [home], [prattle]

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 21:52:16 GMT

Rocket Boom, "The Res"

I don't get the chance to watch a lot of TV beyond the competition shows on Bravo and sports on ESPN. I have, however, shifted to watching a lot of video weblogs. I was surprised today that Rocket Boom spent their entire show today on a transmitter going up in one of South Dakota's reservations, Pine Ridge.

I never held a proper understanding of America's relationship to its natives, but being here makes observation speak volumes with silence and separation. The raw statistics are striking (via Wikipedia): 85% employment, and 97% living below the Federal poverty level. If you're in Sioux Falls, however, you may as well be a world away. Strange in a place with no immigration borders, no physical barriers of integration.

My mother, in an offhandedly insightful way, remarked when she saw a Native American man, destitute near downtown: "Eh, that one has lost hope!" And, on the face of it, without having to be a mystic, you can see that these people somehow did lose themselves when their land was taken from them.

It's hard not to be cynical, but that's not the whole story. There are a lot of Native people who seem to be fighting for their communities and wellbeing. When Jonathan was here we happened upon a presentation on Lakota people at Falls park. The youths earned feathers for personal achievements - staying in school, cultural knowledge and so on. What's in a feather? These weren't your run of the mill feather - they were massive, rare specimins. One kid had a bald eagle feather - so large it almost seemed disproportionate. He bore it with pride.

On my way home I occasionally hear the National Native News show on NPR. A world within the world of "America."

Well, I hope you enjoy your visit to The Res. And stay tuned to Rocket Boom, it's good stuff.

posted in [home], [prattle]

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 04:31:22 GMT

Supermodels

On Saturday conversation with T, as it usually does, meandered into cultural differences. T is Swiss, raised in Canada and engaged a very special girl from Hong Kong. We were talking about the American way and I brought up this idea that not only is American culture real, but the American imagination is filled with supermodels; people who live in our minds as the ideal after which we model ourselves. The first person of this kind to come to my mind was Abraham Lincoln, who most people - the Atlantic Monthly most recently - consider the greatest president. He's a man of humble beginnings, an autodidact who was self made, and one who allowed action and character to supercede speech and eloquence, although most people find an eloquence in that (think Gettysburg).

I asked T who lived in the Swiss mind the way Lincoln lived in ours. No one really jumped to the forefront so I asked about Canada, and then followed with China. The result was not clear. There seem to be folk heroes here and there but none really dominating the social consiousness.

It makes me think that a part of American-ness is that ideal of having an ideal, a supermodel be it Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, or Ben Franklin. Or, a degenerate of popular culture -

That's kind of interesting.

posted in [home], [prattle]

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 04:58:29 GMT

The Last King of Scotland (Film Review)

A long time ago - so long Google search didn't even turn it up! - I read and wrote about a book called The Last King of Scotland, a piece of literary fiction concerning itself with Uganda's infamous dictator, Idi Amin. I had mixed feelings when I learned it would be made into a film, and it's with mixed feelings that I'm writing this review, disappointed in so many ways with the film. The disappointment comes with a sense of awareness in how film works as a medium, and how it can both shortchange and enhance a story.

The story the book concerns itself with is that of Nicholas Garrigan, a young Scottish doctor who finds himself enlisted in the services of Amin after coincidence brings them together. Amin, while racing his red Maserati has had an accident and Garrigan is summoned as a doctor to his aid. The help he gives is quite trivial: he bandages up the dictator's sprained wrist. But in helping Amin a bond is established which takes him through the course of Amin's presidency: power to corruption, and corruption to downfall.

The encounter between Amin and Garrigan as described in the book and later portrayed in the film is a model for how the book and the film use the same events and part ways. The book's description is as follows:

"On this occasion, he'd hit a cow - some poor smallholder had probably been fattening it up for slaughter - spun the vehicle and been thrown clear, spraining his wrist in the process. The soldiers, following him in their slow, camouflaged jeeps, had come to call for me. I had to go and attend to him by the roadside. Groaning in the grass, Idid was convinced the wrist was broken, and he cursed me in Swahili as I bound it up.
But I must have done something right because, a few months later, I received a letter from the Minister of Health, Jonah Wasswa, appointing me to the post of President Amin's personal physician - Medical Doctor to His Excellency - at State House, one of his residences. That was Idi's way, you see. Punish or reward. You couldn't say no. Or I didn't think, back then, that you could. Or I didn't really think about it at all."

The film version is different. There is no red Maserati - the vehicle of choice is downplayed - and as Garrigan tries to attend to Amin the dying cow begins to moan desperately. The cinematography becomes hectic: as the moaning becomes louder the screen cuts rapidly between Garrigan and the cow several times creating a sense of nervous desperation. It is all put to a stop when Garrigan grabs Idi Amin's personal gun and shoots the cow in the head at point blank range, ending the stress that has built to that moment. Soldiers surround him with guns and he realizes the danger he's in until Amin, played by Forest Whitaker begins to laugh, melting the tension in an instant. Amin is taken with Garrigan from that point on, as a man of action.

It became clear to me that the dilemma of the film maker is evident in all this because not only is the constraint of resources, such as the amount of money it takes to purchase and crash a red Maserati, an issue when capturing a book but how the book can easily understate what many would consider boring on screen. Hence the need for dramatic improvisation: the loud music, the quick cuts, the tension. This disparity of book and film kept coming back to me over and over as the film played up sexual appetites, parties, and character conflict.

The film did well in portraying aspects of Amin as I understood his legacy - conversing with J about the film brought on the word cartoonish, which applied to so much of his presidential story. What the crash scene understates is that Amin is driving a red Maserati - a vehicle on the order of one hundred thousand dollars - and his injury, a sprained wrist, dominates all notions of the poor man's cow which has more inherent worth than does Amin's car. Forest Whitaker did well in portraying Amin's cartoonish stupidity, in one scene making desperate calls for Garrigan as he thinks he is dying - and then laughing moments later when Garrigan cures him of his real ailment: flatulence. There's the scene as well, this one based on a true event, of Amin riding a white horse at a party, and lassoing his air force commander.

Amin, however comical the interludes, is a dark figure and his madness begins with subtle hints of paranoia and ends with some very gruesome scenes - gruesome to the extent that the shock value can disorient the viewer into thinking they are watching a horror film rather than real events. Two scenes in particular can be disorienting and yet the truth is that Amin was responsible for the type of torture and killing that is portrayed. The trouble, in a film that aims to dramatize and create sensation, is that it can't be taken in its proper context of reality and instead seems "film-ish" like the conclusion in which Garrigan is aboard an airplane, flying away - escaping the madness with an empty, weary look in his eyes.

Of course film cannot achieve the depth and concinnity that is found on the written page but it isn't just simply this disparity that left me with an empty feeling after the film ended. It had everything to do with how the changes made were a distraction on what would have been a great tale if only left alone. The conclusion of the book is the best example of this when considered alongside the film.

In the book, as Garrigan becomes more desperate he plans an escape by simply driving south towards the Tanzanian border for safety. He has an encounter with some soldiers and abandons his vehicle near a large forest. In the process of his escape, he's bitten by a snake and loses conciousness - and rescued by a tribe of people restricting themselves to the forest. Shortly afterwards, when he is well enough to leave on his own, he makes his way out of the forest and to a familiar place where he is taken into the care of Tanzanian soldiers fighting their way to Kampala and the defeat of Amin. Before the book ends Garrigan encounters Amin underneath Mulago hospital, where he'd tortured so many people, hiding from what he knows to be the ultimate consequence of his misrule. He is not conciliatory, however:

"Yet I am not so bad. People keep saying I am Hitler. Why do they keep on Hitler? The Hitler problem is now past tense... I know that the Israelis tried to poison the waters of the Nile to be killin gme. That is one reason why people are fighting towards me: because I know many things. In no book are these things written except in my head... Yes, and I know that very soon I will escape from here. Alive. Because, as I have said, my dreams always come true."

The escape of Garrigan and the final encounter with Amin held more for me than the film's conclusion, which ended the way a typical horror film does with the survivors passage to safety. Untouched it would have made for more compelling drama even if diluted by limited capabilities of film and it would have layered the story with the remorseful cognizance of the doctor and the unforgivable, arrogant stupidity of Amin. Moreover the endings left two varied points of view - in the film we end with the white doctor's escape from the clutches of Africa, on his way to tell the truth about Amin to a public who will listen "because [he's] white." In the book version Garrigan returns in the midst of controversy to a public that is aware of the monstrosity that is Idi Amin, trying to write at length about his experience to distance himself from the dictator and grasp at an explanation for how he was complicit and trapped during his time in Uganda.

I don't read very quickly - I'd guess The Last King of Scotland took me at least a few weeks to complete. But the reward for a little patience is depth - the layers of a story which, albeit falling short of the capacity of life, make us see people multidimensionally and let a story capture many things with understatement, overstatement, allusion, and plain prose. Everywhere that a film gives us a vignette or a dramatic sequence from which to percieve a truth, written word paints a canvas that we can approach from different angles and distances, focusing on this and that, gleaning more each time. Although the short two hours is easier, patience, as it seems to always do, pays a better reward in the end.

posted in [home], [prattle]

A few things:
About the book, here is an interview with Giles Foden shortly after The Last King of Scotland was released.
Here is a more recent piece by Foden about the book and his reaction to the film.
An interesting aside - Foden's more recent book Zanzibar hasn't been published in the US because, apparently, it contains some controversial attitudes towards US foreign policy in Africa.

Tue, 02 Jan 2007 04:25:22 GMT

Godt nytt år

It's a new day, it's a new dawn...

Hobbitwerk 2007

I've had a homepage since 1994 or so - the first versions have long since been lost. But when a new technology from Microsoft showed up called ".NET" sometime around 2001, I created a site in a Whittier coffeeshop and inspired by a moments thought I called it "Hobbitwerk."

Hobbitwerk 2005

Hobbitwerk 2001

This year's version had a few new design goals¹, but for the most part I wanted to try something new and learn a little in the process. Last year's newness was my photoblog, phoDak. Sticking to phoDak last year was difficult, but rewarding. Before you feel sorry for me, I did get a Canon 20D in the process so you can withdraw all pity without remorse.

I've got many other resolutions for the year which make me want to use the quote I put up at the beginning of last year:

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

I fail a lot. But as time goes by I see how I fail better each time I try. The trick is in finding a reason to draw a line in the sand and make some goals to go after. Here's to today: a line in the sand from which to try new things.

I remember when I was a kid - we had a cassette tape of creepy stories which included, with erie background music, a prediction that the world would come to an end in 1999. I was so disappointed - I still had so much living to do from that tender age of 12 or 13. I still can't shake that excitement - I'm as excited as ever. It's 2007, time to fail some more.

posted in [home], [prattle]

¹Design goals:
1. Syndicate my updating content
2. Stick to valid XHTML and existing web standards
3. Fresh approach that did more integration with my other sites

Sat, 23 Dec 2006 01:51:53 GMT

Five Things

Over the last few days I've watched a lot of digirati get "tagged" with a meme to reveal five things that people didn't know about them. I wondered whether it would filter down to me and lo and behold! Erik tagged me (thinking I don't check his blog without realizing that courtesy of Netvibes I'm on every new post he makes within minutes).

So, five things about me people probably don't know?

1. I've never lived for a meaningful stretch in the country of my legal passport, Uganda. It was not long after I was born that my parents, at the heels of the madman Idi Amin, fled for Kenya. We migrated from Kenya to the United States and then back again, where Nairobi became my home and the Africa that I know. We visited Uganda once a year, after the mid-1980s civil war ended.

2. My wife and I met¹ in a Taco Johns fast food restaurant. She was in a hooded sweatshirt and old jeans. I told my friend Susan "S-diggity" at work that I was going to "wife her" two weeks later. 17 months later we exchanged vows in an old church in rural South Dakota.

3. In 11th grade I nearly died after going through a window by the side of my house. I yelled "Mommy!" and my mother, recovering from an operation of her own, came running and switched into nurse mode², barking orders to my brother and our live-in guest. She couldn't drive so we went up to the neighbor's house - a Norwegian family working with Norwegian Church Aid. They were in the middle of dinner with guests and after taking one look at me rushed me to the hospital. The gash on my neck nearly reached my carotid artery, which would have killed me. I didn't lose enough blood to warrant a transfusion, which in 1990s Nairobi would have probably resulted in an HIV death sentence as well. Needless to say I've been partial to Norwegians since then.

4. I've always hated touching cotton for as long as I remember. When I have to I purse my lips or use a tool like tweazers.

5. I still have my first copy of The Lord of the Rings. On my 12th birthday my mother took me to downtown Nairobi, near Biashara street and I made a difficult choice between a caligraphy set and my own copy of The Lord of the Rings. It was the only book I brought with me to the US when I came as an 18 year old, for college. It moved with me from dorm to dorm each fall and summer, it also got packed up when I moved to Costa Mesa, then La Mirada, Whittier, and Buena Park. I spent a long time in limbo because I flew back to California a lot when I'd first come to South Dakota. But when I packed it in a box to drive it to the Dakotas, I knew I actually lived here.

Now it's my turn to tag some people: Aaron, Dervala, Barbara, Miriam, and Dave. Since my wife reads a lot of blogs I'll tag one more author of a blog I see her on all the time - Cathy.

posted in [home], [prattle]

¹She remembers a brief exchange a little before that but we didn't really "meet."
²My mother was a trained nurse.

Thu, 21 Dec 2006 21:23:30 GMT

Two Religious Men

I work with two religious men. One is an evangelical Christian, the other is orthodox Christian. The evangelical is on the pulse of current issues: gays, abortion, Bill Clinton, and other "hot button" topics of the day. The evangelical sends newsletters to any and all who will listen. The orthodox man is nearly silent on anything other than work - I say nearly because we coaxed an explanation out of him for why he wasn't eating office treats and other candy during Christmas time. He explained that he was fasting until January.

posted in [home], [prattle]

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 00:59:48 GMT

Time Says You

I learned today that Time magazine has selected "you" as its "Person of the Year." You are "you" if you are a part of the mass of people who generate content for the web. People who upload videos to YouTube are "you," as are those of us who blog or contribute to websites that depend on user generated content. According to the article online:

"The tool that makes this possible is the World Wide Web. Not the Web that Tim Berners-Lee hacked together (15 years ago, according to Wikipedia) as a way for scientists to share research. It's not even the overhyped dotcom Web of the late 1990s. The new Web is a very different thing. It's a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it's really a revolution. "

Many people will quibble with this. George Will on the ABC program This Week held back a sneer but his facial expression showed his disdain for the choice even as Richard Stengel, editor of Time discussed the selection. You can see them discussing the choice a little further here.

I have my own quibbles as well. I just recently read Weaving the Web, where Tim Berners-Lee put together an account of his own on this history of what we now understand as the web. It seems, from my reading, the web has in many ways become what he intended, as a way for any person to create and share information for any other person connected. His focus on hypertext may have made him lack anticipation for different kinds of media (video, etc...) to be shared but even this is arguable since his idea included linking files on any one computer to files on another.

But as much as it seems like an incongruous selection from an "old media" giant, I can't deny my agreement with the notion. For the better part of this year I've spent a significant amount of my time listening to podcasts. Even though I have blogged for a while now (on and off, granted) I really started to spend more time on other people's blogs thanks to the ideas of syndication and aggregation - I've been using a site called NetVibes to pull all the blogs and websites that I read into one place. The other night after reading about Lonelygirl15 in Wired I thought I'd take a serious look at YouTube. Amidst a lot of crap I did find some gems like Ugandan hip hop videos. In what other time could a Ugandan musician reach anyone including any of you who bother to click the link?

I also think of the example of LA Observed which started as simpler blog but now seems to have fairly robust coverage of things that should interest people in the area. While a paper like the L.A. Times may be daunting in size, weight, and news stories, a blog that you scan headlines on is easy to keep a handle upon.

And while I'm a sucker for a headline like "democracy of information" I think that the new opportunity to present itself for people on the web is that of the curator; someone who puts together information and takes care of it. It's rare that I'm on YouTube's homepage but there are a lot of "top ten" video sites that I do find myself watching clips on. Even though the idea of a citysearch is quite old, most websites offering information about local events, entertainment, and hangouts are quite useless - as are the reviews people sporadically write. For a long time I've thought of putting up a site that has information about Sioux Falls's coffee houses where I curate the information based on my own personal opinions of what's important: noise level, WiFi, [too much] teen spirit, and how large tables are.

So maybe this year was all about "you" but as the web gets more noisy with useless information and media I hope that the future is about curators - people who take time to sift out the good from the bad, the novel and the useless. It may just be a new type of journalism.

posted in [home], [prattle]

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 18:03:35 GMT

Seeing Stars

Although I miss "orange glow" for its LA-ness, one nice thing about South Dakota is the ability to see the night sky. I've been tempted to get into amateur astronomy, but it seems like a dangerous hobby since you can spend as much money as you want on it. I'll stick to hobbyist programming - all I need is my laptop and an idea.

Last night the sky lit up with the Northern Lights but each time I stepped into the backyard to have a look they were gone. It would have been a real disappointment except that, for the first time in my 31 years, I saw shooting shooting stars. Because of forgiving weather - it was a balmy 45 degrees with no wind - I lingered and found some of the familiar constellations.

In moments like this I do a thought expiriment: if I was a person living BCE, looking at the sky and the stars, how would I have reconciled that with my reality? How far have we come and how much more do we know? Just like my spending a thousand dollars on a telescope would make me even more lustful over a multi-million dollar one, I think what we know exposes even more mystery about the true nature the thing we are striving to know.

Astronomy programming is very difficult because of the complexity of calculations but maybe that's a happy medium. I'd be interested in stepping into the void.

posted in [home], [prattle]

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 16:44:20 GMT

Pandora, Vocal Harmony

Some time ago I raved about Pandora - an online jukebox, pointing out that one of the most interesting things about it was that music selection was based on a recipe that broke down music into a sort of descriptive set of attributes from which similar things could be selected. This is quite different from what most people are used to: the human disc jockey, who plays "taste" and a limited catalog of memory into their decisions. The DJ model is cool - my favorites have introduced me to some good music along the way - but it's nice to use Pandora now and then to discover new music or make connections in music you've always liked.

I just discovered Pandora has a podcast which delves into musicology of their jukebox. This episode covers vocal harmony and how they break it into different styles: unison, tutti, call and response, and counterpoint. It is very interesting stuff if you're willing to think of music outside cultural, perceptual, and stylistic bounds.

As a sidenote you'll discover a San Francisco ensemble called 20 Minute Loop.

posted in [home], [prattle]

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 15:39:53 GMT

Powerpoint

It's well circulated thought in the tech community but many people haven't really considered how Powerpoint is rotting society. My wanker-o-meter just hit the ceiling here in this coffee shop because I can see the guy in the business suit (sales - see What the Bubble Got Right, #6) working on a presentation with the following:

1. Italicized, script (psuedo-cursive) fonts.
2. Hideously colored themes: green text on a red background, pink headers on a green background.
3. Fake percentages: e.g. "Having the right people is 99% of Success!"

I could go on describing it but I don't want to look anymore. I can see his presentation too: he'll read each bullet point verbatim since he won't be able to remember what he's trying to say between slides.

It's sad when I see stuff like this or when I see people put together a presentation by firing up powerpoint and starting with their bullet points. Or when I visit a church and the "sermon" is in its entirety Powerpoint slides and fill in the blanks with words or phrases missing from the bullet points.

This guy (oh yes - I'm well aware of who he is) at Google, Peter Norvig, did a little parody (the story behind it) of the Lincoln's Gettysburg address in Powerpoint. You'll laugh at first too if you're like me, but it's sadly a pervasive mentality.

The sad matter is that Powerpoint is actually quite useful when used appropriately. At a conference I recently attended, I took note of how all the presenters did an excellent job in crafting their Powerpoint slides. Too bad the tool's abuse overpowers its good uses.

Last thing: I give presentations from time to time and still use Powerpoint, although I do my best to let my content drive the presentation, not the slides. I try to use other visual aids as well as writing on a whiteboard. I avoid large blocks of text on the slides and if I do have handouts I put a little effort into them; they are usually not the slides as seen in the presentation. And there's a community of people online who do a lot of thinking about this topic - a really good starting point for that is Presentation Zen. For inspiration you can see the presenters from TED, especially Hans Rosling.

posted in [home], [prattle]

Wed, 15 Nov 2006 18:04:21 GMT

Thoughts On Herds¹

I didn't realize a friend (okay, web acquaintance, but friend to me nevertheless) worked on a trading floor but he recently recounted the following:

In the '80's I was working as a trading floor operator for a stockbroker. For most of the 80's stocks went up - and quickly too! Then, in the late '80's something amazing happened, the stock market fell massively in a single day. Overnight, the fortunes of thousands of people had been dashed. I remember being on the trading floor that morning with emotion, people, and cameras everywhere. At one point I looked up into the viewer gallery and I saw an old man crying uncontrollably - an image that will live with me forever. It was not a good day for a lot of people.
Only a couple of months prior to the stock market collapse I was having dinner with my boss and he taught me an important lesson about herd mentality, he said this:

When your taxi driver starts giving you tips on the stock market, it's time to sell everything you own.

This tip taught me more about the real nature of herd mentality than anything that I'd heard before or ever since.

They are pretty riveting words, especially for a fellow like myself who has always felt more excitement about crowds and what is current. For many people like me it starts with affection for pop culture and morphs into a fear of not "getting the memo." All it takes is meeting someone who is trapped in time to get a sense of clarity over how pathetic that can be. Whether it's your racist grandparent or the person who considers themselves different for refusing to carry a cell phone, it's annoying.

On the other extreme are the people who are so wrapped up in the movement of the crowd that they lose their perception and agonize over what is simple, trivial fashion. More than a few times I remember playing some music for a person and experiencing a distasteful expression on their face and then, after a few months when a song is played on a "popular" radio station, they are bopping their head and laughing over their first encounter. While it's easy to laugh at how a musical taste can be directed by radio disc jockeys and the marketing guy with a spreadsheet, it is horrifying that this is the approach people use towards their values.

What interests me most on the subject of herds is how we develop a sense of trust in ourselves. I've always liked people who not only show awareness of what is happening around them, but also know how to move - yes, let me bash the metaphor a bit - to their own internal rhythm. From my observation what makes some people exceptionally good at a judgment call is in part their ability to gather information (research) about the thing to which they are applying their judgment. The other part, however, the part which I think vaults them over the crowd is being interdisciplinary. Which is to say that they can apply a thought, a trend, an analysis, a reaction - the totality of their value system - in many different directions to balance it out.

Steve Jobs did a keynote a few years ago for Stanford, taking students through some of the things that brought him "success" in his life and he made the following comments about an interest in many things:

"Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something²: your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. "

Another observation I've had over time is that not only are the people who transcend the herd mentality interested across disciplines, but they seem to make their values work by sheer force of being. It's not really that vague or frou-frou of an observation if you think along the lines of Michael Jordan³ playing basketball. He just plays basketball: that's what he does. If it were the most unfashionable, unpopular thing in the world to do, he would. I suspect that these days, even though he doesn't get paid his old astronomical salary, he still shoots around and - if the competition is right - finds it difficult to walk away from a pick up game.

I had a friend once who would separate the things he did for money with his existential definition for himself by answering occupational questions with "I'm an artist." No matter that his income came from a completely different source, or that what he did many people wouldn't call "art" by their own definition. And he couldn't be something else, even if he spent most of his time teaching people how to use software and writing code.

Many people make a distinction between what they "do" and what they "are." I would argue that when this separation is made for many folks, the "doing" aspect of the duality becomes largely formed by default because a separation like that dilutes the stake we place in our action. There's subtlety involved but I hear it a lot in conversations: "I am David. I do programming. I am a homeowner."

We are, of course, many things. I'm a spouse. A homeowner. A brother. A programmer. A reader. A comic book collector. But this reveals a key: when you trick yourself into making something about who you are, you raise the stakes. When you raise the stakes, you look deeper. When you look deeper, you aren't as sidetracked by the crowd as you are in being.

Sometimes what we are becomes victim to the herd. I spend a lot of time reading blogs from winners of the "dot com" era; people who had good ideas and made enough money to retire to a comfortable life and what they found interesting. But I know that there are lots of people who not only had great ideas but were also quite gifted that were victims of the bubble.

What's external is often misleading and I'm sure that what contents many of the people who went down with bust of the stock market is that they keep doing what they do, being who they are. I'm sure their malcontent comes from having to leave who they are in order to take care of the responsibilities of regular life. A malcontent well placed, I think.

So back to the notion of the herd: bucking groupthink seems to be a matter exposure, values, and a well of trust for ourselves. I often feel shaky about who I am; my brave new world involves lots of moving parts that leave me looking for precedent in a well trodden path. If only life consisted of a single decisive moment from which to claim victory. The reality is that of a video game: obstacles to jump, giants to knock down, things to wrangle, and whether you win or lose it just keeps advancing from level to level.

My friends amaze me as the type of ideal I write about in terms of sniffing out their own path and keen, well-developed values. How do you come to trust yourselves? Are there such things as good herds? How do you exploit the herds around you?

posted in [home], [prattle]

¹Sorry if this is "preachy," I intended it to sound more exploratory. I'm trying to get back to writing and forcing myself to post it despite not feeling satisfied with it.
²Some people I know would have difficulty with this and think Steve is saying something (shock! outrage! anger!) Relativist. What I believe that what Steve intends for you to understand is that the action makes the difference, not necessarily your reasoning. You can attach what you like to that, but I think for the most part it's true and the effects show.
³Or Lebron. Or Tiger. Or [insert gifted athlete unparalleled in competition].

Wed, 08 Nov 2006 05:08:05 GMT

Sit Down and Eat

A week ago:
It's excruciating. I've got an errand to run before work and I can see from the flashing of seconds on the oven clock that sitting will make me late. But since GRON got back from being in Europe, I've been thinking about my life and my food, and making some changes. I'm trying, desperately, to sit and eat.

Written today:
Nearly everyone who goes to Europe¹ raves about food and while some would argue that it's better, I disagree while acknowledging that I haven't eaten food all over the European continent. I disagree mostly because we have access to a lot of good food around us which we don't eat for two reasons: it involves going out of the way and it is usually more expensive. For example, here in South Dakota there are many ways to get food directly from the farmers who grow it. One way is to buy from the farmer's market, another is to buy from Hutterites, a religious sect who do all their farming organically (btw, I think "organic" is a lot of hype and don't understand the obsession) and on a small scale. I used to buy incredible fresh bread (herbs & cheese, cinnamon, walnut) at the farmer's market when I lived in Brookings.

I think what seems true about a lot of the Europeans' approach that I admire is respect for the act of eating. In the US (depending on where you are) it seems like eating is extremely low priority - something to cross of a list of needs, like sleep. If that means eating McDonalds on the road because you have no time for a nice three course meal at the outdoor café before your next task, so be it. In the process what's become acceptable for food is actually a lot lower than we care to think, or, in my case, taste. But what we do have power over, if not the food itself, is the act of eating and having a certain amount of respect for it.

In my usual mornings in the past, I would wake up with enough time to start the coffee, take a shower, pack my things and go. The best foods were portable and easily prepared. You can run around the apartment with a toasted bagel or English muffin, not so with cereal. If the morning didn't lend itself to a quick snack I'd usually just skip breakfast or stop somewhere along the way.

But I noticed something simple: I didn't even taste anymore. Of course I got the sensation and some familiarity with food, but I realized that eating had become more about gulping and swallowing than it was about picking something good. Even with things that should present a distinct taste were less about that than their utility; my choice at the local coffee shop was usually lighter roast beans for more caffeine rather than a preference for, say, Costa Rican coffee over Nicaraguan.

The picture that came to my mind was our dog in Nairobi, who, no matter what you presented, inhaled it in seconds. And I thought to myself: I eat like a dog².

So in order to stop the rush and add some thoughtfulness to the act of eating, I sit down and try to enjoy my meal. The food itself may not be different but if there's jam on my bagel, I slow down to enjoy it. If it's a good fresh roast of Ethiopian coffee beans, I don't drink it on the way to work, distracted by NPR, my lateness, and the lukewarm nature of it. I try to taste it so that I can tell the difference between that and some other roast I'll get on a different day.

On the day that we moved in, K bought a kitchen table. For each meal I have at home, I try to sit at the table and give myself a little pause. When we're both at home, we usually eat together at the table. It doesn't always happen but it's made a difference thus far. Sometimes I'm late, but so be it. I could be late running around and stuffing my face with whatever's close and portable, or I can reset my thoughts and have a little moment of reflection before going. It's been a week or so since my first encounter, watching the clock flash with each second. This morning I read a great New Yorker article about Will Wright while finishing my focaccia bread and coffee. And I wasn't late to work.

posted in [home], [prattle]

¹I'm definitely generalizing about Europe (not everywhere is Paris) but in this context think of places like Spain, France, or Italy; well known for cuisine. I also know that there are a lot of lifestyle factors in food choice so it makes sense that a programmer in say, Barcelona, may eat on the go just as much as I do.
²Although dogs won't eat anything. Ever try to feed one sushi?

Wed, 25 Oct 2006 01:57:25 GMT

Countdown

I've never had an outdoor plant.

Or bush.

Or massive, towering trees.

Or a chimney.

Or swank.

Thursday, 9:00am, life changes forever.

And you, my dear friends, will always have a warm house to stay in if you come to the Dakotas.

posted in [home], [prattle]

Tue, 10 Oct 2006 03:51:31 GMT

Inside Out

Minivans were, briefly, a topic of conversation this weekend. I was with my friends T and S, transplants who got to the Dakotas around the time I did. Minivans came up with the discussion of K and me moving to the suburbs:

"So David, are you going to have a minivan?"

We're all familiar with the sentiments - feeling young versus feeling old, living towards an edge and compromise, standing alone and being just like everyone else. Especially at the stage of life I'm in, a lot of people seem to have shrugged off any surprise and put together the following equation:

Marriage + Suburb + Minivan + Children = Played Out / Compromised / Lackluster

To the extent that a person with all these accouterments can be like a frog getting boiled in water, with the temperature slowly rising, I can see in myself a lot of the stereotypes and assumptions that lead to a negative reaction. But with my new perspective as a person right in the middle of it all, I can see much more the human side to what I'd painted broad brushstrokes on before.

I'll probably end up with the "things" that I used to react so strongly too: a lawnmower, a snow blower, a minivan, a washer, a mortgage, a screaming toddler -

But now I see how the physical stuff that surrounds us is not our entirety. By that I mean that a lot of people can control their physical world by living inside out; having a firm belief that by controlling what comes in to their lifestyle they regulate what is outside and what shows up to the non-casual observer.

What is the value of faith in God? What effect does literature have on a life? If we allow ourselves to experience and really think about art, will it change our perceptions and values? If we travel outside of our comfort zones, if we are willing to see and tolerate people who live a different life, will that make a difference?

I'm really hoping so, because that's my long answer to that short question of whether I'll have a minivan.

A few years ago I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and was left with a lasting impression of the author, Robert Pirsig's view on life. When asked how to paint a perfect picture he writes that it's easy: make yourself perfect and then paint whatever you want. I know that life is a bit more complex than that (and his comment too, you should read the book if you're interested) but the premise remains that the whole notion of quality is something that's built inside out. The way to maintain depth in my life is not really about my physical belongings as much as it is about my inner life. What's outside will represent a sketch of the inner workings, but a lot of people look at pictures and see only what they want to see. I can't really control how everyone will react to me from my possessions or appearance, but I can work on my thinking and the inner platform for my lifestyle.

posted in [home], [prattle]

Sun, 08 Oct 2006 21:49:22 GMT

Flickr-fu

People occasionally ask how I do phoDak; I wrote it a few days before the new year and do a few things manually to get pictures up (color correction and crop to the same size). Anyone wanting to put pictures online for other people should really use Flickr. The rub is that Flickr doesn't really look like a traditional photoblog.

For a while now I've been wanting to dig into Flickr's programmable side and this weekend I put together Flickr-fu as a beginning. Originally I had it as a single person "photoblog" but Flickr makes it easy to grab different people's pictures and the mini-aggregator thing just flowed.

Main screen:

Selected Flickr account:

Categories:

The categories are pretty straight forward: Friendly represents people I know, Killer Bees are people who are good with the camera, Tagged will give you some preselected tags, Locale is tags of some geographic nature, and the You Choose textbox lets you enter a tag of your choice and look at photos that are returned from Flickr.

So have some fun and play around. Let me know what you think of Flickr-fu!

posted in [home], [prattle]

For the technical people out there, a few more notes:
1. A design goal of Flickr-fu was to use table-less design. All style is done with CSS, *most* of which I managed to keep in an external stylesheet.
2. Another design goal was to make this thing port for people who did want a Flickr photoblog. You'll notice there's a frameset used - if you're willing to reference something external you can take the top two frames and customize it, even adding your own RSS feeds in the dropdowns. Let me know if you want this, not a problem to send.

Thu, 05 Oct 2006 04:56:06 GMT

Home Owner

And many more like it...

K and I are on the verge of the biggest purchase (or debt) of our lives: we're trying to buy a house. I asked a friend of mine whether she ever saw me as owning a house and her answer mirrored my sentiment: never.

I turned it over in my head over the next few hours asking myself why I never saw myself in one. The tempting answer is that I belong in New York sitting in a café working on something "fabulous" or that I should be taking notes from the next episode of Globe Trekker and planning a trip to Berlin.

I wasn't quite satisfied with the big city answer and I couldn't see how having a house would make it impossible to visit Berlin. It would require more effort, to be sure, but it wouldn't be impossible. There would be inertia in home ownership too, but someone recently asked me about surfing and I realized I could probably count on a single hand the number of times I went swimming in the Pacific for the 10 years I lived in southern California. Inertia transcends location.

The answer was pretty obvious, once it presented itself; I had been so sidetracked with the "cool" reasons to not be in a house that I hadn't paused to notice that I never really thought I could own a home. My parents never owned a home; we always rented in Nairobi since Kenya was never really our country and they didn't plan on being there permanently. We rented different places over the years, migrating from neighborhood to neighborhood as we got older. We even moved out of a house and then moved back a few years later. People don't really own houses in Nairobi, at least not the people you talk to on the street. The big Africans and the enterprising Indians seem to own the real estate, renting it to working people and the very small expatriate middle class, to which my parents belonged.

Although I've never thought I could own a home I did have - I do have - many aspirations of what I to be. I love architecture. I privately fantasize of engineer's work. I like to tinker with my computers. I want to collect books.

The same question always presented itself when I was surveying my various competing interests: how could I be each of those things? In a world that is so specialized, how does a run of the mill person do the type of citizen engineering that built the world we know today?

Then out of nowhere the connection between my lack of thought over home owning and the various aspirations I'd always had made itself perfectly clear as we were walking the grounds with our home inspector, Don. Don was looking at a retaining wall and abruptly got a twinkle in his eye as he was mentally taking note of things after which he slipped into a story that he must have told many times: that he was a trained civil engineer and retaining walls were a tricky affair. One of his first projects, in fact, was building one and as he was explaining to us the calculation for water pressure on the wall, which is a function of depth and not necessarily volume, I had my epiphany: as a home owner, my challenge would be all of my aspirations: engineering, architecture, and other forms of craftsmanship. If we were to own the house, I would need to know about this retaining wall, the structural durability of the basement, and the mechanics behind sprinklers and fireplaces. K and I would become architects: concerned with the outer form but even more importantly inner space and orientation. I would go back to system's engineering: letting my computers out of the closet, where they are now stored, and into a workshop where I'd have the chance to see if I could figure out how to automate lighting or security with some free distribution of Linux.

It has become an exciting thought. It's an excitement that is mixed with a lot of apprehension since I don't know the first about furnaces or siding or carpentry or landscaping or any of the other myriad of things to which one becomes a caretaker when they have a home. But I'm willing to make an effort and learn with a big premise: no one is going to care as much as you will about what you have, including your home.

Nothing is final, of course. But one day I hope to think of myself and K as distinguished engineers, chief architects, head gardeners (okay, I might not be carrying my weight there), master systems administrators (K will gladly yield this one), and superior snow shovels during winter. Yes, I know: it will be a lot of work. But when would an interdisciplinary mix that produced as much satisfaction be easy?

posted in [home], [prattle]

Sat, 30 Sep 2006 14:32:04 GMT

People as Lights

Recently I caught myself thinking of people as light. I spend a lot of time reading programmer weblogs and have recognized just how focused some people can get. I was getting a mental picture of how that type of focus makes them like lasers: powerful, narrow, and concentrated. When I thought about it and started making the parallel I thought of how others are like spotlights - football "Friday Night Lights" spotlights - powerful as well but so far reaching that they encompassed a massive area; without the ability to cut deeply like a laser, but retaining the kind of strength that doesn't allow a person to look at them directly with the eye.

By this point I'm thinking of all sorts of lights: headlamps of cars, street lamps, flashlights, desk lamps, candles - moments like this are when my mind is wandering and K asks "What are you thinking?" and I can't really articulate it well and say, "Oh, nothing."

Because I'm at a point where I'm recalibrating a lot of my life I'm extending this whole idea of light to myself, wondering what parallel I would draw and also what kind of person I'd like to be. I admire lasers a lot; if I could talk to someone who has a PhD built around George Eliot's writing I'd be giddy, but I couldn't focus so heavily on something without intellectual infidelity like wondering about things like planets, geopolitics, insects, or computer languages.

I think flashlights are admirable too, so light and portable, going from place to place showing the holder what's there. I'd think of someone like Malcom Gladwell as a flashlight; he's able to write about sports (I love that he loves basketball), pensions, homelessness, business, human nature, and a myriad of other subjects. I love reading Gladwell's pieces in the New Yorker and elsewhere, but I wonder if such a big range has the penalty of being too broad and generalized. The point of a flashlight, however, is to show us something we couldn't see, not to light things up like a stadium light.

I know some people who are content to be desk lamps: confined to a specific area, very useful for the space that they are in, without the need for excessive luminescence. I envy people who are willing to draw a boundary around themselves and stay, doing what's necessary without venturing. I not jealous of the boundary; my curiosity cries foul on that. I envy how easy it is to be happy when you don't extend yourself. When you have an instinct to extend yourself, it's very difficult to be happy because there seem to be an infinite number of directions to go.

I could flog this notion of people as light more with street lamps, headlights, candles, and other lights but it will break down with big generalizations and become more tiresome to write and read. I guess it's about what kind of person I want to be when I grow up which, at thirty-one, is a strange question to ask myself. Recently I made a failing bid to go back to school and I'm finding myself in a pensive mode a lot, trying to figure out where I go from here. I'm going to return to some old things in the meantime - writing in this blog, learning how to use my camera, and working on my craft by making little software applets.

I have a friend who always thinks of things as a dichotomy. You could say something like "Wow, I like the red in that picture" and he'd respond with "No! Green is better than red!" I like him enough as a person, but that's downright annoying. Everyone is different and every light has its different uses. More than anything it's about the evolving process of who I am and where I place my identity than "becoming a better person" or "advancing myself." The journey continues.

David Seruyange: Prattle

Bring the Africans to Kansas

posted in [home], [prattle]

Myself, The City

posted in [home], [prattle]

Trips to Minnesota

posted in [home], [prattle]

Fan Failure

posted in [home], [prattle]

Monocle Love

posted in [home], [prattle]

Seruyange Ecosystem

posted in [home], [prattle]

Missionaries

posted in [home], [prattle]

The Irish Are No Longer Poor

posted in [home], [prattle]

Rocket Boom, "The Res"

posted in [home], [prattle]

Supermodels

posted in [home], [prattle]

The Last King of Scotland (Film Review)

posted in [home], [prattle]

Godt nytt år

posted in [home], [prattle]

Five Things

posted in [home], [prattle]

Two Religious Men

posted in [home], [prattle]

Time Says You

posted in [home], [prattle]

Seeing Stars

posted in [home], [prattle]

Pandora, Vocal Harmony

posted in [home], [prattle]

Powerpoint

posted in [home], [prattle]

Thoughts On Herds1

posted in [home], [prattle]

Sit Down and Eat

posted in [home], [prattle]

Countdown

posted in [home], [prattle]

Inside Out

posted in [home], [prattle]

Flickr-fu

posted in [home], [prattle]

Home Owner

posted in [home], [prattle]

People as Lights

posted in [home], [prattle]

Thoughts On Herds¹