Generalísimo Brando

On My Block (the Laurel Street Remix)

2009-07-01T22:10:00.000-07:00

One of the better ideas Joe and I have had on our lunch breaks was a Laurel Street version of Scarface's 'My Block'. Now that I've been on the street for exactly one year, I finally had enough material to put a ditty together. You have to know the song to get it, though.

♫ ♫ Since last July it's been the same ol' thing on my block

You're either out on bail or a young professional on my block

Friends in SUVs "have to be fucking crazy" to park on my block
Bedraggled moms ask for bread on my block
Multigrain or white? They'll take whatever you got

On my block

Where half-way and century homes co-exist
My block
The 'I need two dollars' guy is usually pissed
My block
There's a rotten old creek with shopping carts in it
On my block

♫ ♫ Weekday mornings it's the same ol' thing on my block

I walk to work while people work to walk on my block

Last night's blood in their veins, but they're up early to hustle my block

Ducks cross the road; I hope they're not breakfast on my block
It's the start of another day on Laurel, whether its residents like it or not

On my block

Where Winnebagoes hide from the cops
My block
Cabbies talk of a brothel where you can get whatever you want

My block

A hairy man leers out a window that never shuts

On my block

♫ ♫ Every weekend it's the same ol' thing on my block
Profane lovers' quarrels spill onto the streets of my block

'Jerome' yells "Fuck welfare!" as his girlfriend kicks him off of my block

Someone jumps out a third-floor window and the cops are back on my block

Some of them wave to me now because they're here a lot

On my block
The men are usually shirtless

My block

There's a free bottle return service
My block

But strangely I no longer get nervous

On my block

Lame point-form update

2009-06-22T12:57:00.000-07:00

What I’ve been up to in the past month or so since I last posted:

- Helping my dad and step-mom move. In all fairness, this is what started my online exile, being stuck out in Balitmore with no Internet access for a week. With my sister’s help we pitched out 5,000 pounds of refuse, salvaging some important family photos and heirlooms along the way (notably my father’s 40-year-old Finnish cross-country skis). While it was sad to say goodbye to Baltimore after 17 years, I look forward to visiting the new place – a quaint little house on the outskirts of Cobourg.

- Reuniting. Mike Brown came back from Sierra Leone, so we saw fit to spend the better part of an entire weekend catching up over tomfoolery. Then all the old Cord guys got together and we had our fourth annual Guys’ Day, complete with 16 oz burgers, a mini-keg of Red Baron and road hockey. Highlight of the summer so far.

- Getting ridiculously excited about South Africa. The guidebook I ordered arrived last week, coinciding with the start of the Confererations Cup – the warm-up tournament held in the World Cup host country one year prior to the real thing. Between reading about 3-day wilderness treks through Kruger National Park and witnessing the atmosphere in the stadiums, I’m beginning to think this might actually be worth travelling across the world for. Now if only I could find one more person who agreed with me… (see previous post)

Wanted: one World Cup travel partner

2009-05-21T13:02:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I had a ridiculously good time in Toronto with Mike Li, an old friend from Laurier, and his roommate Jane. Though significantly hindered by tomfoolery, we started planning our trip to Southern Africa next year.

There’s the Kalahari Desert, wine tours on the Cape, Table Mountain, cage diving with Great Whites, Kruger National Park, beaches on the Indian Ocean, the Okavango Delta, Victoria Falls – and, of course, the small matter of attending multiple World Cup games.

With all of that on the table, combined with the complications of traveling to/within South Africa, it’s good that I have faith in Mike and Jane as travel partners. The only problem is that I need to find a companion of my own to occupy my extra seat at the games (Mike and Jane have their own tickets to the same games I do).

As such, I have thought up some criteria that will hopefully help me identify and rate potential candidates. If you think you’re up to it, don’t hesitate to let me know – this is going to take some serious planning and I’d like to know who I’m going with as soon as possible.

Anyway here’s what I’m looking for, in order of importance:

1) Someone with the time and money. I’d like to be in-country for the entire tournament, which runs from June 11 - July 11. Including travel time to/from South Africa, the total trip would last close to five weeks, and cost $5,000 at the very least. Obviously without the potential cash and vacation time (which is all I have at this point), coming along is a non-starter.

2) A seasoned and adventurous traveller. A very close second to having the time and money is your attitude towards travel. South Africa isn’t a Caribbean all-inclusive or backpacking through Western Europe; it’s going to be intense, exhausting and dangerous, and I need to trust that who I’m going with can handle that. At the same time, I’m not going half-way around the world to be overly cautious – you should also be willing to take calculated risks in the name of experiencing something truly unique.

3) A passing interest in soccer and Africa. I don’t expect you to be as football- and Africa-obsessed as myself, but I don’t want to spend the month explaining the Offside Rule and the history of South Africa (I couldn’t do the latter very well anyway). A general sense of curiosity about the two is enough, as this is clearly the least important qualification – I’m sure spending thousands of dollars can generate a passing interest quite quickly.

(Photo credit: Cape Town's Table Mountain, courtesy of Wikipedia)

Happy (very belated) Mother's Day

2009-05-15T16:16:00.000-07:00

For the fourth year running, a brief phone call had to suffice to wish my mom a happy Mother's Day in Mozambique. With the annoying 'speaking via satellite' delay and egregious price of international long distance calls, the conversation was typically short and not always to the point.

There once was a time when this wouldn’t have bothered me at all. My mother’s evangelism, if not shared, can be incredibly alienating in large doses. But surprisingly, after picking up and moving to Southern Africa to be at the centre of a worldwide Christian revival, her outward expressions of faith have moderated to a point where we can have a mostly rational discussion about our lives, God included. Clearly, our relationship has improved as a result.

On the phone last week, I actually would have loved to hear more about the work she’s been doing since returning to Pemba in March. Every year, she seems to take on a new role on her project – an outpost of Iris Ministries – and with each passing year she gets assigned to something that seems more ill-suited to her skill-set as a health care professional and evangelical missionary.

When I visited the project in 2007, she was designing the first phase of public health improvements to her ‘base’ – the centre where over 500 orphans, missionaries and students live and work on a daily basis. While she knew nothing about building latrines, her project management skills had the task completed on time and under budget. This landed her the unenviable position of being in charge of constructing an underground septic system for the entire base in 2008.

Though nominally related to public health and stopping the spread of cholera (which invades the base every rainy season), to see pictures of my mother in a hard-hat and steel-toed boots, standing proudly in front of what amounts to a massive concrete shithole, was illuminating.

And she was so good at rooting out corruption and eliminating waste in that project that, this year, they’ve put her in charge of the notoriously corrupt kitchen (though thinking back to my mom’s equally notorious cooking when I was growing up, it may also become infamous for the food).

But in all seriousness, this Mother’s Day I was happy just to have the opportunity to tell her that I’m incredibly proud and supportive of her mission – and that’s not something I’ve been able to say until recently. But I’ve seen the difference she’s made and how hard she’s worked to answer her calling. Whatever our theological differences, I’ll always admire her for that.

The last self-indulgent running post for a while

2009-05-06T00:00:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't inferred as much already, my lack of post-marathon posts has been caused by my re-discovery of pre-marathon life. Concerts, Stag n' Does, baseball and throwing myself into an online conference at work have taken the place of my former training regimen.

For the first week, at least, getting reacquainted with my old friend Excess was an exciting novelty. I could barely locomote for the first few days after the race, so plunking down in front of the TV with a pile of Red Barons and the vape seemed like the natural thing to do. The thought of running anytime soon was laughable when I could barely get out of a chair unassisted.

Then my first non-training weekend: a whirlwind of partying in Elmira, watching my beloved Barcelona demolish Real Madrid to clinch the Liga title, gorging on lamb chops and finally replacing my fat clothes with more size-appropriate garments.

But with my lower-body pain subsiding and gorgeous spring weather outside, I was desperate for a light jog on Sunday. And I probably would have if it were not for my equally desperate need for new running shoes. But the price tag on a new pair of Saucony Hurricane XI's is prohibitive - close to $200 after tax.

I went for a walk - to the office, sadly - instead. It was what I imagine a shot of methadone feels like to a heroin-addled junkie.

By Tuesday, I was getting seriously restless. Cooped up for two days in the stuffy e-Conference 'nerve centre' (a meeting room at CIGI where we're running the event from), all it took was a light baseball practice to push me over the edge into full-blown endorphin withdrawl.

In an excercise reminiscent of the Bad Old Days when I'd cave and hit up a convenience store for a pack of smokes on my walk home from work, I marched into the Running Room and was home with a new pair of Hurricane's within 15 minutes. As quickly as I could lace them up, throw on my gear and get out the door, I was back pounding the pavement for gloriously liberating 10k.

Having no schedule or set distance, I could go anywhere I wanted at whatever pace I felt like. For the vehicularly challenged such as myself, new running shoes are the only thing I'll be taking for a joyride anytime soon, so I generally ran my guts out to see how the shoes and my body would react. Some very minor pain in my right leg was easily overshadowed by the temporary satisfaction of my new (and much healthier) insatiable addiction.

Marathon by the numbers

2009-04-27T19:58:00.000-07:00

4:21:57.3 - time in hours, minutes and seconds it took to cover the 42.3km

>1000 - kilometres run in training

35 - pounds lost in the process

300 - dollars raised in support of St. John's Ambulance

51 - minutes it took to run an overzealous first 10k

12 - kilometres into the race when I hit the first 'wall'

3 - times I broke down and cried during kilometres 39 through 42

7 - senior citizens that breezed by me

71 - songs listened to on iPod during the race

2600 - approximate calories burned

81 - runners who finished ahead of me

35 - runners who finished behind me

12 - bottles of beers consumed post-race (estimated)

26 - days until I'm 'allowed' to run again

.009 - percentage of general population that have run a marathon

Lifelong dream, here I come

2009-04-23T18:40:00.000-07:00

Dear Brandon Currie,

Further to your application for 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ Tickets, your Ticket request has been entered into the Random Selection Draw and processed by the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ Ticketing Centre (the “FWCTC”).

We are delighted to inform you that the Tickets shown below (and also as reflected within your FIFA.com customer account) have now been reserved by the FWCTC for your exclusive benefit:

Match 9 - E1 v E2 - 14 June, Johannesburg 13.30 (2 tickets)
Match 23 - C1 v C3 - 18 June, Cape Town 20.30 (2 tickets)
Match 35 - B2 v B3 - 22 June, Durban 20.30 (2 tickets)

Wind at my back

2009-04-22T21:32:00.000-07:00

Tonight was my last run before the race. There must be something to this 'tapering' business as I absolutely devoured the 10km.

The weather was crap, but it didn't matter - the wind always seemed to be at my back. Even the normally annoying traffic lights conspired in my favour as I glided through every intersection without having to break stride. I caught myself singing k-os' 'Follow Me' out loud as I came down the homestretch of my route, pleasantly surprised I had enough breath to bleat out the chorus in the midst of running five-minute kilometres.

As I reluctantly slowed down to a stop, I got the amazing (and rare) feeling that caused me to want to run a marathon in the first place - simply that, if I had enough flat road laid out before me, I could just go on running forever. Your legs, lungs and heart don't even matter any more. The energy of your being is an unstoppable force moving in a forward direction, and only your mind can limit how far that momentum can carry you.

Suffice to say, I'm as sure as I've ever been that I'm ready for this. That, or the latest New Balance ads have got me so amped I'm going to have an out of body experience on Sunday.

The longest job I've ever had (since high school)!

2009-04-21T15:25:00.000-07:00

As you might have noticed, I like milestones. Well today I thought up another one - it's been exactly a year since I started at CIGI. Provided I go to work tomorrow, it will be longest job I've had since high school (with everything since being year-long contact positions).

It's been a good year, too. From baseball (obviously pictured above) to interviewing some interesting people and now getting to design an e-Conference, it's been an enriching experience. And in this economy, engaged and sustained employment is something to be commemorated.

I'm peaking?!

2009-04-13T17:07:00.000-07:00

I completed the last of my tortuously long Sunday runs yesterday. I feel less bad than I have some other Mondays - including one when I could barely walk to work - but even still, I have shooting pains in both legs, an aversion to anything resembling stairs and a trademark limp that I'd like to coin Runner's Hobble.

Yet my running Bible says this is me in peak fitness; I now have to 'taper' my training program to less than half its previous intensity so I'm rested for race day. Apparently:

A good taper will make you feel like a horse in the gaits at the start of the Belmont... It is the feeling of peak fitness; use it to your advantage.

Wow, I feel sorry for those horses. Admittedly, I'm only in day one of the taper, but I hope this isn't what peak fitness feels (or looks) like. My body and I still have a long way to go after this race is over.

My Top 10 albums

2009-04-03T07:29:00.000-07:00

In my quest to craft the ultimate marathon playlist, I've been going through all my music to extract any and all songs that I think will keep me moving in a generally forward direction. Once I got the news that I could run with my iPod on race day, I began refining my already-epic 'Gets Me Amped' list into a strategic symphony of tunes that will surely help me finish.

In the process, I've been thinking about what my all-time favourite albums actually are (admittedly something I started considering a few weeks back when I read Al's rather more comprehensive list) and have produced a list that is probably slightly biased towards runability. But that's the headspace I'm in right now, and this is nothing if not an ever-changing list that won't be the same next year. Also note that my criteria for 'top' and 'favourite' mostly have to do with the album's staying power as a personal classic, and little if nothing to do with its cultural or historical importance. It's simply what I like.

So, in chronological order, here goes:

1. The Beatles (the White Album) (1968) - The Beatles
Driving around aimlessly on an epic Spanish road trip, this was one of about ten albums Scott and I had to listen to for 4000 or so kilometres. It's scatterbrained style matched my mental state at the time, and it's kitschy diversity has been a staple ever since. Not most people's favourite Beatles album, but definitely mine.

2. Rage Against the Machine (1992) - Rage Against the Machine
As much as I now disagree with their politics, I can't deny that Rage, more than anything else, got me interested in politics. As a clueless country kid, the world of peasant uprisings, Che Guevara and Buddhist self-immolation excited the hell out of me. And, front to back, an musically innovative and devastatingly powerful album that can still get me amped (though no longer to the point of hoping for the imminent demise of the unipolar world order).

3. Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (1993) - The Wu-Tang Clan
In Grade Eight, I was understandably confused how Far Eastern martial arts theory could be cross-bred with East Coast Hip Hop. Luckily, this album’s philosophical underpinnings mattered very little – with RZA’s singular production and the Clan’s MC’s all in fine form, I had officially become another white rap fan (see: clueless country kid, above).

4. Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Black Star (1998) - Mos Def and Talib Kweli (obviously)
On the musical-taste family tree, Black Star is at the base of an ever-growing branch that includes such heavyweights as The Roots, Kanye, Common and Shad. Though Talib's and Mos' careers have been mostly downhill ever since, it's easy to see why after making the conscious hip-hop album of my generation. I dare anyone to listen 'K.O.S. (Determination)' and disagree.

5. Anthology (1999) - A Tribe Called Quest
I know it’s cheating to put a best-of album on a best-of album list, but Anthology isn’t a chronological greatest hits compilation – it meanders its way through Tribe’s studio albums and even includes some B-sides and a Q-tip solo effort. While I was sadly unaware of the trio throughout their rise to prominence in the early to mid 90’s, this album became the chilled-out soundtrack of my early days at Laurier. “On my day off/bullshittin’ and hopin’ that the day goes slow” pretty much sums up my approach to first and second year.

6. Songs for the Deaf (2002) - Queens of the Stone Age
Anyone who played EA Sports' NHL 2003 knows that the song "No One Knows" is probably the best hype track in the history of sports video games. But while that song was what first got me interested in the Queens, it was the entirety of this concept album - an rollicking road trip through the California desert that Hunter S. Thompson would undoubtedly approve of - that has earned Songs a spot on the list. Dave Grohl as guest drummer didn't hurt, either.

7. The Black Album (2003) - Jay-Z
What happens when the best rapper alive rhymes over all his favourite producers' best tracks in a conscious attempt to (and forgive the barrage of sports cliches) call his shot and hit hip hop's ultimate walk-off home run before hanging 'em up? The worst part about the The Black Album is that it was followed-up with less transcendental Jay-Z albums.

8. We Were Born in a Flame (2003) - Sam Roberts
As per CanCon regulations, at least ten percent of my ultimate album playlist has to be partially funded by the public purse, and maybe the CRTC finally got something right with Sam Roberts' debut. They got good return on their cultural investment though as Roberts' mentions his homeland numerous times, including the eponymous and slightly misleading 'The Canadian Dream'. 'No Sleep' even contains token biligualism. Even still, 'Higher Learning' was an anthem for all things post-secondary and 'Dead End' sums up the genetic pressures of us last-in-the-line male heirs. All in all, my favourite rock album with Canadian Identity™.

9. Joyful Rebellion (2004) - k-os
Beside the fact his stage name is still a grammatical train wreck, there's not much to complain about with k-os' sophomore effort. It helps that I saw him perform tracks from the album in two semi-intimate settings, the first of which being a tomb-like Wilf's in 2002. When I recently heard Lil' Wayne talking about his album as a newspaper needing to cover different sections, I actually thought of Joyful Rebellion. You've got the Status of Rap Throwdown ('Emcee Murdah'), the Marley-esque Reggae Romp ('Crucial'), the Ode to MJ ('The Man I Used to Be'), the Golden Era of Rap Tribute ('B-Boy Stance'), the Love Song Claiming not to be a Love Song ('The Love Song') and the Rock Collab ('Dirty Waters' feat. Sam Roberts) and the Epic Outro ('Papercutz').

10. Late Registration (2005) - Kanye West
"If you talkin' bout classics, do my name get brought up?" - Unfortunately for Kanye's ego, yes. Any album that dominated 05-06 at The Cord was bound to end up on this list, but unlike bound copies, I don't look back at Late Registration with occasional horror. As of the last time I discussed the album's dominance of the newspaper office with Mike, various songs were still firmly atop the play counts of one of the main music-playing computers. This was the first album on this list and probably the last I'll ever take off.

Honourable mentions and possible future inclusions, lest you think I'm decisive:
What's Going On (1971) - Marvin Gaye
Return to the 36 Chambers (The Dirty Version) (1995) - Ol' Dirty Bastard
Foo Fighters (1995) - Foo Fighters
Trainspotting: Music from the Original Motion Picture (1996) - Various Artists
UPDATED: Black on Both Sides (1999) - Mos Def
UPDATED: Blazing Arrow (2002) - Blackalicious
The College Dropout (2004) - Kanye West
Be (2005) - Common
UPDATED: The Old Prince (2007) - Shad
Shine (2008) - Estelle
The Renaissance (2008) - Q-tip
Troubadour (2009) - K'naan

Marathon fundraising begins!

2009-03-26T07:36:00.000-07:00

An excerpt of what I sent around CIGI today... let me know via comments or email if you're interested in pledging and we'll work out a way for that to happen.

Colleagues and friends,

As some of you may be aware, in about a month’s time I will be attempting to run the Waterloo Marathon – and I stress ‘attempt’ because I’ve never tried to run a marathon before. Nevertheless, I have been training throughout the winter and am now confident (or delusional) enough to start asking around for pledges.

This year’s race benefits the K-W chapter of St. John’s Ambulance, an organization I’m sure you’ve all heard of and whose mission is to “enable Canadians to improve their health, safety and quality of life by providing training and community service.” Pledges in any amount are welcome (those of $25 or more are tax deductible) and can be made via cash or a personal cheque made out to ‘St John’s Ambulance’. By no means should you feel obligated to pledge, but if you are interested please do so by Friday, April 24.

Thanks in advance for your support,
Brandon

My not-so-iron lungs

2009-03-20T11:53:00.000-07:00

Last week, an ugly bought of wheezing, chest pains and phlegmy cough presented the first serious threat to my marathon hopes. It had actually been creeping up for the past month or so, since I started running 20-plus kilometre distances and stopped the inhalation of all things not air.

Running wasn’t really a problem, but I was short of breath before bed and in the morning. And the taste of what I was coughing up throughout the day was enough to wish my taste buds could go back their pre-quitting-smoking uselessness.

What I thought would be a renaissance for my poor old lungs was turning into asthmatic odyssey reminiscent of my worst days as a smoker. I kept picturing that poor wretch on the ‘Cigarettes Leave You Breathless’ warning label, wondering how I ever convinced myself smoking on and off for 10 years was a good idea.

When I finally got to see my doctor about it earlier this week, I feared that the marathon would get shut down and that my long-standing asthma was mutating into something more serious. I braced myself for bad news.

Instead, I got a fairly positive diagnosis that seemed to explain all my symptoms. Apparently, the microscopic hairs that line and clean the bronchial tubes (pictured above) are returning after their years-long extinction, and are thusly producing the heinous mucus that I had been horking up. And because I had been stubbornly refusing to take my ashthma inhalers before running (trying to be all natural and whatnot), my lungs had been working extra hard to provide enough oxygen during exercise, hence the minor pains I had been experiencing.

The increased prevalence of wheezing was chalked up to the vast changes my body has experienced in the past five months. Asthma is an elusive and ever-evolving malaise that can react unpredictable to changes in environment and lifestyle, the doctor said. And because I hadn’t given up smoking everything until very recently, my lungs and their itinerant conditions have to play catch-up with the rest of my now-healthy body.

Best of all (except for not being diagnosed with emphysemalungcancerpleurisy), I could keep running. Armed with a new proactive asthma inhaler, I feel like a weight has literally been lifted off my chest. “A healthy young guy like you shouldn’t worry so much,” the doctor said, “try to keep that in mind.”

Finding a Pot of Gold

2009-03-15T21:02:00.000-07:00

Just when I think I'm too tired with my day job and running to keep up with the increasing demands of working with the Rainbow, (the aspiring Zambian newspaper I wrote about here), I find this post on Derrick's Facebook wall:

Hi Brandon Currie, it was great to have you in Zambia. The Rainbow Newspaper Limited is humbled by your expertise in communication and human rights. Please, keep it burning as we need a just society. This is great. Please we (Rainbow family) and I, (Derrick Sinjela) in particular are greatly inspired by your acumen. We shall send a copy of our third edition soon. Merry Xmas and a Profitable and interactive 2009. In line with our motto: "Promoting Diversity in News Coverage', we are glad that you came to Zambia and made us proud.

Regards, Derrick Sinjela-Editor-in-Chief

That was obviously written a few months back and was in no way sent to me, written on my wall or tagged - I wouldn't have have found it at all if I been on Derrick's profile page looking at pictures (see above). While he was obviously effusive in praising my "acumen", the fact that he would write something like that, not knowing if I'd ever even read it, is incredibly humbling.

Derrick, a journalist who's worked unfathomably hard to become the editor of his own newspaper, has a lot to be proud of in a place where few reporters can hold their heads high. If I've helped him to realize that, then I did a lot better of a job in Lusaka then I first thought.

The Old Prince Still Lives in Waterloo

2009-03-11T21:05:00.000-07:00

It has come to my attention that I've become embarrassingly thrifty when it comes to buying groceries.

With interest rates low, I'm paying off debt as fast as fiscally possible, leaving little in the way for culinary extravagance. About $10.71/day for food to be exact, according to my trusty little Excel spreadsheet. And with the ever-present caloric demands of marathon training, this has led to some interesting trips to the grocery store. Basically I need to eat a lot of good food, for cheap - a fine balance that's necessitated some creative thinking.

Earlier tonight, I purchased chocolate milk over my regular two percent - not a shocking revelation, given how delicious chocolate milk is - but, sadly, taste wasn't the main reason for doing so.

One litre of chocolate milk was 99 cents and two percent was $2.99. The idea of a grown man using chocolate milk in all of his normal milk functions seemed juvenile at best. But what am I going to be using the milk for anyway? To put in cereal and coffee. Huh. Chocolate with granola. Mocha lattes. Mmm.

So, not unlike a 10-year-old, I purchased two cartons of the chocolate - one for the above-mentioned normal milk functions and the other so I wouldn't just guzzle the carton reserved for normal milk functions.

On this same trip to Valu-Mart, I also purchased $3.99/pound portobello mushrooms, promptly ripping off their heavy stems in the produce aisle so as to not pay for a part of fungi I wasn't going to eat (I also employ this technique with vine-ripened tomatoes. Seriously, who pays for the vine?!).

But it's not all about short-term savings - there are also investments. If I come across an exceptionally good deal on an in-demand item, I will buy an enormous quantity of it. While financially prudent, I often end up with a glut of food that can be difficult to get rid of.

Last week, an innocent-seeming trip to Sobey's went awry when I discovered they had a firesale on oranges - five kilos for $5.00. Since they're my favourite fruit and usually at least twice as much per pound, it was a no-brainer. The fact that it could be difficult to eat 11 pounds oranges before they go bad didn't really occur to me. I estimate I'll have to eat four a day to stay ahead of their decomposition.

Same goes for a pile of almonds I bought, which are trendy in healthy food circles right now. Two pounds of plain, unblanched almonds for $5?! A steal - until I realized that unsalted and unroasted, almonds are like bits of protein-laden cardboard. Woops. The knowledge that they're full of 'good fats' doesn't make them taste any better.

Then there were the legendary blocks of parmigiana reggiano, an amazing but heinously expensive cheese that usually I can't afford. Last month, some poor fool at Valu-Mart had clearly input the wrong unit price, as the normally $40/kg product was marked down to $4/pound. Not one to alert the authorities, I swindled two pounds of the stuff in a coup for dozens of future Italian dishes.

So tonight I had discount whole-grain penne with weeks-old leftover pasta sauce (no visible mould is evidence enough for consumption), sauteed stemless portobellos, always-cheap bulk onions and on-sale green peppers. Garnished with practically-stolen parmigiana, washed down with replacement chocolate milk and finished with a dirt-cheap orange.

Embarrassing, perhaps, but also fairly delicious.

Note: Post title inspiration can be found here - particularly the last verse

Marathon Training: Still Occurring

2009-02-23T21:56:00.000-08:00

Given my previous lifestyle choices, it's perfectly understandable that I get a lot of questions about how marathon training is going. The problem is I don't know what to say.

"Good" would imply that I don't have Runner's Nipple and blisters that resemble an open-pit mine.

But "bad" would be inaccurate too. At the halfway mark of my training program, I've completed 47/50 scheduled runs for a total of 407km run. With every successful distance covered (26km is the longest single run so far), I believe a little bit more that I'll be able to finish the race, maybe even within a respectable time.

No, the most informative thing I can say about my training is simply that I'm still doing it. Perhaps if I go on to do more races, I'll be able to gauge my progress in some kind of context. For now, it's still a novel process of mental exhilaration and physical exertion.

An update from Zambia...

2009-02-19T14:13:00.000-08:00

Just to update anyone who might be wondering, I recently received an email from a current JHR trainer in Zambia that explained the circumstances surrounding Binion's death:

I would like to let you know that one of our Zambian friends and colleagues, Binion Kapoma, died on February 10, 2009. He died at the University Teaching Hospital (UTH) in Lusaka of cerebral malaria or meningitis that had been misdiagnosed as malaria; I have heard both reasons given for the cause of his death. I attended the funeral on Feb. 12. He was 34 years old.

I feel better now, at least knowing what happened. It's depressingly close to what I had assumed - that something preventable had gone unnoticed or unattended to at UTH. It's the only real public hospital that exists in Lusaka and is not up to international standards. Shortly before I left Zambia, there was a city-wide controversy when nurses at UTH were assaulted for leaving patients to languish in waiting rooms. A shocking number of seemingly educated individuals supported the beatings, the origins of which were obviously caused by a lack of human and physical resources and not an unwillingness to triage.

Whatever the cause, Binion is the third Zambian I've known that's died young, even by Sub-Saharan standards. While I was nowhere as close with the other two (who both died in traffic accidents), it illustrates the dramatic difference in life expectancy between our two cultures, and that the rules just don't apply to poor Zambians. Binion was university-educated and solidly middle-class in his social hierarchy - that, more than his age, is what surprised me most about his sudden passing.

Tiwonana, Binion

2009-02-11T13:32:00.000-08:00

When I started my internship in Zambia, my host organization was in the bewildering process of switching office buildings. Being new and relatively unimportant, when I showed up to check out my new digs, I discovered they were non-existent. Already three weeks into my internship and not wanting to waste any more time, I stubbornly took up residence in the hallway. It was awful. I had no access to a company phone and a wireless signal that was so weak I had to walk to one end of the hallway to download my email, then walk back to my chair to check it.

About a week into this sorry state of affairs, someone from the Zambian Community Media Forum (Zacomef) – a smaller organization that rented office space from my hosts – asked me what on earth I was doing loitering in the hallway. After explaining that, no, I wasn’t waiting to see someone, the young man became very concerned and insisted that I work from their office, at least temporarily. He introduced himself to me as Binion Kapoma, and I ended up working alongside him for the rest of my time in Lusaka.

In the early days of being in such a strange new place, Binion was a godsend. Not only did I now have a huge desk to myself, high-speed internet and a landline, but he constantly listened to good reggae and hip-hop. Kanye, Marley, Peter Tosh and Lucky Dube were as likely to fill the office as were conversations about the struggles of community newspapers and radio stations across the country. I was at once more relaxed, more engaged and more at home in my own skin.

When Binion quickly realized I had no ability to communicate in the local language, he taught me as much as I wanted to know. And when he saw that I didn’t know what to do with myself at lunch, he took me to the local food stand, where I never once saw another white person but grew to love eating with my hands and joking around with the lunch ladies.

Throughout my stay in Lusaka, Binion and I became good friends. He would come over and drink Castle at my place on weekends. I visited his home to see his first child, a son that we joked should be named after me. All the while we worked closely together as I identified Binion’s work with community journalists as an area where I could make the most difference in my small window of opportunity. He was more than happy to facilitate my eagerness, and we embarked on an epic journey across Zambia to deliver a three-day training workshop to some of the most in-need reporters I’ve ever met. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was the most professionally rewarding experience of my young career.

We’ve stayed in touch since I left, with Binion acting as one of my references that helped me get my current job. The other day I was just thinking of emailing him to ask about the office, his baby boy and any other Lusaka gossip he was willing to share.

That was until I received the news this morning that Binion died last night.

I don’t know how, exactly, other than he passed away in hospital after being admitted for an ‘illness’ a few days ago. I'm desperately trying to find out more. He couldn’t have been older than 35.

Too Hot for GV

2009-02-10T12:51:00.000-08:00

During a trip to Ottawa in November, I interviewed Dr. Nipa Banerjee for Governance Village. The India-born professor was, until recently, a long-time employee of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and held down foreign postings all over Asia, most notably in Afghanistan soon after the fall of the Taliban and at the beginning of Canada's development efforts there.

What transpired was easily the longest (close to three hours) and possibly most controversial interview I've ever conducted. Transcribing it took close to three days. I knew most of it wouldn't be published on GV - being a CIDA-funded project and all - but it was so scintillating (to me, at least) that I couldn't help myself.

What follows is an re-edited transcript of the interview. As a Canadian taxpayer and someone who cares about the mission in Afghanistan, I found Banerjee's comments deeply troubling.

Why is a ‘development approach’ important in fragile states?
Because poverty is one the root causes of conflict in all fragile states, particularly in Afghanistan. And delivery of development services is one responsibility that would bring legitimacy to the [Afghan] central government. My central thesis on fragile states is that government’s legitimacy and acceptance by the people is the most critical factor in bringing stability to a fragile state.

So what can a country like Canada do to help the Afghan government seem more legitimate in the eyes of its own people?
Well, first of all, security measures. I’m very much in favour of the presence of international armed forces because the government isn’t ready to provide the security that‘s needed for its own people. And that’s one of the ingredients that will bring legitimacy to the central government because people are looking for human security. And not just for their social security, but their physical security as well… the reform of the [Afghan] military and police force has been a complete failure. I don’t know how effective Canada’s training of the police has been in Kandahar – it’s Canadians who are saying it’s been very effective but I need to find out what’s going. It doesn’t look very effective.

But what about those who say our aid dollars go to waste if we work too closely with an increasingly corrupt Afghan government?
With the corruption issue – corruption wasn’t bad in the beginning but as it’s gotten worse the international community has kept quiet. Even now they are quiet – you won’t find the Canadian government talking about it. Seriously speaking, if you think the government is so corrupt that you cannot work there, then just provide military support and withdraw from development.

With your long career in our government’s foreign services, in your opinion does Canada have the capacity to do long-term state-building in places like Afghanistan?
No. I think that development work can be done. I don’t know if you can write that or should write that, but seriously, I am extremely frustrated with the [Canadian] civil service competence. In the beginning the excuse might have been that we were trying to put things in fast, but it’s not in the beginning stage anymore. Out of CIDA’s programs, maybe 25 percent are successful projects.

Because we are going through Canadian firms and Canadian companies, monitoring is not good and I’m not so sure our [development] officers are trained well enough. In Afghanistan it is chaos. They are sending so many young people without and previous experience in aid or living in a Third World country, never mind a fragile state. The people with experience don’t want to go. Capacity, though minimal, is there. You can’t do [the Afghans] work for them. What you need to do is to constantly be on their side and say ‘This is the way it should be done. Now you do it.’

But I don’t think this is the way Canada works. Is part of the problem that Canada has never tried anything like this before? I’m not a military expert… but it does concern me that since 2005, when we took over Kandahar, things have declined. Absolutely almost to the date. I hate to criticize the army because, seriously, of the 'Three Ds' it is the most committed, but whether or not they can do it is a different issue. But at the same time, I think we are looking the other way as to what is wrong with our operation in Kandahar. CIDA will tell you they do state-building, but they don’t really in a fragile situation like in Afghanistan, which is starting from almost zero capacity. And all donors can be heavy-handed, which is not suitable for a fragile country, or anywhere really. [Canada’s] entire approach and philosophy has been wrong.

Does this speak to an inability, on the part of our Government, to admit when they’re wrong?
One of the main problems I’ve had with the government is that I’m outspoken. But I’m also committed to development and maybe I’m brighter than others because I find problems. When there are problems you identify them… what’s the point of looking the other way all the time? Evaluations are so you can identify problems and issues and deal with them. There is extreme resistance to any change in CIDA. I think they’re insecure, because anything they have done is 100 percent correct, I guess that’s the public image they want to give.

To some extent Canadians are like that. There’s no search for excellence. If there was you would look at these issues and problems, and address them, if you really want to achieve something… mediocrity is the way to go. Somehow the project gets completed. That’s all they want. Then they would say ‘We’ve disbursed so much money for the project and everything is dandy.’

We often talk about what we don’t or can’t do well in assisting developing countries. After 30 years in Canadian development, what does Canada have the capacity to do well?
In my experience, you can do development. But I don’t think we should design our own programs and implement them through our own private sector. It should be, as much as possible, through national government programs. But you need to be vigilant because the corruption issue will constantly come up. At the time of the design of the program and when you are approving funds, there has to be tight, results-driven accountability.

I used to tell my staff: "Establish your credibility, be humble when you don’t know and when you say something base it in strong knowledge." I don’t think it’s that difficult.

We talk about accountability in the Third World?! [CIDA] has no accountability to anybody. Nobody asks anything of you, nobody supervises you properly, nobody monitors, and nobody trains you. Nobody asks for any accountability. People stay in a job for one or two years and go away leaving a mess behind… I think I’ve put my finger on it. There’s a total lack of accountability within our government.

No accountability in general or in the way we do development?
I’ve never worked in any other government department; I’ve only worked in CIDA. But 33 years of experience and I would say that is it: a total lack of monitoring, supervision and asking for accountability from officers and project managers. They are solely driven by their career motivation and keeping the boss pleased, I guess. Can you believe this? They’re spending public funds. Think: would you risk your own money in that kind of a project? But what we’re trying to do with re-building failed states seems to be unprecedented.

Shouldn’t failure be an understandable part of the process of involvement in Afghanistan?
But we’re not doing it for the first time. There’s Bosnia, Kosovo, Timor-Leste… When [the Canadian] embassy started in Afghanistan, I was told over email that it was going to be a ‘Three Ds’ policy, god only knew what that was… There was no strategy for the integration of the ‘Three Ds’, nobody knew what it was. There were four people placed in the embassy. I was thrown in, a single person with 150 million dollars to program. I didn’t have any experience with fragile states. None whatsoever. There was no strategy, no support from headquarters. None.

We were in Kabul initially but when the army moved to Kandahar there was a deliberate effort to cut off the Kabul embassy and development program from Kandahar. This was CIDA. The guy they sent [to Kandahar] as a director: first time posting, never been abroad before. Not a very confident person either. He deliberately would not report to me, but to CIDA directly. He didn’t know what fragile states were, he didn’t know development. He was in CIDA for two years, and environmental specialist or something. It’s just disgusting, I’m sorry. There is a cap on the Afghanistan program, definitely, in what you can say.

Is that an official policy?
I think it’s official. (Goes on describe how CIDA management censored her in presenting a paper on Afghanistan at a conference). But that’s why I say it’s the managers, not the higher-ups. These guys are not trained, not supervised. It is so bad. And I feel bad for [the managers] too. They are not learning anything. I’m older and more experienced; I can take risks and chances.

All this time I’ve been controversial I knew one thing: they will never fire me. They don’t have the guts.

There was a Sri Lankan guy fired for incompetence. Well, okay, I don’t think he was incompetent exactly but pretty ineffective I would say. So I wouldn’t have problems with his firing. But the thing is, if he is fired, there should be another 20 mainstream, white, Anglo-Saxons who should be fired too. He took it up to Human Rights Commission and eventually won. But the thing is this accountability issue. I think you should put that down. ‘A retired CIDA officer said there is no accountability. CIDA staff bears no accountability to anyone.’ And we talk about the accountability of recipient governments?!

What about our own government’s accountability to us, the taxpayers?
That’s another thing. Are we being ethically accountable? I don’t think so. I don’t think we tell the truth to the public. The public is stupid, they don’t understand anything – that is the assumption. That’s the assumption in the entire government I think.

After I got back from Afghanistan… those guys who run the CIDA website asked me to write something. I thought I wrote an extremely nice piece and it was not negative at all. But I was talking about capacity-building and leadership and ownership… Well, they came back and said ‘This is not what we want. We want personal stories of how CIDA funding has affected individual lives.’

I don’t look at development as that kind of a thing. To me, development is nation-wide and interviewing one girl who has better health because of clean drinking water doesn’t do anything for me… so they never published [my piece].

Have you ever seen anything from the Government of Canada saying that establishing legitimacy in the [Afghan] government, and hence visibility and ownership of programs, is most important? They never say that. If you tell the public, they won’t understand. We tell them ‘We’re establishing democracy there.’ Well you can’t establish democracy without improving their institutions… there is no democracy if there are no institutions to protect democratic rights. Elections aren’t the only thing that makes democracy work. The entire purpose is to stabilize the country. And a stabilized country will address women’s causes. And help establish democracy. None of those things will happen unless you stabilize the country. If you want to do the women’s development, why have you sent the army in? Are we fighting the Taliban for the sake of Afghan women?

The Battle of Marathon

2009-02-05T20:26:00.000-08:00

Being generally curious about history, one of the first things I did when I decided to take on the marathon was to research where on earth the ridiculous idea to run exactly 26.22 miles came from.

The name marathon comes from the legend of Pheidippides, a Greek messenger. The legend states that he was sent from the town of Marathon to Athens to announce that the Persians had been defeated in the Battle of Marathon. It is said that he ran the entire distance (26 miles and 386 yards) without stopping and burst into the assembly, exclaiming "We have won," before collapsing and dying.

Thankfully, the thought of the marathon literally killing me hasn't really come up in my training; I haven't experienced any worrying symptoms of over-exertion and my doctor declared me fit to start running my guts out. That was until I received a strange email from this year's race director:

Recently, I was talking to our Medical Officer of Health about the causes of deaths after a Marathon - sorry to broach such a morbid subject but as the Race Director and the Executive Director here at St. John Ambulance it is a subject I take very, very seriously. She said one of the main causes was drinking too much water - she is in fact a runner herself.

It went on to describe how, if you ingest too much water without enough sodium, it won't absorb properly and you can actually drink yourself to death, on water. It seems there has been one reported case of this happening, ever, at last year's Boston Marathon. "Try to drink sports drinks with sodium and potassium," the email reasoned, "but also try alternating hot clear chicken broth with water and tomato-based drinks."

Wait, what? Should I arrange to have someone supply me with sports bottles full of piping hot chicken noodle soup and virgin caesars along the route? I think I'll opt for water or Gatorade, thanks.

With the litigious nature of society these days and following a death at the world's biggest marathon, I understand why the race director wanted to raise awareness of the issue. But to seriously suggest ingesting hot broth is the key to not dying? If only someone had told poor Pheidippides.

Zambia, One Year On

2009-01-28T06:38:00.000-08:00

It's been almost 12 months since I left life in Lusaka for the considerably cooler and more developed climes of Southern Ontario. Save a brief sojourn to Quebec in August, I haven't left the confines of the region in nearly a year. But whether it's the god-awful weather here or my continued engagement in Zambian media projects over there, I often think of my adoptive African country. Allow me to explain.

Pictured above (at right) is Derrick Sinjela, one of Lusaka's most determined journalists, holding a certificate of incorporation from the Zambian Government. As of November 2008, Derrick's vision for media development - what he calls the Rainbow Media Group - is a legal entity and can even be traded publicly on the Lusaka Stock Exchange.

This is remarkable in a number of ways. When I left town, Derrick was still reeling from the debacle that was The Advocate (which I wrote about here and here), the nascent human rights newspaper that eventually 'fired' both of us. His exit was particularly acrimonious, as the editor made Derrick's firing a top story in one issue of the newspaper. The last time I saw him, he was something of a broken man, though he promised me in an interview to "rise like a Phoenix through the Rainbow," his new idea for a socially responsible publication. I was understandably skeptical.

But in the months after I departed, Derrick kept in constant contact as he developed his business plan. Combining lessons learned from my brief experience with start-up newspapers in Lusaka and his 20-plus years in the media, I played a small role in helping him craft the Rainbow's founding documents, even earning the ridiculous title 'Lead Business Consultant' in the process. Instead of rushing straight to print and trying to distribute nation-wide - two common mistakes of fly-by-night publications - Rainbow Media would, at first, act as a journalism foundation, ensuring it could recruit and fairly compensate its reporters. This idea was hugely important to Derrick, who rightly saw the lack of professionalism, direction and dignity in the Zambian media as a function of low wages. Secondly, the eventual newspaper would only be distributed in targeted neighbourhoods of Lusaka (namely the ones with highest literacy rates) to start.

Professionally-speaking, the most rewarding piece of the project was that Derrick had internalized the notion of public service reporting to the point of enshrining it as a founding principle of the company:

The mission of the Rainbow is...

To contribute to the building of news reading culture to the Zambian citizens.

To conscientise the Zambian people on the critical issues impeding national development.

To highlight pertinent issues and matters affecting Zambians on human rights, gender tolerance, economic development and share equity among citizens, and opportunities to be extracted from tourism and the role of culture in national development.

There was a degree of satisfaction in this for me as I'd spent the better part of a year telling Derrick and his acolytes that human interest and advocacy journalism would work if they gave it a decent shot (like actually interviewing ordinary Zambians for stories that affect ordinary Zambians). With this, I figured they were on solid ground to start their venture.

The reality, of course, has turned out to be much more muddied. In May, when advertising and grant money first started to come in, they rushed ahead and published their first issue before the ink was even dry on their business plan. It was a disaster (I have the PDF to prove it if anyone's feeling masochistic). The lead story was about a tribal squabble between the President and leader of the Opposition: exactly the kind of empty political rhetoric we'd talked about avoiding. Even worse, a ludicrous 'Minister in Dog Sex Scam!' headline ran on the cover. If at all true, it would have been a gripping story of a Lusaka-based pornography ring that drugged woman, engaged them in bestiality and sold the products to Scandinavian countries - allegedly covered up by a high-ranking Zambian official. Unfortunately the end product was completely unbelievable, not quoting a single named source and reinforcing negative stereotypes of commercial sex workers and homosexuals (the alleged participants in said heinous acts).

The Rainbow Newspaper, to my knowledge, hasn't been published since - but that's entirely a good thing. Derrick didn't need to me to tell him that he had fallen short of his own lofty goals, and promised to try and stick to his plan of building a professional media infrastructure before producing a professional product. He disappeared for several months after the inaugural issue fiasco, but resurfaced to send me the above picture, saying that he's sticking to the original plan again. I've been asked to buy shares in the now-public company, to which I responded that I would have to see a new issue that spoke to the guiding principles. Derrick's promised me another PDF by the end of February, and to send me stories to vet before they go to print. We'll see.

(Note: there's another significant Zambian media project I'm involved in as well, but due to the length of this post, I'll save it for later when I have more of your attention span)

Sneak Preview: My First Narrated Slideshow

2009-01-26T07:23:00.000-08:00

Well, 'mine' is a bit of stretch. I came up with the idea after meeting local photographer Stephen Edgar, who told me he had some great shots of an interesting development project in Bolivia. From there we developed the script with folks down in the Andes while I recruited a familiar yet professional friend to narrate it all. About a six-month process in all, not without its share of frustrations. Turned out not too bad though, I think.

The video will be debuting on Governance Village starting tomorrow.

Sundays

2009-01-25T10:54:00.000-08:00

According to my training schedule, Sundays are 'long, steady run' days. These are easily the longest jaunts of the week, sometime almost double any distance I've run from Monday to Saturday. While the duration of these workouts provides the most obvious challenge, the real difficulty lies in the fact that they take place on, well, Sundays.

This means I'm usually recovering from some form of excess, which you might guess is not the ideal foundation for a day that tests the limits of your physical and mental faculties. But Sunday is something of a holy sabbath for runners, with all manner of races, training and general rigour taking place on what is presumably the most laid-back day of the week. The marathon I'm attempting takes place on - you guessed it - Sunday, April 26th.

Through sheer necessity, I've started to adapt. Since I'm not yet willing to make my Saturdays totally intoxicant-free (though this will have to happen at some point), I've been tapering them and their respective Sunday legacies down to moderate levels. At the same time, I have invented a Sunday morning routine that gets me from 'largely dead to the world' to 'ready to run 20k.'

1. Wake up, drink two Throbbies of water (I bring the entire Brita bedside the night before. 'Throbbie' is the hilarious nickname of my 700ml water vessel)
2. Eat a mountain of oatmeal. It soaks up any leftover sludge in your stomach, digests easily and provides a heap of soon-to-be-burned calories
3. Don't drink a double espresso. This is nearly impossible and runs against all morning instincts. But water retention is too key.
4. Clean up the apartment. Besides giving time for food to digest and water to absorb, there is some psychological importance to having things in order before I head out. Strange, I know.
5. Shave and shower. It may seem counter-intuitive to shower before I sweat out pounds of water during my run, but for that exact reason you want to try and shower off the previous night's essence. Out of Golden Rule respect for others at the gym, it will limit my bad smell radius
6. Blast hype tracks. This is the final step, and a general clearing house for musical guilty pleasures. By the time I play myself out of the house to something like Lil' Wayne, the previous night is a distant memory and I'm ready.

Cynicism Loves Company

2009-01-21T07:05:00.000-08:00

One of my e-companions throughout my journey to better health has been David Bruser, a staff reporter at the Toronto Star, fellow ex-smoker and cynic extraordinaire.

Last year, he blogged about his "graceless, but still successful" to quit smoking cigarettes. While his deep and abiding addiction to nicotine surely surpassed my own, his struggles epitomized the daily challenges and annoyances all quitters face. "Let's hope nothing great happens" was a memorable concept, as he was given to relapsing during the best of times.

Now he's back with a new Fitness Blog, sarcastically detailing his quest to get into shape. His skewering of fitness culture entertains me to no end. To wit:

I was 30 minutes into the yoga session when a woman in the back of the room, contorted and coated in a fine sheen of sweat, wrapped tight in all the finest and flattering lululemon accessories, let out a splintering fart, making a mockery of the studio’s Far East tranquility vibe...

... I don’t like gyms because of all the strutting and flexing in front of banks of mirrors. Because I have never understood why men, strangers to each other, don’t mind getting naked in the gym locker room. I would rather eat rocks than catch peripheral glimpses of other men’s junk.

... Some of you have tried to sell me something, like "DYLG Consultants" pleading with me in a post to buy an "11 day cleanse" product. I only quit smoking 11 months ago, so it would probably take a fire hose spewing isopropyl down my throat to make my insides look like they belong to a healthy 31-year-old. Let's worry about my colon in a future blog.

And, of course, best of all - I recently got a shout out for an allegedly funny comment I made a couple posts back:

One of my favourite posts may be from "Brandon," who seems to understand my helplessness. After I whined in the blog about my unbalanced diet and penchant for McDonald's, he wrote: "All it takes is one delicious, well-balanced meal to turn that corner. I hate to sound sexist, but could help with your diet be your wife's contribution to your fitness goals?" My wife Brooke did not find this post as funny as I did.

I apologized and suggested couples cooking classes.

Live-blogging Obama's Inauguration

2009-01-20T06:32:00.001-08:00

Blogger's Note: I'm trying out this Live Blogging thing as much for an upcoming project on Governance Village as I am to try out something new in here. Credit to Doug Smith's excellent Raptors Blog for introducing me to the application.

Why I Run

2009-01-15T21:43:00.000-08:00

As you may or may not know, I'm going to try and run the Waterloo Marathon on April 26th - exactly 100 days from now. So far, training has been a blast: I have fluid-filled blisters on both feet, a permanent patch of windburn on my cheek, a small toenail that seems to have disappeared, a routinely frozen goatee, ever-increasing bills from the Running Room, an enraging membership at Goodlife Fitness and balaclava-type hood that makes me look more likely to rob a liquor store than run a marathon.

Yes, I'm at the point where I'm wondering why I'm doing all of this.

I'd like to think it's a tribute to my dad, who told me last year that he wished he had ran a marathon when he was young and sprightly, and that maybe it would have put him on the road to better long-term cardiovascular health. With one quadruple bypass behind him and possibly facing another open-heart surgery (or worse), I thought he'd be happy to know I was taking my own health rather seriously these days, perhaps even enough to break the history of heart attacks and strokes that runs in my family.

Then there's Scott 'The Silver Bullet' Gibson, my running mentor if I ever had one. A veteran marathoner (including the venerable Big Five Marathon) and second-in-command at Lusaka Hash House Harriers, he planted the seed of serious long-distance running in my head. When I scoffed at the idea of breaking the 10k barrier, he explained the simple formula for marathon training: run 5 times weekly, including one long run that increases by 10 percent each week. Starting with your long run at 10k, you can be marathon-ready in four months. That sounded bizarrely possible.

Hell, there's even Heather, my first serious girlfriend, who dragged me out running with her when I was at a Ron Burgundy level of jogging ignorance. Apparently you do just run.

But to be honest, I'm not suffering through the pain, anger (in the case of Goodlife) and deprivation for any of those people. Luckily for me, I have plenty of selfish reasons to run.

I like the way I feel after I run. I like the solitude and the rare opportunity to think about whatever. I like the people-watching. I like exploring, finding interesting little things in my neighbourhood I wouldn't discover otherwise. I like blasting hype tracks. I like the functionality of being able to run well (comes in handy on Laurel Street). I like how I look as a result of running, even if I look utterly ridiculous in the process.

That's what keeps me running, to borrow a phrase from the Doobie Brothers. If it keeps up, I might just make it the 26.3 miles. It still seems like an absurd distance at this point, but so did the very idea of a marathon just a few months ago. A lot can change in 100 days.

See this movie

2009-01-04T10:41:00.000-08:00

One of the benefits of gallivanting throughout Southern Ontario over the holidays was having the opportunity to see two movies in Toronto that I might not have otherwise. While I would recommend Frost/Nixon to fellow media/political types (or anyone who's done interviewing), Slumdog Millionaire was, by far, the best movie I saw in 2008.

That might not be a bold statement, considering other contenders that come to mind include Ironman and Pineapple Express, but Slumdog is the first film in a long time to challenge City of God as my all-time favourite movie.

Portrait of the President-Elect as a Young Man

2008-12-23T11:31:00.000-08:00

In Dreams From my Father, Obama's first book, I was most interested in the parts of his life I had never heard about. Once he establishes himself in Chicago as a well-connected community organizer, meets Reverend Wright and goes off to Harvard Law, the novelty of Obama: the Early Days largely wears off (though his first trip to Kenya, which is the last part of the book, is fascinating in its own right - I'm still reading it though).

But the narrative of growing up in Hawaii with his grandparents, moving to Indonesia with his Mom and newfound step-dad, finally meeting his biological father, then on to Los Angeles and New York for his undergrad - is endlessly illuminating. Knowing Obama is now about to become president adds an element of importance and irony to many of his young experiences, whether it is his drug use in college, being exposed to developing world poverty in Jakarta, making his first public address at an anti-Apartheid rally or finally coming to accept his first name (he was known as 'Barry' until college).

The photo above comes from a remarkable collection recently published in Time magazine's 'Person of the Year' coverage. It was taken by one of Obama's college friends - then an aspiring photographer - and stored in a safety deposit box until after the election. The series has reminded me that I really need to finish the book.

In the Line of Fire: Doing Development in Fragile States

2008-12-22T17:58:00.000-08:00

Following a recent conference on state fragility, World Vision Canada's head of humanitarian assistance, Michael Weickert, sat down with Governance Village editor Brandon Currie to discuss the numerous challenges his organization faces in operating in fragile states

Currie: What challenges do humanitarian aid workers face when they work in failed or fragile states?

Weickert: There are a lot of them. First and foremost is getting the capacity to do the job - the national staff who do most of the work in [fragile states] tend to be in short supply. Hiring expatriates is also difficult because the work isn't family-friendly and you often get high turnover.

And the quality and quantity of money that we get to do work in fragile states isn't great. The higher-profile natural disasters tend to get a lot of resources dedicated to them. Lower-profile crises that have been going on for a long time... the money can be very irregular and often flows in one-year chunks. This makes it hard to program in a context that's not likely to change in five or even 10 years. Getting money for peacebuilding or capacity building - some of the softer-type things that [World Vision] does - can be really hard.

Another obvious [challenge] is security for aid workers. They're increasingly targeted, increasingly seen to be part of the agenda of ‘The West'. The perception that we're neutral seems to be eroding even though most agencies try very hard.... And it's our national staff that bears the brunt of this, not so much the expatriates. They often go to the hardest places and take the most risk.

In a context such as Afghanistan, where humanitarian assistance is sometimes delivered with military support... has that hindered the ability of NGOs like World Vision to be seen as neutral?

I think most NGOs, including World Vision, have policies around cooperation and coordination with the military. We've thought pretty hard about this and have guidelines that we try to follow on the ground in terms of how closely we work together in certain contexts. In terms of a natural disaster, where the military is there just to help people, the relationship can be more straight-forward. When it comes to something as politicized and militarized as Afghanistan, you have to be very careful to keep your distance; you can't be aligned with one side or another.

We expect the powers-that-be, whether that is a peacekeeping force or a rebel movement - whoever's in charge in that environment - to provide protection for the civilians. We do talk quietly to [non-government actors] about that, but we have to be very careful what we say publicly and certainly do not advocate the use of force. Our engagement isn't just with official militaries or peacekeepers; it's often with police forces, militias or other armed groups and we've had to think through the implications of that.

In some ways it's the same, but you're dealing with people who are less trained and are not used to working with NGOs or may have a malevolent agenda that we're concerned about. Ultimately we're trying to help the people who are most at need... so it's a live issue everyday in these kinds of fragile situations.

You've said that World Vision wants to work in "the most difficult contexts." Why is it important for your organization to take that risk?

We have our core values, and one of those is to be committed to the poor and helping those who are most marginalized and most at-risk. As a Christian organization, I think our faith motivates us to serve the poor regardless of who they are. We don't just want to go to the easy places but go to the ones that are otherwise missed. I'm not going to pretend we always do it perfectly - sometimes the most poor are the most invisible and we miss them- but we do have a commitment to work in those areas and in zones of conflict. But there are many good NGOs that go to the toughest places and do the hardest work because they know that's what should be done.

There is a lot of talk about the ‘whole of government approach' the Canadian government is taking in places like Afghanistan. Does this ‘big tent' approach simplify operations for NGOs trying to deliver aid?

It doesn't provide ‘one-stop shopping' with the government and the UN. It makes sense, in a lot ways, why they're trying to do it. Our concern is always: do the political, military or security agendas override the humanitarian development agenda? The issue for me is asking whether [humanitarian assistance] can be firewalled and kept away from the political agenda. Because I think most governments would agree that humanitarian assistance should be given out on the basis of need only... and should be delivered by civilians, except in the most extreme cases.

The whole-of-government approach is understandable and there are some good things that can come out of it, thinking collectively. But there is this concern that things can get blurry and very legitimate development needs can get set aside or instrumentized as a tool of political agendas.

But being outside the ‘tent' is usually a good thing in our line of work. It means we're not associated with any of the warring parties, and much less likely to become a target. And hopefully that will mean access to affected populations who may be behind one military line or another.

Did you realize you were a Champion in their eyes?

2008-12-21T07:23:00.000-08:00

No I didn't. Apparently, I'm a 'Champion.' That, according to a personality test (72 yes or no questions) that I took on the promise that the results would be creepily accurate. Once you finish the test, there are a number of psychological interpretations of the personality type your test assigns you. Here is an excerpt of mine from the Keirsey 'Temperament Sorter':

Champions have a wide range and variety of emotions, and a great passion for novelty. They see life as an exciting drama, pregnant with possibilities for both good and evil, and they want to experience all the meaningful events and fascinating people in the world. The most outgoing of the Idealists, Champions often can't wait to tell others of their extraordinary experiences. Champions can be tireless in talking with others, like fountains that bubble and splash, spilling over their own words to get it all out. And usually this is not simple storytelling; Champions often speak (or write) in the hope of revealing some truth about human experience, or of motivating others with their powerful convictions. Their strong drive to speak out on issues and events, along with their boundless enthusiasm and natural talent with language, makes them the most vivacious of all the types...

... Joan Baez, Phil Donahue, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Edith Wharton, Sargent Shriver, Charles Dickens, and Upton Sinclair are examples of Idealist Champions

Creepy enough for ya? I don't usually engage with this kind of online pop psychology, but I promote it here to see if anyone else gets a little freaked out by the results.

Well the weather outside is...

2008-12-19T09:33:00.000-08:00

... I really miss Zambian weather. As I complained to the current African contingent today, missing any/all of the Canadian cold months really lowers your tolerance for winter. I thought it might be like riding a bike, having spent 25 of 26 winters in Canada, but no. I'm starting to see why my mom lists the weather as one of her top reasons for wanting to retire in Pemba.

Some Thoughts on Afghanistan

2008-12-10T13:24:00.000-08:00

Today I was asked by the Canadian International Council to provide some feedback on one of their events I recently attended, a 'National Town Hall' on Canada's mission in Afghanistan. It was an interesting idea in that they teleconferenced five meetings across the country to a panel of experts in Waterloo, in such a way that we could all hear and see one another.

I post it here as it's a good summary of my thoughts on the situation in Afghanistan.

Is the approach by Canada and its international partners working in Afghanistan?

As this event clearly demonstrated to me, the security situation in Afghanistan is a mess. And without security, humanitarian and development efforts are unsustainable. Until the army, police, corrections and judicial system are reformed and work for everyday Afghans, I think many will continue to see the Karzai government – and the international forces that prop it up – as illegitimate and unable to provide for their human security. If the Taliban, warlords or other militias can provide that, Afghans will naturally support them out of basic human necessity, if not ideology.

Assess the Government of Canada’s communication strategy on Afghanistan. What can the government do to better reach out to Canadians on this issue, explaining the mission, the achievements made to date and the risks of failure?

I think a lot of Canadians are confused about why we’re in Afghanistan, and justifiably so because I don’t think many in government understand the reasons completely either. I think we all realize the risk that a lawless Afghanistan poses to the international community, but the ‘Why Canada?’ question has never been answered satisfactorily. When we first went there, and especially to Kandahar, I think it was to make an impression on NATO (certainly with an emphasis on America) and the wider international community, perhaps with too little thought on what a monumental undertaking it would become, or that it would be easier to rebuild than it has proven to be. Either way, it was a miscalculation that is politically painful to admit.

But I think politicians have also miscalculated the resolve of Canadians to stay in Kandahar. We’ve built our capacity to operate in this environment at a very high cost, and personally, witnessing Taliban jail breaks and acid attacks on schoolgirls only underscores the need to stay until 2011 and beyond. This is one issue that Liberals and Conservatives could easily work together on, having both spent a lot of political capital on the mission. I think an open admission that we’re in well over our heads would be a start (instead of deluding ourselves that real progress is still being made). The credibility we’ve gained by taking the lead in Kandahar needs to be leveraged against the Afghan government and our NATO partners to step their efforts up. If part of the original reason of this mission was to be taken more seriously on the international stage, we need to use that newfound clout to demand more from our allies.

Based on the panel discussion, how would you advise the Government of Canada and its NATO partners on the way forward in Afghanistan?

I’ve partially answered this above, but as many have noted, the Obama Administration has identified Afghanistan as their top priority in the war on terror and will make a serious re-investment of resources there. I think this is a tremendous opportunity for Canadian Forces who stand to benefit from the expected influx of troops, equipment and political will. But just as important will be (hopefully) increased diplomatic efforts in bringing the Taliban to the bargaining table and helping Pakistan’s wobbly civilian government to rein in jihadists in the FATAs. I think it would be prudent of the Canadian government to wait and see what policy changes America pursues, and if we can convince NATO to finally provide reinforcements. If there is considerable improvement over the next two years, I think we need to revisit the 2011 deadline. The risks of going into Kandahar have been incredibly high, but so will the rewards if we can see our commitment through.

Meanwhile...

2008-12-09T23:13:00.000-08:00

During the aforementioned past few months, I have done one productive thing for this blog: jot down my ideas for what I should write once I finally get a satisfactory layout. Since I supposedly no longer care about that (see post below), here are some of the more-likely-to-be-completed, non-time-sensitive items on said list:

- a predictably glowing review of Obama's first book, Dreams From my Father
- my (foolhardy? inspirational?) decision to try and run a marathon in April
- an ethnography of Ottawa's development community
- the merits of vapourizing plant matter and nicotine-infused lozenges
- a Zambia/Mozambique update
- my desire to start a chapter of Hash House Harriers in K-W
- a list of 10 things that are fun to dislike
- reflections on organizing a large corporate sit-down dinner
- the process and health implications of finally getting a family doctor

Gettin' Back in the Saddle, Chafed

2008-12-08T22:54:00.000-08:00

Over the past couple months, I've tried many times to start blogging again. The main obstacle, and this will come as no shock to those who know me well, is that I don't like the layout. I've tried different platforms, implementing open source templates, HTML generators and fiddling around with the CSS of Blogger's pre-ordained templates. Nothing has satisfied my spatial sensibilities, and it's quite possible nothing ever will. So I'm just going to start writing.

(Cathartic note: I intensely dislike the title bar and how close the comment text is to the bottom of the post text. There. I'll probably still try to fix it though.)

Blogger's note: I've of course tweaked the design now so I like it a bit better. Thanks, Firebug! I think I'm ready to go public!

A Year On

2008-07-27T06:59:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been awhile, hasn't it? I've been meaning to start blogging again for quite some time, but a mixture of poor re-design templates and getting my life together has prevented me from doing so. Now that I'm back from gallivanting and have something approaching a real job, I need a creative outlet.

And what self-respecting web editor doesn't have his or her own pretentious blog?

"He'd smell a soccer jockstrap and faint dead away."

2007-07-06T20:45:00.000-07:00

One of things I'll miss most about Canada were the lazy Sundays I spent on the couch, recovering from a hangover or pretending to do schoolwork, watching La Liga from Spain. While the English Premier League is no doubt the most popular competition in the world, for my money the Primera (as it's called over there) is the most exciting.

Real Madrid won the league title in a thriller this year, to my great dismay (as a Barcelona supporter), but the upside is that it excited Ray Hudson, colour commentator and all-around buffoon, to the point of, well, "SHEERDELIGHTORGASMICJUBILATION!"

If you've got speakers, turn them shits up.

Lusaka Sunrise, Bloodshot Eyes

2007-07-03T21:23:00.000-07:00

Just in case anyone still bothers to check on this tomb-like corner of the internet anymore, I'm set to launch the (hopefully) less stagnant Lusaka Sunrise. Bandwidth permitting, it'll detail goings-on, political hotstoves - anything too hot for the JHR correspondents' website, anyway - spoiled Westerner complaints and photographic evidence of my seven-month tenure in the Zambian capital. Anything to limit the use of my embarassing new account with the Book of Faces (don't gloat).

When I inevitably get sick of Africa, I'll do my best to get back in here to post on matters closer to home. Promise.

And the following is why I love Barca...

2007-04-19T18:43:00.000-07:00

It's not very often that I'll get right off the couch and lose my shit while watching sports, especially while I'm alone and sober. But this makes it twice this year that I've become irrationally emotional during Barcelona games. This time, lil' 19-year-old Lionel Messi does his best to imitate Maradona's famous gol against England in the '86 World Cup. And to think, he's still 19. What the hell was I doing at 19? Certainly not dribbling through an entire professional soccer team and being all prodigal and whatnot. Turn up the sound for predictably moronic Spanish commentary.

Memorable Quotes from the Fabled Fourteenth

2007-04-16T13:22:00.000-07:00

12 pounds of ribs, 4.5 litres of Jack Daniels, 6 guys from The Cord and one papered-over coffee table made for a very fabled April 14th. I wish I could provide some context for any of these quotes, but for better or worse, I don't know what most of them mean. I was just happy I could even decipher the writing through the grease, BBQ sauce and liquor stains. It reminded me of conducting some sort of perverse historical primary research, piecing together degraded penmanship and crumpled parchments to unlock the mysteries of the past. It's not exactly Paris 1919, I warn you, but it's fairly easy to tell that our main goal on the day was to puff ourselves full of senseless male bravado. As the table quotes so nicely reveal, we accomplished that and so much more.

“Dear Dan: you’re being a schoolboy bitch.”
- B. Rock

“I was mostly just drunk, and then there were people.”
- Mike Brown

“You throw at my face, not my hand.”
- Joe Turcotte, referring to the sub-par throw

“How can you hold that?”
- Tony to Al, referring to the hot ribs

“How many lighters do you think I got? An infinite amount of lighters? God.”
- B. Rock

“I’m going to Bear-in-Mind to frame it.”
- Tony

“Heyyyy, we got it up.”
- Dan P.

“No, Jerkoff glove not Turcotte glove… they sound the same but they mean different things.”
- B. Rock

“Father’s Day is the most confusing day of the year on your reserve.”
- B. Rock

“I’m a MAN… we’re all MEN!!”
- Al

“I’m not quoting myself Joe. I’m not that narcissistic.”
- M Brown

“Hey, that’s a DJ Shadow beat. Don’t even confuse that with Swollen Members.”
- B. Rock

Brevity

2007-01-22T19:44:00.000-08:00

You may have noticed I've added a clichéd tagline under this blog's title, and thought I should offer a brief explanation. In my general experience with writing, it's much harder to write less than more. Packing meaning and impact into the fewest words possible is a skill practiced and prized by few, especially in academia. Despite my flowery and sometimes pretentious word choices, I've been making a conscious effort to write less and mean more, like the it-getters over at The Economist.

When in doubt, follow the (fittingly edited down) rules of George Orwell's Politics and the English Language, probably the best thing I ever read in high school.

1. Never use a metaphor or figure of speech you're used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use jargon if you know an everyday equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Insouciance

2007-01-21T18:35:00.000-08:00

My mom's never been one to mince words, even when I was little. Probably because of her medical background, she's shamelessly frank about the body, it's parts and functions. I was drilled to use terms like 'bowel movement' and 'sexual intercourse' from an early age instead of their cruder counterparts. More recently, I've heard the horror stories of her home nursing career: the lady bed-ridden with sores and being slowly eaten by maggots; interning a man to the hospital with a dead rodent in his ass.

So she spared me no gruesome details in her battle with Africa's microbiology.

"Everywhere you turn, something's trying to lay eggs in you," she told me, resting comfortably in a friend's care in Abbotsford, BC. Finally back from her 80-day sojourn to Mozambique, I wondered why she'd been back for a week and I hadn't heard from her - turns out she has malaria. On the scale of things that can go wrong in Africa it's a mere nuisance, she said, well worth contracting because it meant she didn't have to sleep with a mosquito net in the interminable heat. With proper treatment it's only a day or two of discomfort followed by a couple months of feeling kinda tired, hardly the colonial-era mass-murderer that branded Sub-Saharan Africa 'White Man's Grave'.

"Oh, and I have to go to the doctor on Wednesday to get de-wormed."

Besides the aerial bombardment of insect matter from mosquitoes, tsetse flies and rinderpests there's the worms in the fruit; in the meat; even the sand on the beach isn't safe. "Walk barefoot and they'll bore into the bottom of your feet and go right up your leg into the large intestine," adding that an unfortunate colleague of hers was anally intruded upon by some spiral-boring sand worms while sitting on the beach. She theorized that her parasitic co-habitants had come from the mystery goat 'meat' (see: junk and ass parts) found in the stew, oddly proud that it didn't give her the same noxious diarrhea that had befallen fellow missionaries.

She took it all in stride though, and focused our conversation on the positives: the spiritual revival and longing for salvation she'd expected, pledging to put a family of orphaned siblings through school, learning some Swahili and Portuguese and, most of all, simply surviving the ordeal.

Makes me Wanna Holler

2007-01-13T16:04:00.000-08:00

After my constant pestering (and probably some other factors that actually mattered), CBC is finally airing the final six episodes of Planet Earth, only the most epic and ambitious nature documentary of all-time. I went on about the series some time ago, after the first five episodes, and haven't left CBC's documentary department alone since.

So to get into gear for the premiere of "Ice Worlds", Sunday night at 7:00pm on CBC - the show's regular timeslot for the next six weeks - I've compiled a list of clips to whet the appetite.

Cute little fox cubs! Oh wait, they're eating cute little goslings.

Duckling divebombers

A Simba vs Babar deathmatch

A day in the life of a polar bear family. Way more realistic than a coke ad.

Will the big bad wolf catch Bambi? I hope so!

It took the crew nearly three years to get the shots of the elusive snow leopard, I'd say it was worth the wait

For the hardcores, one of my favourites - the episode "Fresh Water" in its entirety.

Obituary: Fintan Kilbride (1927-2006)

2007-01-04T18:45:00.000-08:00

Though I'm scarcely qualified to eulogize a man whom I only knew in his twilight years, the passing of Fintan Kilbride over the holiday season - the only person I would call a mentor - has inspired me to write a few words about someone who touched the lives of so many, myself included.

I easily remember the first time I met Fintan. High school graduation was only months away and I was rudderless, hopelessly drifting towards an uninspired undergraduate degree that felt more like an impending jail sentence than the privilege of higher education. That spring, way back in 2001, I improbably found myself in an information session on volunteering. The only reason I even went was because my OAC global issues teacher gave bonus marks for attending such seminars outside of class. Amidst some stuff about landmines and sweatshops, an imposing figure took the floor to recruit students for his twice-annual missions to Jamaica.

Fintan stood tall, even as a septuagenarian, his pallid face wizened by years of work in the sweltering heat of the tropics. His stature was highlighted by a lithe but muscular figure that any 30-something would be proud of, even if his diminishing crop of hair belied his vitality. A Roman-Catholic priest turned high school teacher, I imagined he could put the fear of God into a callow teenager at a moment's notice. But the lilt of his Irish brogue was disarming and, with a infectiously broad smile, Fintan had me determined to raise enough money to join him on a two-week excursion that summer.

He made it clear from the start what the trip wasn't about: religion or altruism. Despite his strong personal faith and religious background, there was no pressure or expectation to be Christian while in Jamaica, though the nature of the experience was inevitably spiritual. He had a similar distaste for seeming the haughty Canadians swooping in to teach the enfeebled Jamaicans a thing or two. We had more to learn from them, he insisted, then they did from us.

And learn we did - from the exuberance of the children living in the garbage dump; the disfigured lepers who sang and danced with us without a care in the world; the audible gunshots from the slums of Kingston at night - Fintan was there to put it into context. He transported a small library to the islands, and at night he'd have us reading away on everything from gay rights to globalization to first-world suicide rates. While we gained insight into the social injustice we witnessed on the streets, Fintan's ultimate goal was to expose the superficiality and excess of our own culture that caused it.

But Jamaica was a mere summer vacation for Fintan's tireless work. Throughout the year he would build schools in Haiti and deliver medical supplies to Nicaragua, all the while teaching at Toronto-area Catholic schools. He recalled with great satisfaction the wager he would make with petulant children: beat him in jump rope and they could all go home. No student ever succeeded.

Through long conversations and much laughter, I learned a little of Fintan's compelling life story. A priest, teacher and consummate athlete, the man was full of surprises and unbelievable stories of humanity. A bit of a renegade in the Catholic Church - he was a vocal critic of priests being unable to marry and women being disallowed priesthood - he served stints in Trinidad and Nigeria that seemed to cement his connection to the developing world. I'll never forget his story of being shot down while flying medical supplies into Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War, the province where he'd built schools and hospitals. Or how he, as a priest, fell in love with a nun and the two of them left the Church to build a beautiful family together.

It's probably those little anecdotes that I'll remember most about him. How he said he'd always clean up a public washroom if there was litter on the counter top. How he'd be after me to go out for coffee whenever I was in the GTA, even after our Jamaica days were well behind us. How I'd receive letters from him out of the blue when I didn't even know he had my new contact information. How I had to cut his toenails when his sciatic nerve was acting up. How I mistakenly challenged him to a friendly game of table tennis and was soundly drubbed by a man 55 years my senior.

Only later did he tell me he was the world racquetball champion at his age level and the one below him. He could have been the champ at my age level, I remembered thinking.

After that formative summer in 2001, I went off to university and promptly changed my major to global studies, my eyes literally opened to a new world of opportunities. I ended up going back to Jamaica for a second time the next summer, and kept in contact with Fintan until I left Canada a couple years ago on another global exchange. Though we drifted apart, I still think of him often; what he taught me; what he meant to so many others around the world. As I carry my life forward and dear Fintan fades into memory, his creed of "peace, love and respect" won't be soon forgotten.

Theory of a Nickelfault

2006-12-28T17:36:00.000-08:00

I've been saving this one for when I haven't posted in a month. Year in Review, thoughts on Blood Diamond and What I'm Going To Do With My Life to come soon!

The Red-Green Show

2006-12-04T18:52:00.000-08:00

Admittedly, I was pretty excited when I heard that former environment minister Stéphane Dion unexpectedly won the Liberal leadership. Not only that his environmental outlook seems a literal breath of fresh air, but by voting with their hearts instead of (maybe) their heads, Liberal delegates have helped transcend the image of the Party's all-things-to-all-people populism with some real conviction.

But for the Grits to slam dunk the Conservatives on the environment, which is certainly there for the slam dunking and definitely needed to win back even a minority government, they're going to have to get the Kyoto monkey off their collective backs. Everyone knows the protocol has failed, and to be fair, the Conservatives have been the only ones to admit it. Their mistake was to have no alternative to appease an ever-greener Canadian public. And having a useless environment minister.

Dion would do well to admit his complicity in Kyoto's slow death and offer Canadians what Harper was supposed to: a 'Made-in-Canada' solution that addressed the reasons why it died and offered a way forward. That would soften the blow from the inevitable onslaught of Conservative criticism that Dion presided over a massive increase in carbon emissions in his time as environment minister, even more than climate change bogeyman America. Harper's government has maintained a wishy-washy pledge to adhere to some of Kyoto's far-off targets, so in denouncing it, Dion could outflank the conservatives and expose their lack of leadership on an increasingly important issue. While Harper is rearranging deck chairs on the proverbial sinking ship, for the moment, Dion is standing on deck waiting to drown.

The Liberals have invested a lot of political capital in Kyoto and if Dion is the man of conviction he was elected to be, he shouldn't be afraid to admit that it's not working - that's the easy part. Pushing for a new international carbon-cutting regime, finally getting America onboard and changing the Canadian marketplace to foster sustainable growth will be much harder.

Colour Commentary

2006-11-30T21:48:00.000-08:00

There are some who probably think footie broadcasters are all stodgy Brits, but that's only because they've never heard GolTV's Ray Hudson (who had the call for Ronaldinho's wondergoal last weekend). Even if you don't like soccer, these deserve to be read on their own merit:

"Celtic choked right at the end; Rangers are dancing the jig, and eating the haggis until it comes out their ears, followed by whisky shots straightaway after the game, and it's marvelous for McLeish. I'm a Rangers man myself, so I had a good belt of whisky after that game."

"Bruce Arena has to pick these boys up by their jockstraps and put lobsters in their jockstraps because they went down like flies against the Czech Republic, how humiliating to have that happen to a team that was coming out to the world scene seeking respect. What a joke!"

"That's an absolute exquisite footballer -- MVP, no question. Magnifico! Extraordinario! That should be in high definition! That wasn't just literature, that was Shakespearan beauty! Ah, God, I'm sorry, I love that guy. If I could love a man, I'd love Dwayne DeRosario!"

"Genius, genius, genius. Absolutely superb strike. And look, not a smile! What makes this guy smile? I mean, come on, Román, give us a look, give us a smile, baby. I mean, is there anything more exquisite in life than watching this man play football? Look at this! Perfection. [...] That is an orgasmic goal, Phil."

"The Vikings are out; lock up the women and children, because Sweden mean business."

"In The Exorcist, Satan had control of Linda Blair for most of the movie, and that didn't work out too good in the end."

"I couldn't put it better myself, whatever the hell 'ickybalookie' means! That's what happening here! Scenes of absolute jubilation for Espanyol! And for myself, impersonally, I can't believe it! I'm not impartial today, I'm an Espanyol fan, I'd hate to say it for the Real Sociedad fans out there and for all the Alavés fans! But this is a team that would not be denied, Espanyol! They kept on hammering at the dam! They were hitting the goalposts, time after time, they kept on believing ... I don't even know who the hell scored!"

"It'll be real interesting when me and dog are watching the game tonight, and we're looking, and I'll kick him a couple of times. The dog is going to get a couple of kicks because of the chances that I believe we missed."

"He needs to be on his tippy-toes, like a midget at a urinal."

"I'd knock him out. Bind and gag him, put him in a safe and send him to the bottom of the ocean. Then maybe I'd be able to contain him."

"Cannavaro is running around like a three-legged giraffe out there, but it's effective."

"Ruud Van Nistelrooy says to Lilian Thuram, 'You're my little lollipop here tonight, mate!' "

"Brad Davis has class coming out of his earholes."

Retro Rewind: Andreas and I

2006-11-27T21:03:00.000-08:00

Getting all nostalgic around birthday time, I guess. What a difference two years makes. Seriously, check out that hair though - I was really scared of Spanish barbers chopping off my point of pride.

A Birthday Present from Ronnie

2006-11-25T18:57:00.000-08:00

An assload of schoolwork was ruining my birthday weekend until this happened. Probably the best goal I've seen live on TV.

EDIT: Here's what Ray Hudson, my favourite ridiculous sportscaster, said during GolTV's live broadcast:

"As electrifying as a hair dryer thrown into a hot tub, my friend. Absolutely breathtaking. He puts the Haitian voodoo rattle on this one, when he finishes. Ahh! Like BetaMax, they do not make them like him anymore. What more can you say?! An extraordinary goal by an extraordinary player that will send these people into their dreams tonight, thinking of heavenly things. Absolutely bamboozles his defender with this virutoso goal. Little blondie says: 'I wanna be like him.' Well, I doubt it very much. Look at this, gets all of his angles right, then sets it up for himself. Cygan is just a spectator, looks down at him and says: 'That's not human.' And it is not. It's superhuman."

Dr. Livingstone, I presume?

2006-11-19T12:08:00.000-08:00

Just in case anyone missed it, here's the latest in my on-going obsession with Africa. Not my best work, but given I haven't written for a newspaper for the better part of a year, it turned out alright. All part of my quest to become the modern-day David Livingstone.

Most Dishonourable

2006-11-13T12:37:00.000-08:00

Normally I shy away from posting soccer-related You Tube clips (you should go here for those), but at times, certain excerpts just deserve to be disseminated.

How on earth did they get a free kick so close? Are those players committing hari kari afterwards? A comment on Japanese culture and their gender construct of masculinity?

An Homage to Rummy

2006-11-09T12:58:00.000-08:00

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know."

One Love Update

2006-11-07T09:39:00.000-08:00

Finally went to see The Last King of Scotland over the weekend. A bit of a misleading title, as the story details how a young Scottish doctor goes to 1970s Uganda and falls in with legendary dictator Idi Amin. The movie is pretty rubbish outside the scenery (probably filmed in South Africa anyway, as almost all 'African' movies are) and Forest Whittaker's chilling portrayal of Amin.

But if you don't know the intricacies of 1970s Ugandan politics, you'll be pretty lost. The movie never really explains why Amin came to power and why the dissidents he murdered wanted him out. His paranoia of being assassinated or overthrown really drives his character and the film, but it seems contrived as we learn nothing more about the rebels other than they're 'Obote's Men' (the former president). Obote is never shown or even discussed in passing, really.

Also, the film glossed over Amin being a Muslim ruler in a majority Christian country (there's a reason to be worried), only making fleeting references to him funding the PLO and propping up Libya's Islamic regime.

I dunno, maybe I'm being too critical but the characters seemed cliched and two dimensional: the naive white guy that goes to Africa to 'make a difference', the African 'strong man' dictator who claims to be a man of the people but purges political opponents and converts public money into private wealth.

Calling all WLU'ers

2006-11-01T20:18:00.000-08:00

Fellow sixth-year soldier, Willison Hall alumnus and all-around virtuoso Jason Shim has just launched Overheard at Laurier, a spin-off of the hilarious Overheard at Western. So if you've eavesdropped on anything funny lately, help a brotha out and send a transcript to overheard@overheardatlaurier.com

Cracks me up

2006-10-26T20:59:00.000-07:00

Off on some procrastination tangent, somehow found that the Internet's most pretentious music website eschewed the conventional album review and adjudged the latest Jet album quite hilariously. After the laughter subsided, it dawned on me that chimps scare me even more now.

On the Road to Zion

2006-10-18T20:32:00.000-07:00

For some reason I've been thinking about Africa a lot lately. Maybe it's the resurgent naturalist in me or the African history class I've been taking. It's probably that my mom's leaving for Mozambique today (note gun and hoe on coat of arms).

It all started about a month back while watching a show on Animal Planet about this dude who owned a chimp sanctuary in Sierra Leone, rescuing them from the jungles as the country plunged into civil war in the 90s. As they drove through Freetown, there were people with missing limbs all over the place - these poor wretches had the choice of loosing an arm or leg to rebels terrorizing the countryside. Surviving the ordeal almost seemed worse as it doomed them to a life of vagrancy, not even able to perform basic unskilled physical labour anymore. The owner of the sactuary was spared only because he dealt with animals, not people.

It all seems so pervasive - the janjaweed militia ethnically cleansing Darfur, kids sleeping in guarded camps Uganda so they're not kidnapped and forced to be child soldiers, people living like feral animals in the quintessential failed African state, Somalia.

Then there's the HIV/AIDS crisis.

The average life expectancy of Mozambicans is just 39. Not that bad compared to 32 in neighbouring Swaziland, where people can expect to live the shortest lives on earth.

So my mom is going to a missionary school way out in the boondocks to do her part to try and do what she can to help. Takes five days just to get there from Canada, no running water, only a generator for power. Gets to swim in the Indian Ocean every morning instead of a shower, a daily ration of rice with beans and for the odd treat, a bit of goat.

To those who have never met my mother, she's an amazingly spiritual person and the strongest woman I know, but if you're not at her ridiculously high level of Christianity, she can come off as a tad crazy.

First, she tells me that "there's a whole other world I have no idea about" in some of these religious revival communities in Africa. I accept that, I really don't have a clue. I read in The Economist a while back that evangelical Christianity is spreading like wildfire down Africa's East coast.

Then she tells me that she's going on week-long missions into mainly-Muslim communities to offer salvation and refuge at the missionary compound should any of them want it. A little scary (don't need any jihads against the Currie family) but yeah, that's what missions are for, I guess, conversions and saving.

Then there's the healing. Now, she already has a degree in 'spiritual healing' from a religious college in BC, so she's no stranger to laying hands on the sick, claiming to be able to channel the Holy Spirit to help physical ailments. This might sound farfetched to some, but in evangelical circles, it's commonly accepted and 'healings' take place quite frequently. I'm not really sold on the idea, but it seems to work, at least on a psychosomatic level, for some.

But apparently in Africa, the healing is on some next-level shit. Not only do they perform the run-of-the-mill arthritis expulsion or cancer reversal, but given time and a spiritual fervour only Africa can foster, HIV/AIDS can be completely cured. We're starting to go off the deep end here...

Now there's raising people from the dead, two, three and even four days after they 'die'. I asked my mom what to do if she does die over there, her last wishes and whatnot, and she maintained that in the event of death, she would simply be "raised up." That's what I call life insurance!

Lastly, if you're still with me, are what I call the 'magic pots'. Most Christians know about the story where Jesus, arriving to a dinner where there wasn't enough bread and wine to go around, performed a miracle by multiplying the food and drink so there was just enough to fill everyone. At the compound where my mom will be staying, there exists a modern-day version of this feat whereby when they're feeding the locals that come in for a free meal, the pots never have to be refilled, and when the last person is fed, the pots are found to be empty.

Africa does have that mystique that if any of this stuff can happen somewhere, it would be there. Maybe it's my Anglo-Saxon view of the continent as a vast, untamed wilderness that, for the most part, scares the shit out of me. I don't want to think of my mom as naive zealot, but my scientific-rational side can't accept dead-raising and food-creating. But it would seem oddly appropriate that in the midst of so much human suffering would come God's greatest works.

Retro Rewind: Chris Sharp

2006-10-09T11:38:00.000-07:00

Aside from the antics of this past weekend, the pick of the litter was going through my old CDs to find this one full of wrestling videos from an old Willison floormate.

Chris Van Vliet (stagename: Chris Sharp) was actually a pretty decent guy, not the meathead you'd expect to be an aspiring profesisonal wrestler. Wrote for The Cord a couple times, went on to be a anchorman for a news station up in Peterborough and now has his own radio show out in BC.

But yeah, one of the highlights of my first year was this wrestling match they had in our lounge. We cleared out the couches, brought in a bunch mattresses from our rooms and made a makeshift ring. He had another one of his wrestling buddies up to have the match, complete with entrance themes, plotlines and the whole bit.

Anyway, here's a little comp of Chris Sharp and the aforementioned battle of the Willison A2 North lounge (sorry about the Rob Zombie).

Planet Earth

2006-09-28T10:44:00.000-07:00

It's occurred to me that humans pretty much suck. Our commendable quest to understand the natural world has brought great advancement to mankind, but also enormous vanity - too many of us live under the presumption that we've mastered Planet Earth. Sure there's the odd tsunami or Katrina to remind us of our utter helplessness, but let's face it, from the Bible on out, we like to think that we have dominion over Mother Nature.

Our greatest monuments are a testament to this - towering skyscapers that defy gravity, dams that hold back the floodwaters, palaces carved out of impregnable rock, walls built up impossible mountain slopes - but they're absolutely dwarfed by the epic beauty and scale that exist in places too few humans ever get to see.

Well, the BBC has done its part to change all that with their Planet Earth series, four years in the making, the self-described "most ambitious documentary ever undertaken." It takes its viewers to places unseen by most or even all of humanity, using the latest in time-lapse and satellite photograph to capture the planet as never before. It's literally breathtaking. And goosebump making. Enough to make anyone with a passing interest in nature want to throw themselves into a career geared towards preserving the magnificience of such a masterpiece.

A 25-foot Great White Shark launches out of the depths to ensnare an entire seal in its gaping jaws.

BASE jumpers free-fall into a 400m deep cave.

A sandstorm the size of England tears across the Sahara.

What I could find on You Tube doesn't do it any justice, but you get the idea. It puts us in our place; a short-lived civilization that has more power than ever to alter and comprehend the physical world, but one that ultimately won't matter all that much in its entire history. Sounds funny, but the series has actually made me less worried about carbon emissions, habitat destruction, deforestation, etc. Nature's going to beat us in the end anyway, profoundly as we may change it along the way. It's just a matter of how long we can avoid the tipping point.

Keep not giving a fuck about global warming - how does another ice age sound? Maybe a seven-metre rise in sea levels as a result of melted ice caps? That's the 50% of humanity that lives in coastal areas screwed. Start buying that inland property now, it'll be the new coast!

Keep slashing and burning the rainforest? Well, besides contributing to the aforementioned malaise, we have no idea what diseases lurk in the jungle that we're yet to discover and contract. Where do you think AIDS, Ebola, West Nile and SARS came from? Seriously, don't fuck with jungles.

Combine those with the threats of massive tectonic plates shifts (earthquakes and tsunamis), interstellar missiles (meteors, asteroids; anything Bruce Willis can destroy) and we're already balanced precariously close to the edge of some Malthusian holocaust. No wonder people hope the Second Coming is just around the corner. Watching this documentary and changing your lifestyle in subtle yet important ways might be a better start.

Hot Like Hot Sauce

2006-09-25T20:42:00.000-07:00

Rubbing salt into the superficial wound of Western's defeat this past Homecoming weekend, Karl pointed me towards this clever little blog that desperately needs to duplicated for WLU. And I thought all students-cum-journalists at UWO wanted to do was take pictures of dorm strippers. Anyone overhear anything good for an inaugural post?

On a Lighter Note

2006-09-18T19:49:00.000-07:00

I'm not usually one for homecoming and all the non-age-appropriate bullshit that comes with it, but this year there's at least one thing that's piqued my interest more than, say, assaulting WLUSU volunteers at Pikecoming.

It combines three things that should intrigue nearly everyone: Trailer Park Boys (Whites), karaoke (Asians and whoever's drunk enough) and a worthy cause (all of humanity).

It can't be any worse than the last time I dressed up as Ricky. They had this TPB night at the Turret last year, and I actually dressed up for it. I forget who exactly was with me (others were in costume too), but we got there and the place was an absolute tomb.

In obvious disappointment, we headed downstairs to Wilf's, dressed like the Trailer Park Boys on an ordinary Friday night. The weird part: students were so embroiled in their midnight-hour drunken conversations and pick-up attempts, nobody seemed to notice I was wearing a shirt torn to shreds and duck-taped back together. In that moment I remember thinking that it must be because Ricky's character and the Wilf's/Turret barflies share a similar level of social civilization.

See y'all at the Huether on Friday night.

Afghan Wigs

2006-09-16T10:42:00.000-07:00

I'm getting pretty sick of Canadians whining about getting out of Afghanistan. I understand the dismay over our government's lack of disclosure over why we're there and increasing troop casualties, but do people seriously want us to just drop everything and leave? Or negotiate with the Taliban as Jack Layton has suggested?

First of all, abandoning such a feeble state in that part of the world would be a disaster, as it was the first time when the Taliban rolled out the red carpet for Al-Qaeda to plan 9/11. Sandwiched in between we-shadily-secure-our-nuclear-warheads Russia and we-have-a-shitload-of-terrorists-and-we've-got-nukes Pakistan, it's at the crossroads of one of the world's most dangerous regions. Not to mention its long border with atomic aspirant and regional up-and-comer, Iran, who likes picking out failed states to host its terrorists.

Weak states are the perfect breeding ground for terrorism. Lebanon can't confront Hezbollah because its state institutions - specifically the military and police force - don't exert influence across the entire country. Better to tolerate their presence and prolong your own poltical livelihood than try and crack down and risk assassination, overthrow, etc.

If we leave Afghanistan's elected government toothless and only in control of Kabul, how long will it be before it has to allow the Taliban and the opium-growing warlords to run roughshod over the rule of law our soldiers have died to instill?

Then there's Jack Layton's idea of reasoning the ever-reasonable Taliban. Show them that casualties are hurting our national resolve and reward them for slaughtering our soldiers with a nice chunk of territory in beautiful mountainous south Kandahar province. That's just a guess, though. I really have no idea what concessions he'd be willing to make to mysogynist Islamofascists, or how he could even consider bargaining in good faith with those who publicly stoned women in the national soccer stadium. Anything to distinguish the NDP from those supporting an increasingly unpopular war, I guess.

Jar Jar?!

2006-09-14T20:47:00.000-07:00

I had no idea Ronaldinho was a Laurier Ice Breaker! I guess the incessant cheering of O-Week would have anyone looking as haggard as my favourite in-need-of-dentistry Brazilian soccer player. At least the first-years won't be falling over themselves to sleep with this one.

"For those who get high on language."

2006-08-30T08:15:00.000-07:00

That's how one reviewer praised Irvine Welsh's latest effort, The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs. It's not a seminal work, like Trainspotting or Ecstasy, but it has reminded me of why I've endeavoured to read every book he's ever written.

Between dialogue written in phonetic Scottish brogue and narration bristling with linguistic gems, his novels feed into my already pompous lexicon. Since his books are always set in Leith (the port district of Edinburgh) and explore the history, prejudices, vernacular and current state of the Scots, they've become an anthropological primer for a possible move to my ancestor's homeland.

So, as an homage to my favourite author, I compiled a list of words as I read the other night. Try some of these on for size: agog, apopleptic, blithe, besotted, doleful, egress, empyreal, ennui, erudite, fastidious, fey, foible, foist, jocular, jocund, malodourous, parsimonious, putrescent, quaff, surreptitious, supine, suspiring, tawdry and wan. And to think, he uses cunt, nonce, knob cheese and pouf in equal measure.

Gross Miscarriage of Justice

2006-08-30T07:39:00.000-07:00

Still can't believe Colbert lost out to BARRY MANILOW at last Sunday's Emmy Awards. Especially when he referenced my blog on air last week! Hint: it's embedded in Stephen's multiple honourific (3:40)!

A/V Input

2006-08-26T13:37:00.000-07:00

Promise this is the last Euro Trip-related post, but since I went to the trouble of creating a You Tube account, I figured I'd share some of the videos Leo shot with his digital camera.

OSNABRUCK - Germans go bananas after they beat Argentina on penalties during the 2006 World Cup.

AMSTERDAM - Coordinated with the church bells, he played the trumpet and french horn with one hand, the organ with his feet and steered the boat with his free hand!

HELSINKI - This string quartet really added to the drama of an otherwise mundane afternoon.

Under Construction

2006-08-20T22:40:00.000-07:00

Just discovered this whole Blogger Beta thing, so if things look buggered up around here for a bit, don't think I've lost all my spacial and typographic sensibilities.

Part Two

2006-08-13T20:59:00.000-07:00

The rest of the best, confusingly from the first half of the trip. The full set is finally up on my freshly pimped Flickr Pro account, though I've yet to add descriptions. Those will be forthcoming, along with my summer-long ambition to consolidate the photos from Euro Trip '04.

Just like the colours in this one. Simply a street artist doing his thing at a skate/BMX park along the River Thames.

Doesn't get any more British; Big Ben, the London Eye and a pompous orator. Note the single-decked bus in the background, I guess they're finally phasing out those death-courting, high-centre-of-gravity killing machines.

Posted this one before, but it's probably the best shot from all of Germany. It's Carsten, our German host, moments after his country defeated Argentina in the World Cup quarterfinals. The most vivid audio memory from that night was "Doo, doo, doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo, Deutschland!"

Kind of mundane in comparison, but this is Carsten's street, unfortunately named Adolfstraße, at about 5:30 in the morning. Couldn't sleep, so I wandered around taking some streetscapes and thought this one depicted the average residential area quite well.

Along that same walk, I came across a sandy football pitch bathed in morning light. Appropriate, I thought, given my reason to travel to Germany in the first place.

Ah, Gelsenkirchen. Home to numerous run-down factories in the coal-and-steel heartland of the Ruhr, and on this Canada Day, thousands of subordinate English fans as well. This ruddy chap was busily encouraging the faithful throughout England's match against Portugal, which they eventually lost on penalties.

English fan (ground) and Leo, taking in the misery of said loss.

Church pictures are usually so static and boring, but I thought I'd use this one of Cologne's famous Dom to ignite a talking point on the decline of Christianity in the continental identity of an increasingly Godless Europe.

'Would Fuck for Tickets' writes this brash German fan. His friend on the left seems to wholeheartedly support the plan.

Feels weird to end the commentary in the middle of the trip, but anyway here are Leo and I, DABs in hand, anxiously awaiting the semifinal game between the rhino-coloured teams. The beer was true to German form in that, even when drunk in frighteningly large quantities, it fails to produce a hangover. Thank god for the Purity Law.

Pulitzers, Part One

2006-07-27T12:13:00.000-07:00

The best of the best from what I've edited so far, with more coming next week. The rest of this first batch can be found here.

Leo, Carsten and I at the Beck's Brewery in Bremen. The guy
running the tour actually let us behind the taps for the photo
op, and noting our shitty pours, commented "It's OK, there's
lots of beer here."

Berlin Fanfest, third place game. In the shadow of the Brandenburg
Gate, over one million Germans go bananas during player
introductions, specifically that of national hero Oilver Kahn.

Line of Buddy Bears, Unter der Linden, Berlin. Cool how you
can see the TV Tower and Berlin Cathedral in the background.
Bear in foreground is from Columbia, I think.

Sunset behind Berlin's Olympiastadion. Always an eerie place,
its original use was to showcase Nazi Germany at its pre-WWII
zenith, the 1936 games.

It's so hard to get a candid picture out of Andreas. Let's just
say there's some off-camera antics that evoked such a
'who's grabbing my ass?' response.

The next three involve booze, such was my trip to Finland.
Here's Raikku and I, bathed in the red light of a Helsinki
nightclub, sharing a healthy dose of salamari.

Licking the ice wall at the Finlandia Ice Bar, Helsinki. 10 Euros
for one drink, but the token tourist experience will last a lifetime!

Myself, Ville and Leo, moments after a generous shot of 74.6%
Estonian Absinthe. It had some strage plant right in the bottle,
but was actually smoother than its alcohol percentage would
suggest. Could taste it in the back of my throat for entire night,
which helps explain why my mouth is, again, hanging open like a
dog's in summer.

Danke, Tack, Kiitos

2006-07-22T00:14:00.000-07:00

TAMPERE, FINLAND - This is it, really. One last bleary European morning, waking to pick up the pieces of the previous night's revelry. Went for broke, quite literally, last night, taking everything from Absinthe (yes, the real stuff, from Estonia) to cider to salamari and even some Finnish homegrown. "All in" as Grits 'n' Gravy would say with a mid-western drawl.

Assuming I won't have internet access during my mind-numbing 16-hour London layover, guess it's time to sum up. Met six friends from my time in Spain, including one I just bumped into in Stockholm, small world and all. Marieke, Andreas, Annika, Marcus, Tiina and Raikku showcased their respective countries with a lot of pride, at least more than I'd have for my hometown. What the hell would I do with any of these people if they came to visit me? Take them to, uh, Phil's and St. Jacobs?

Hard to rank where we've been as the German stage of the Tour de Farce was more touristy and chaotic with the football and such. Berlin, though, sticks out as my favourite city from the biased perspective of having been there for the end of the World Cup. Could just wander around and stumble into all kinds of kinder surprises - a beach party here, Cold War history there and the best Döner Kebabs this side of Istanbul. Plus, it's the home of the Buddy Bär, adorable little buggers.

Nightlife, somewhat surprisingly, I'd have to say Finland. Maybe the crew I was rolling with just knew the scene really well, but it seemed there'd be something novel at every bar we visited. A band playing old clothing racks, some flaming licorice shot that Raikku concocted, multi-level theme bars, people getting seriously shitfaced. Perpetual daylight too, so you never know what time it is, if you should be coming or going or what. Took a look at the atlas, and we're up around the 60th parallel, which in Canada would put us in the southern Northwest Territories.

Seems stupid to evaluate entire countries, having seen so little of them, but Sweden was probably the most fun of all, though that has more to do with my friends there than the place itself. You know, like the cheesy Rogers commercial says, 'The best place in the world is where your friends are.' That was what the post-WC part of the trip was all about, really.

Homestretch

2006-07-19T05:25:00.000-07:00

HELSINKI - It's been awhile, due to shoddy net access in Sweden, but there wasn't much time to post anyway. Between catching up with the ever-bubbly Swedes, going to a footie match, pounding vodka shots and, of course, eating meatballs, my five days in Stockholm felt as short as a Scandinavian night (it's only dark between 11:30pm and 2:30am, even less here in Finland).

Hard to explain the emotional gamut of seeing my best friend from Alicante, Andreas, for the first time in two years. We both have steady girlfriends now, thinking more about the future, but in a lot of ways nothing has changed. I repeatedly insulted Sweden and its funny money while drunk, he accused me of being an American in disguise, but we had a cracker of a time in the process.

Running out of time to write even though there's a lot more to say about my fist stop in Scandinavia. In Finland now, staying with another friend from the exchange, Tiina. Went swimming in a nordic lake, then did it up all Finnish-like with a half-hour in the sauna.

99 Problems

2006-07-14T12:58:00.000-07:00

STOCKHOLM - Sweden, it has to be said, is the cat's meow. Similar to Canada, but with old-ish looking buildings and more communism. Too inebriated to write much more.

Moroccan Super Pollen

2006-07-13T02:24:00.000-07:00

AMSTERDAM - Leaving for the Swedish leg of the journey today, and it seems about time I go to a country with a little more social regulation. After spending the first two weeks of the trip completely drug-free, this 48-hour stopover has had me all buggered up from the get-go. Spend the entire day at the apartment yesterday, just whacked out of our gourds, only went out to buy groceries and play some hacky sack. It occurs to me that this would be a good starting point to phase out smoking dope - the quality is only going downhill from here. Also feels like I'm a lil' tardy in getting here. Right after high school with some CBG friends would have been a time alright, but now, just gettin' high all day seems a bit of a waste.

Dirty Pirate Hookers

2006-07-12T01:18:00.000-07:00

AMSTERDAM - Fell into the city like a sack o' bricks, having 'slept' the previous night on the floor of the Berlin airport waiting for the red eye.

As Hunter S. would say, the place is choc-full of grit - lots of dodgy alleyways, potential petty thievery on every corner and of course, myriad whorehomes. Add to that the threat caused by any of Amsterdam's 700,000 bikes, and the city can feel quite threatening at times. Condensed too, is diminuitive Netherlands, every bit of space carefully allotted, packed and used to maximum efficiency. Just checked wikipedia, and yep, it's the smallest country I've ever visited. 392 people per square kilometre to Canada's three. Hilarious to see businesswomen, complete with heels and mini-skirts, ripping around on old-school bicycles through the rush hour traffic though.

Great accomodation here too, staying with a former roommate from Alicante. She's a successful finance lawyer now, her place decked out in Ikea, which feels far too nice for us borderline vagrants.

64 games later

2006-07-10T01:31:00.000-07:00

BERLIN - 31 days, a transatlantic journey, countless beers and a feast of football later, the World Cup, or Weltmeisterschaft, is finally over. I figure that I've watched about 58 of the 64 games, amounting to well over 100 hours of total football consumed. South Africa in 2010?! We'll see. Might be a tad easier to get tickets for.

The final was quite the anti-climax, though, at least for a neutral. In Rome or Paris maybe, but in Berlin it felt like the party was over after Germany won third place Saturday night. Funny how the last game brought fans out of the woodwork; Poles, Brazilians, Britons and other nationalities long since eliminated donned their native colours for one last excuse to party. In this orgy of multiculturalism, last night was the unwanted bastard child.

Sad too that this is my last day in Germany. Can't complain about the country, really, it's been a whale of a time. Hopefully, I'll find the time and wherewithal to post something from the 'Dam.

I'll leave you, and this World Cup, with this gem I picked up from soccerpulse.com.

Brandon-burg Gate

2006-07-09T02:28:00.000-07:00

BERLIN - For some damn reason, I have not been able to use Blogger in the last two internet cafes here, hence the breaking of my daily blogging ritual. That, and I cannot figure out how to get an apostrophe on this stupid keyboard. Pardon the awkward-sounding language. Did I mention that apostrophes are my favourite grammatical function?

The two blog-less days in Hamburg were pretty forgettable anyway. Some killer shopping, but the sleazy Reeperbahn, apparently the most formidable red-light district in the world, ranged from annoying (see: dirty old men trying to lure you into all manner of sex clubs) to downright disturbing (in the case of very assertive, possibly transvestite, prostitutes). At least my face did not get licked, a la Bryn.

Anyway, had a cracker of a time in das capital last night. First was watching Germany prevail in the third-place game, causing Deutchlanders to party almost as if they had won it all. Nice to be treated to one more night of unbridled German nationalism. Ended up at a faux-beach bar district in the middle of some urban redevelopment scheme, complete with a man wielding a flamethrower and a packed dancefloor pumping everything from JT to James Brown to House. Sung "Fat Lip" and "Black Betty" in deserted U-bahn stations on our meandering journey back to the hotel.

Was surreal to talk to everyone at The Cord office as the sun came up acrost West Berlin, picking up where we had just left off.

Amistad

2006-07-05T16:27:00.000-07:00

BREMEN - Friendship with those abroad is fleeting at best and should be enjoyed in the moment as much as possible. Promises of keeping in touch and subsequent visits abound, but you should always work under the assumption that you'll probably never see the person ever again. Whether it's an acquaintance on the train, flatmate or medium-term friend, pragmatism is key even though it feels pretty callous.

Carsten, our host in Germany for the past week, has put up with our disruptive behaviour so gracefully. Whatever shit Germans may give me for the next 5 days I'm here, he's ensured that I'll look kindly on the populace. We parted ways on a high here in Bremen with a Brick Brewery-like tour of Beck's brewery then to a Bavarian restaurant for schnitzel and *insert German sterotype here* a Maß (mass) of wheat beer, which is an entire litre's worth of the liquid gold.

Free Frings

2006-07-05T02:50:00.000-07:00

It wasn't supposed to be like this, in so many ways. The home country eliminated in the last throes of extra time, the supposed German efficiency rendered useless in the confusion and mayhem at the Dortmund hauptbahnof. Now there's simply no team left to cheer for, no need to hope that we might serendipitidously stumble our way into becoming ticketholders.

There we were, along with about 200,000 disappointed German fans, stuck in one huddled mass outside the police barracade blocking the entrances to the train station. Was it a bomb threat? The threat of hooliganism? Nope, just too many people trying to get in the station at one time. Apparently, there was no plan to handle the onrush of travellers (as opposed to revellers, if Germany won) just trying to get home and away from the berzerk Italians. The fear of trampelling was real, as was a riot, but it ended semi-gracefully with a putrid train ride. Carsten said it best: "Nobody was expecting this."

Canada Day

2006-07-03T10:56:00.000-07:00

KÖLN - A little dated, I know, but we had an interesting Canada Day over here in Germany. Barely cognizant of the fact that it was even our national holiday, late that night we noticed a red and white flag discarded on the floor of the Gelsenkirchen train station. Assuming it was a England flag (they had played in the city hours earlier and, of course, their flags were everywhere), Leo picked it up and to our amazement it was indeed the maple leaf. Shortly after examining the flag, a short man with a Canadian accent (you have to understand we were surrounded by ruddy Brits all day), asked us, "What is this, the Owen Hargreaves fan club? (he's the only Canadian-born player in the World Cup, and plays for England)" Turns out he was a journalist from the Toronto Sun, who I surprisingly respect because he writes for their Sports section. He'd been to tons of games, seen all of Germany and was to great to gab about the fitba with, even though I kept thinking about trying to steal the media pass hanging around his neck so I could actually attend a game here.

The night continued with us making a convoluted journey back to Osnabrück, aided in large part by these two fantastic Germans who had helped us to buy train tickets earlier in the day when we were so clueless; we would have missed our train, and the game, if not for them. As we were about to leave the train, Leo didn't know what to do with the flag as he didn't want to carry it around anymore, but it was so obvious - we should give it to them, especially as we had spent a large part of the three-hour ride blabbering on about all things Canada. It was accepted with a broad smile and a standing invitation to visit Hamburg, so we'll probably head to the party capital of Germany to meet up with them again. Good job that the World Cup motto is "A time to make friends."

To the present though, and we're visiting Cologne, the *surprise* place where the smelly stuff was invented. We were told it's known for two things: shopping and gay culture. I spent all day doing the former, hopefully I don't find out too much about the latter when we hit the town town's bierhalles tonight.

Shine your light on the world

2006-07-02T03:12:00.000-07:00

The process of cultural diffusion is one of the best things about travelling. When you first get somewhere, direction, lifestyle, schedules, cuisine and sometimes language are foreign, but slowly you begin to uncover and decode another small corner of the world. You start to know where and when to go places, what to say, how to eat, dress and live a little more like the locals do. The best part is that it isn't a static one-way relationship; you leave your mark on the place and the people there in the same way they've imprinted themselves unto you. And in the case of the crazy English fans that burned me with a cigarette in Gelsenkirchen yesterday, I've got the physical imprint to prove it.

What Get's My Goat Preview

2006-07-02T03:03:00.000-07:00

I haven't had time to compile it yet, but the 'What Get's My Goat' list is floating around in my head quite a bit these days. And yes, these things will be much worse than what stuck in my craw.

Props go to Carly for stoking the fire of burning hatred for all things tea.

Alando Palais

2006-07-01T01:20:00.000-07:00

It was good to see Germany win last night, not just because it led to mayhem in the streets afterwards, but as Carsten was telling us, this whole World Cup is a bit of a coming out party for German nationalism. History notwithstanding, people shouldn't feel ashamed to be proud of their country en masse. Took in the game in this ridiculous just-for-the-World-Cup arena that held about 5,000 fans. Can't remember too much of the aftermath due to the €2 Beck's, but here are some snapshots of the melee.

I predict a riot

2006-06-30T02:30:00.000-07:00

Went running this morning through a Black Forest-like wood, rounded a lake and across a wheat field. Was some huge white windmills off in the distance and a beautiful mid-morning temperature. Caught a 'guten tag' or two from fellow runners, then got lost in a city full of black, red and gold preparing for today's 21.00 kickoff.

Bearbeiten aus Deutchland

2006-06-29T02:15:00.000-07:00

OSNABRÜCK - Wilkommen! My German has improved in leaps and bounds even though we lost the phrasebook in yesterday's travel cycle. It's a softer language than it gets credit for (see: Arnold Schwarzenegger parodies) with lots of 'sh' and 'ein' noises. It's getting confusing though, this multi-lingual thing. The wires in my brain get crossed and sometimes Spanish and French come out when I'm trying to say something in German.

Broke the fast food duck last night as well, due to everything being closed. Burger King reigns the German fast food world apparently - I had a whopper and Leo the 'Long Chicken'. I guess this will have to substitute for my trying McDonald's once in every country I go to as the grease made me feel pretty awful.

But the real highlight of the day was London. We traveled into the city instead of spending 10 hours in the airport waiting for our connecting flight to Germany - just a quick train ride from Stansted and we were in the mix in Liverpool Station, Picadilly Circus, Big Ben, fish n' chips and the like. It's absurd to try and take in such a globally important city in an afternoon, but it felt über-Bohemian to swing through foggy London town then jetset our way to Deutchland. Bizarre cultural observation: British people smell really nice, even the men. Definitely was taking stock of if this was a place I could see myself doing grad school.

Today it's off to explore Osnabrück with Leo's friend Carsten, who's shown us some quality German hospitality even though things are a little cramped in his one-bedroom flat. It's just a little university town here, but there's not much else to do until the WC fires up again tomorrow with Germany v Argentina. Should be a classic.

"You've gotta be a celebrity to drive a Celebrity"

2006-06-15T14:41:00.000-07:00

I've had this post kicking around for a while now, and am finally ready to unleash it unto the world. The necessary photoshopping was done months ago, but with the WC in full swing, I felt inspired to dredge it from the cutting room floor.

Serginho (BRA) - Karl Pinto

Steve Finnan (IRE) - Hillary Swank (from Boys Don't Cry especially)

Clarence Seedorf (NED) - Don Cheadle

Thierry Henry (FRA) - Dave Chappelle

And a doo-doo-do-loo-doo, bum-bum

2006-06-14T09:16:00.000-07:00

To the man in the bar who informed me that "my team was losing to Ukraine" today - nice try.

This, that and the other thing

2006-06-03T18:12:00.000-07:00

How scary is this whole 'homegrown terrorism' story? Very. Interested to see how everything pans out, but yeesh, some serious damage has been done to the reputation of the Islamic community. Reading up on some of the details, here's what freaks me out: the handful of minors associated with the cell were the probable suicide bombers, as they tend to be naive and easily-manipulated by the higher-ups. The three tonnes of explosive material was probably to arm two or three truck bombs (similar to the Oklahoma City bombing, which only had one), which would be driven up to or into their target before detonation. This rules out TTC stations and other public transit centres that can't be easily driven into, but apparently truck bombs are used to bring down large buildings. What a wake-up call. Keep me safe Stephen Harper!

*************
I know there's a real World Cup starting in five days, but I'm getting fairly amped about this 2007 Under-20 tournament that's going to be held in Canada. Reason number one is 18-year-old Kelon Moura Souza, Brazil's next soon-to-be-playing-in-Europe phenom, who has invented this absurd 'seal dribble' to draw fouls, and then proceeds to pound in free kicks from all over the place. What will these crazy Samba kids come up with next? Reason two: a ridiculous compilation of Canada's Under-20 win over Brazil last month, giving me a faint hope that our national youth team won't get embarassed on home soil. Props to You Tube for the clips - turn up your speakers for some freaky French hip-hop and Wu-Tang.

Found It!

2006-06-01T11:49:00.000-07:00

Presenting Stephen Colbert's 'Black acquaintance Alan'!

What wikipedia says about Alan:
Whenever Colbert discusses racial issues, he often asks that a picture of him and his African-American co-worker Alan be shown on screen. Colbert sometimes refers to Alan as "Alan, my black friend, Alan". He first appeared on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day when Colbert was complaining about having to work on that holiday, assuming that Alan was angry about it as well, which he wasn't. Recently reduced in status from "friend" to "acquaintance", after Alan was spotted at a protest rally. This character is played by stand-up comedian Jordan Carlos.

Read the rest of the hilarious wikipedia entry to enjoy the frightening breadth of the Colbert (Cohl-bear) oeuvre.

Lower Canada

2006-05-29T21:27:00.000-07:00

For those of you who watch The Colbert Report, you probably know the bit about 'his black friend Allan'. Basically, it's a token picture that proves he has multicultural friends. For the price of an absurdly large shot of rum, Wilbur was willing to provide me with this gripping homage. I've been scouring the internet for the real version, and will post it when I do find it.

Meanwhile, check out the rest of the Quebec City pics here.

UPDATE: Find more QC images here.

21 Days Later

2006-05-22T11:21:00.000-07:00

They say that it takes a full three weeks of cessation for a smoker to cleanse their body of nicotine. After this, of course, there is still the psychological addiction that can carry on for months and even years after the quit date. I remember my mom, who smoked two packs a day for 20-plus years, tell me that she would get one or two panic attacks a year for an entire decade after she quit. That kinda makes sense, as medical experts claim it takes about 10 years for your lungs to de-tar and re-pink.

It's actually been a great 21 days of non-smoking; not what I was expecting at all. Only one night of clammy sweats in the first week; just a couple of relapse nightmares (when you smoke in a dream and wake up believing you actually did); and no major freak-outs or give-ins.

Even though I thought it would be harder, I'm not all that shocked I've done so well. With my obviously declining health over the past two years since I got back from Spain (where I started smoking again, damn Europe), I really felt that if I didn't quit now, I never would. Do or die (sooner), quite literally. The thought of smoking in front of my future children haunted me. Being a mild asthmatic, I was on the fast-track to being tethered to an oxygen canister for life. I would gasp for air after a pathetically small amount of athletic activity. I hated how my basement, my clothes and I would smell like an old tradesman who'd smoked for yonks.

And therein lies the simple secret to quitting: you have to genuinely want to, and be prepared to change your lifestyle to remove the trappings that led you to smoke in the first place. After that, it's surprisingly easy-peasy. Onward!

Zoology

2006-05-21T10:54:00.000-07:00

I've always been wary of the zoo. I hate the idea of imprisoning all those animals, especially exotic ones, that must be bewildered as to how they wound up on the outskirts of Scarborough. But after visiting the Metro Toronto Zoo yesterday, I understand that even though it's awful to see a 1000-pound polar bear looking positively lethargic in a small enclosure, these animals are ambassadors for their species; promoting conservation and a greater respect for their freer brethren. Most of the creatures at the zoo are handicapped or otherwise debilitated anyway (eagles that can't fly, the cheetah with one eye, etc), and wouldn't be able to survive in the wild on their own.

Even though most of the information accompanying the animals seems (and looks) outdated, its power is undeniable in the shadow of the species we're affecting. I knew long ago that rainforests the world over are being slashed and burned to make way for cattle grazing - but when you see the majesty of the gorillas, orangutans, tigers and even snakes that it's exterminating - it's the kind of sight that could compel me to swear off beef. Apparently, it takes 44 square feet of rainforest to produce just one hamburger patty from cows that graze where the forest used to be - the same beef that's regularly used in fast food chains. The scale of destruction we've inflicted on the biosphere really moved me, and combined with my efforts to eat healthier, I can say that's it for me eating fast food. From now on, when I eat beef, I'm going to know where it comes from, and it better be a Canadian farm.

But enough of my lefty rant. Enjoy these zoo pictures here!

Força Barça!

2006-05-18T12:48:00.000-07:00

To spare everyone another lenghty soccer post, I'm simply plagiarizing a poem from a forum on Barcelona winning the Champions League:

Ronaldinho didn't give the ball an orgasm
Therefore he was poor, excuse the sarcasm
Eto'o caught Eboue off guard with a run before scoring
Bitter fans are now claiming he was offside and it's boring
Lehmann deserved the red
But Barca should also have been ahead
Eboue had the dive of the season
Warranted an oscar, couldn't find a better reason
Henry choked on the big stage
The title reads "FAILURE", on a new page
Someone said Cesc would dominate
But Iniesta came on to illustrate
That there's stronger players where Cesc came from
Catalunya the home, Barcelona the kingdom

- by 'sergio', soccerpulse.com

The tears streaming down the face of the most hardcore Barca fan at the bar got me kinda choked up too - he was such a loud-mouthed ass for every game - but in victory we embraced and he was trembling with joy. The beautiful game indeed.

Don't fuck this one up, Tanenbaum

2006-05-12T16:48:00.000-07:00

So MLSE has finally announced the name and logo of Canada's first professional soccer franchise in the 21st century: Toronto FC (Football Club). They'll play in the MLS, the US-based league that has helped America become a real contender in world football - currently ranked fourth in the world by FIFA.

Given their recent management of the Leafs and Raptors, combined with the handful of pro teams that have failed in TO, I'm not overly confident that this team will catch on immediately - but I do have hope that the MLS will improve to the point where I would go to games to see players on visiting teams. David Beckham has said numerous times that he'll finish his career with the LA Galaxy, and Brazilian superstar Ronaldo has also talked about hangin' em up in US and A. A lot of people don't know that legends like Pele and George Best played in NYC in the 1970s - and regularly sold out Giants Stadium. Combined with Toronto hosting the FIFA Youth World Cup next summer, there should be some considerable buzz around soccer in Canada for the first time since...ever.

The best part (or worst depending on if you want instant results) is that Toronto must have at least 16 Canadians on their their 28-man roster. Maybe we'll have half a chance of qualifying for the 2010 World Cup - something we haven't done since the country last had a pro soccer team.

Homage to Catalonia

2006-05-08T20:31:00.000-07:00

_________________________

This past weekend, my team, FC Barcelona, won La Liga, Spain's top-flight football league for the second year in a row. This is the story of what happened after.

The city has a population of about 1.8 million in Barcelona proper. The outlying areas, including the horribly named suburb of Badalona, bring the total to around 4 million. What you see in the picture is a few thousand of the 1.5 million people who flooded the streets to celebrate along Ronaldinho and co. for the victory parade.

North American, or even other European cities, have nothing close to this level of public demonstration in relation to sports. The Pittsburgh (pop. 2.25 million) Steelers drew a measley 225,000 when they won the Super Bowl. When Chelsea won the English Premier League, the biggest soccer league in the world, the London (pop. 7.1 million) club only drew 200,000.

It's no secret why the city embraces the team: it's a perfect reflection of the culture of the region. It takes the industry and work ethic of local talent (Catalan players like Xavi, Puyol, Oleguer) and imports style and flair (Brazil's Ronaldinho, Portugal's Deco, Cameroon's Eto'o) in ample amounts. It'd be the equivalent of the Leafs reflecting the ethnic composition of Toronto. With apologies to Grant Fuhr (the only non-white Leaf, I think), that ain't happening anytime soon.

But it's not just their absurdly talented football team, nor the stylish sophistication that oozes from every edificio, plaza and calle that makes Barcelona my favourite city in the world. In the city of Gaudí, Picasso, Miró, even Chris Columbus, cosmopolitanism is the word. For a globalization junkie like me, the place is pure fishscale.

And finally, what inspired me to write this post, was this article from Reuters. Seems that my fears of Barcelona acquiring a commerical jersey sponsor (only one other team in Europe has an ad-free uniform) were misplaced.

---------------------------------

MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish champions Barcelona have shelved plans to seek commercial sponsorship for their team shirts and have decided instead to use the club's name and resources to finance humanitarian projects.

Barca president Joan Laporta said on Tuesday that the club's board had agreed to donate 0.7 percent of annual income starting from the 2006/07 season to the United Nations as a contribution to the organisation's Millennium Development Goals campaign.

"This is the biggest (sporting) initiative to raise awareness of poverty the world has seen," said Laporta.

"Barcelona will become the first sporting institution to establish an alliance of this order with an institution like the UN in order to fight against poverty and injustice in the world.

"The growth in the club's income has allowed us to take a decision of this type," he added.

Barcelona, whose motto in Catalan is "mes que un club" (more than just a club) predict that income for the present season will reach some 240 million euros (164 million pounds).

HUMANITARIAN CAUSES

The UN's Millennium campaign aims to reduce extreme poverty, hunger and infant mortality, achieving universal primary education and promoting sexual equality.

European Union nations have already agreed to a timetable for gradually bringing their annual aid contributions up to 0.7 percent of their gross domestic product, or annual income.

Laporta confirmed that Barcelona's famous scarlet and blue shirts would not be sponsored by a commercial brand but could be used instead to promote humanitarian causes.

"We are planning on using the shirts to carry a humanitarian message as part of our plans to become more than a club in the rest of the world," he said.

Barca won their second league title in a row last week and meet Arsenal in the Champions League final in Paris on May 17.

It's a wonder-filled world

2006-04-24T15:45:00.000-07:00

Relishing the newfound portability that my lil' Mac and free wireless internet afford me, I've become even more addicted to the orgy of information provided by Google and the like.

It's been used to settle some of the most voiciferous debates of our time: Is Jazz Flute really a legitimate genre? Did Manny Lee play on the 1992 World Series-winning Toronto Blue Jays? What was Deion Sanders' career batting average?

So the other night, Leo got to wondering what the Seven Wonders of the World are. I could only name a pathetic one or two, so we had a Google-off to settle the score.

Much to our surprise we ran across this site, and found out there's a NEW online vote to nominate what the Seven Wonders should truly be. Apparently, one of the constant problems in proclaiming what's a Wonder is that everyone has their own list. There's ancient wonders, natural wonders and man-made wonders - nobody really knows what the official list is. But not anymore, thanks to the good folks at New Seven Wonders (TM), who have patented the rights to naming the, you guessed it, NEW SEVEN WONDERS OF THE WORLD!

Anyway, it's a pretty tough choice: 21 potential wonders and you can only pick 7. I used cultural significance, originality and overall awesomeness to choose The Acropolis, Colosseum, Great Wall of China, Pyramids of Giza, Stonehenge, Taj Mahal and Petra (for being in the third Indiana Jones). Besides learning a lot more about all the sites, I realized that I've only seen 2 of the 21 finalists (Alhambra, Statue of Liberty), and decided that it would be a noble task to try and see them all before I die. Vote now!

Media illiterates beware

2006-04-08T12:46:00.000-07:00

As I continue to move on from my editorship at The Cord, this editorial caught my eye as a fellow, albeit an infinitely more important and seasoned, editor at The Economist wrote a 'valedictory speech' to commemorate his last issue in charge. He drones on for ages, but anyone who's led the world's best magazine for 13 years has probably earned the right to be somewhat verbose. Plus, he looks almost identical to my dad circa 1982.

It's an interesting piece because it shows a bit of the inner editorial workings of a fiercely insular publication, and it's actually a 'signed' article. It occurred to me as I read it that this might be the first article that a 13-year editor has explicitly attributed to his name, as virtually all of the newsmagazine's pieces are unsigned. It's unfathomable that with the powerful, concise and compelling commentary they put out on a weekly basis, nobody really takes any kind of formal credit for it. In the day and age of media personalities that make themselves the centre of attention rather than what they're reporting, The Economist harkens back to an era of public service journalism that's long extinct in most of today's media conglomerates.

I also enjoy the part where he admits the mistakes he's made (defending the invasion of Iraq), but outsources their culpability to third parties. Sound familiar?

Carly's OK Party '06 in images

2006-04-02T21:13:00.000-07:00

What an ignoble start. This is what we found
under the middle section of our couch, which
hadn't been cleaned in 8 months.

Karl takes in the cleanliness and fresh springtime
smell of a pre-Carly's OK Party basement.

Blair and Wilbur, before they got really drunk
and high respectively.

Before: A mildly intoxicated group of miscreants
organizes a game of Flip-a-Cup.

After: The predictable results of a game
designed to get you as shitfaced as possible,
held at a party whose raison d'etre is to get as
shitfaced as possible.

I love taking pictures of Jordan. Like directing a
movie about Steven Spielberg or writing a book
about Irvine Welsh.

And because he's so excitable, he gives you
great shots like this.

Alright, we're well underway now. Here's Ananthan
and I, relatively sober compared to what would
transpire later on in the evening.

Danny P. and 'pril, probably the most wholesome
members of this year's Ed. Board.

See, there's this thing I do when I'm drunk.
Besides being belligerent, I open my mouth into
a big gaper whenever my photo's being taken.

This otherwise cute photo of Carly and Adrian
kissing is made creepy by the weird face that
looks like it's growing out of the side of Adrian's.

I forgot that my other favourite thing about
Jordan is when he gets wasted, it's so damn
obvious.

Again, I feel the need to open my yapper to
big gaper proportions, especially in the presence
of my older-but-actually-youger pseudo sister.

Did I close my mouth at all last night?

Finally I shut it, probably in silent respect for how
drunk Bryn's friend Will was. He's normally pretty
quiet, but as this photo shows, he had a lot to say
over the course of the evening.

Dave Alexander, in fine guitar-playing dirty
hippy form.

I'm not sure why, but Carly looks scared to death
of a drunken Ananthan, who's probably the most
benevolent guy I know. Meanwhile, my mouth
hangs open like a dog's in summer.

Dan and Wilbur, in what has to be the most sullen
photo of the night. I hope it was intentional.

Pinchy, a contestant for this year's 'Carly's OK
Award for outstading drunken achievement at a
Party' wags a finger of consternation at my
papparazi-esque photography.

The new 'News Team' expresses intoxication in
their own different, yet equally hilarious ways.

Bryn and Cote, two illustrious members of the
Cord International Editors Club. I'd also like to
add that Bryn is awesome for making everyone
really touching cards (even if mine was a co-opted
bereavement card) and buying me a Brazil soccer
ball.

Two Asians, one state of mind: not sober.

With the night winding down, I keep losing my
camera and finding it again, just in time to
capture Emilie emulating my 'big-gaper'
oral expression.

Emilie laughs at something off-camera whilst
Karl ponders...how he's going to kill Bill Gates?
Whatever it is, he's thinking about it pretty hard.

Ananthan at the pinnacle of his intoxication near
the end of the night. He's my pick for the
aforementioned Carly's OK award.

Finally, it all ends with a 'jumbo-sized' Campus
Pizza, which is so huge, the slices are damn-near
impossible to eat.

A get together, to tear it apart

2006-03-31T17:09:00.000-08:00

Last night was the WLUSP end-of-year dinner, and it turned out to be pretty cool. Got some free drinks, ate some surprisingly good food (considering it was held in a pseudo strip club) and talked a lot of shop with my colleagues over how they thought the year went. I had a speech that droned on and on, but that I was pretty proud of. Oh, and a deserving Mike Brown won Cordie of the Year. If that wasn't enough to put me in a good mood for the night, my good friend Scott announced he's coming home early from teaching in South Korea, so he'll be around in the summer, which is great because one, I get to see him about six months earlier than I expected, and two, we can probably salvage a trip up to his cottage, which has been a perennial summertime sojourn that always proves fun.

Anyway, the whole point of this was to post my speech, as a few people last night asked for the text version:

Last year, at around this time, my good friend and brother-dawg, photo manager Jordan Jocius, said something that’s resonated with me throughout this entire year.

Following Anthony’s election, or rather, acclamation as president, and after our crack Editorial Board had been selected, he told me that he thought we had the potential to have “the best year in the history of the Cord.” I was thinking the same thing to myself, but understandably, had a few doubts as to whether or not I could set the highest bar the paper had seen in over 80 years of student journalism. Hearing Jordan say it, though, gave me the belief that it could really happen, and I challenged my editors, at our very first board meeting, to do exactly that. They, along with all of the writers, photographers, artists, production assistants, copy editors, managers, and yes, even administrators, have made that daunting task a reality.

And even though we made our fair share mistakes, misprints and typos, for me, we fulfilled that great potential we all knew we had.

We were the most prolific Ed. Board in recent memory if not in the entire history of the paper, coming out with a staggering 32 issues over the course of the year, including four special editions. With the help of our amazing graphics and photography team, we’ve had the most visually stunning edition of the Cord I’ve ever laid eyes on. With our over-qualified administration, we’ve had the best-managed and administered Student Publications I’ve ever witnessed. Thanks to the efforts of Jason Shim, the Cord finally got its website up and running, and pretty good one at that. And with the help of our writers, copy editors and distribution manager, we’ve increased circulation by over 30 percent this year.

But now that it’s all over, even though it hasn’t come close to sinking in yet, I owe everyone who worked on making the paper the terrific success that it was, a huge, prolonged, emotional and drawn-out thank you.

But before I get teared up saying goodbye to my beloved editors, I need to thank the unsung heroes who don’t get shout outs every week.

At the top of that list is writers. You toil, many of you every publishing week, to provide the essential building block of the newspaper that you get precious little credit for. We edit your work, decide what headlines go with it and sometimes even cut entire articles from the paper. You’re overworked and underappreciated, and for that I owe all of you a heartfelt ‘thank you’ for giving us the raw literary materials to make the paper from week to week. While many of you missed deadlines and wrote over or under your word count, I always looked forward to editing your articles, to see what little piece of brilliance you were trying to share with the Laurier community on any given week.

Copy editors, as well, get far too little credit for what they do. For a little spot in the masthead, you come in every week and fix the thousands, yes thousands, of little mistakes that we make on a weekly basis. You work long hours concerned with the minutiae of the English language, and make me look like a much better editor in the process. So, to all the comma splices, subject/verb disagreements and spelling mistakes you corrected, I thank you for fixing each and every one of them. And Arla, thanks for staying late each and every week. To come into the job with no ‘managerial’ experience, I didn’t really know what to expect, but your dedication and work ethic are without question.

Next are photographers. As much as writing and print journalism is a craft, photography is an art, and I salute all of the artists in the room tonight. If a picture is worth 1000 words, you wrote volumes in this year’s Cord. While the history of the Cord has been concerned mostly with words, your images were so good this year that they’ve changed the culture of the newspaper. With your professionalism and dedication to telling stories through pictures, you’ve been some of the best, if more subtle, storytellers that I’ve had the pleasure of working with. Jordan: you’ve meant so much to the organization this year from boosting ad sales to rearranging the office to being the best damn team-builder an EIC could ever want. Plus you took some pretty amazing pictures from time to time. You better go into photojournalism or I’ll be seriously pissed. I can always imagine looking at some amazing photo in a newspaper someday and seeing your name underneath it. And Sydney, you are, exponentially, the best cook/host/all-around person to ever take photos for WLUSP. I’ll never forget the board game parties or your delicious quesadillas.

Last, and certainly least, on my pre-Ed. Board list, I have to thank the administration for a lot of things this year. Primarily, I owe you a debt of gratitude for really challenging me, to keep my sanity throughout the year. But in all seriousness, Anthony has been the president that WLUSP has needed for some time now. Though you thoroughly annoyed, pestered and antagonized me at times, your unfailing support for the editorial board, your dedication to not fucking with content and your vision for the organization made you the publisher that every editor should have. Starting from the top-down, you set the example for all of your underlings to follow. Fraser, same goes for you. You were overqualified for your job, but you lived up to my unrealistically high expectations. You tortured me with budgets and financial statements and challenged me to justify every last one of my purchases, but when push came to shove, as it sometimes did, you were more than generous in opening WLUSP’s coffers to give The Cord the resources we needed to do our jobs.

Next is Angela Foster, my office buddy and ‘mom away from mom’. Now, sharing an office in the cubby hole we call the WLUSP office would be a challenge for anyone, but I can’t imagine doing it with any other spunky British dame other than Angela. Her grace under fire and dedication to WLUSP hold the organization together. Us transient students come and go, but Angela is the constant that stabilizes everything from year to year. Plus, you know she fits right in with the Cord staff, because she likes to push people’s buttons when they’re mad at her. Along with Angela is Leo, roommate and soccer fan par excellence, who got up early, against his body’s strongest urgings to deliver the paper with Angela every publishing week. It’s a part of the Cord’s process that not too many people consider, but it’s absolutely vital and you took care of business. I’m sure we’ll be discussing the intricacies of distribution and circulation when we hit Germany for the World Cup this summer. Keeping on the theme of Asian men who are cool is Jason Shim, the man behind the Cord’s website and the lovely photomosaics I used on the cover of the latest Cord and WLU’er. You are truly a virtuoso; I don’t know anyone else who can sell jumping beans and stamp money with advertising to fund a trip to Antarctica, then be a superstar in the WLU/UW apprentice and then propose to ride a bike all the way across Canada for charity. For doing all the tedious work of posting articles to website and being an all-around brilliant, yet humble guy, I thank you for all the good work you’ve done for The Cord this year. And last, but surely not least this time, is Regan Walsh, who’s the only other person in the organization, save Bryn, that hates the software and hardware we use in the office as much as I do. But you weathered every shitstorm the fileserver and Quark could throw at you, and made sure we had the tools at our disposal to get ‘er done.

And speaking of getting done, I now turn my attention to my dear editors, whom I’ve repeatedly thanked over the year, but to whom no amount of gratitude can convey how much I owe them and cherish their company. Though it sounds like a back-handed compliment, the thing I’m most proud of is that none of you quit. In past years, there’s always been some attrition amongst the editors, but this year, cohesion reigned supreme. It’s been a growing trend over my time here that Ed. Board’s have grown closer and closer, but this year, as some unmentionable events on a certain Brick Brewery tour so subtly illustrated, we were more of a family than an Ed. Board, and a sexy, slightly incestuous family at that. While Maclean’s magazine recently let Canada know just how ‘Hot’ this year’s Cord Weekly was, earlier in the year a former editor-in-chief called us the ‘hottest ed board of all-time’, and I can’t say that I disagree. But attractive as it was, it was the talents of the individual editors, skills that could make anyone feel modest, that impressed me the most, and it was how we stuck together, through some unbelievably hard times, that I’ll never forget.

Starting in chronological order, I want to holla at Bryn. Since serving on the 2002-03 Ed Board with him when he was a hotshot News Editor in his first year, we’ve been united in our disdain for the Global Studies program, our love of world affairs and our similar views on what student journalism should be. Along the way, we’ve disagreed about pretty much everything else, but never about the amount respect we’ve had for one another. As you go off to continue your education and travel the world, know that one, I’m jealous, and two, that you better keep in touch because I’ll always need a sparring partner that can argue about the Maple Leaf’s long-term stability and the intricacies of global culture in the same breath.

The next person I came across was Carly. Though I remember little of her as a production assistant, who could forget that memorable night almost four years ago when I proclaimed her to be “OK” time after merciless time in the infamous “Carly’s OK” chant. Thankfully, since making fun of her ability to drink she’s proven me wrong about a lot of things, but I was always right that she’s a lot more than OK. She’s the older sister who’s actually younger than me that I never had, a stoic, demure matriarch, a great roommate and a better friend. Plus, she introduced WLUSP to Ollie, who I think became our first-ever Cord mascot, which is pretty fabulous. I wish her and ‘my little gentleman’ well in Ottawa with their new job, and until I hear otherwise, am assuming you’ll be moving back to Waterloo immediately after.

Following Carly, one of my fellow production assistants three years ago was ‘Pril. Though I didn’t really get to know her until our trip to Edmonton last year, since then she’s been one my closest confidants at the paper. If she does half the job with the entire paper next year as she did for the Special Projects section this year, it’ll be in good shape. I look forward to working with you next year, and seeing you become the first-ever, I think, Mrs. EIC.

Though he was just in high school at the time, Dan Polischuk is next on my list. Seeing Dan’s transformation from a fresh-faced intern to a mature, bearded editor has been a privilege to watch, and I’m glad I could play a role in it as his editor, friend and fellow soccer buddy this year. And who could talk about Dan without mentioning Adrian, your partner, friend and hipster extraordinaire. Adrian, you were the yang to Dan’s ying, and it was a joy for an editor to watch such a great relationship develop between two of you. Throughout the year you probably wrote the most words for the paper out of anyone, but you certainly had quality to along with your impressive quantity.

Next is Kris Cote, who was always a better history student than me, so much so that I asked him to be my Cord Historian. Though he couldn’t be here tonight, I wish him well on his adventure to grad school out East.

Though it’s starting to get a little hazy now, I think Michelle is next. Though I hated laying out her features last year, she’s given me much more joy in her role as Stud Life editor this year, winning my praise for being the most improved editor for a strong second-half showing to the year. But all year long, she brought a much-needed urban conservative outlook that balanced out the ed. Board and overcame some serious personal challenges, for which I’ll be forever impressed by.

Blair, I think, is who I met next. She’s the only person I know to have an onomatopoeia in her name and who will insult and praise you in the same sentence. She was the most difficult editor to work with by a landslide, and I ceaselessly fought with her over the most minute of editorial tweaks to her section. Sadly, the more we fought, the better the feature, and judging by your work over the year, we fought an awful lot. I know you’ll do well with Opinion next year, but the part that pains me about that statement is that I know it will take a lot more fighting to do so. But I think we’re both up to the challenge.

Mike Brown. Two words that reek of sports, thriftiness and dedication. This man travelled far and wide covering his beloved varsity teams, sacrificing school, sleep and eating well in the process. But he never sacrificed the quality of section or his dry-as-a-bone humour, which kept the newspaper full of great sports coverage and everyone on their guard in case Mike got to sarcastically correct you about anything.

The last of my editors I met before their interview was Emilie, who’s quietly gone about changing the culture of the paper with her outstanding artwork. Wait, did I say quietly? Regardless of her volume, even though she says I put a lot of myself into the paper, I think she puts even more of herself into her art, which is probably why I like it so much and is so important to the quality of the paper.

Second-last is Alex, who I hired to give me fashion tips and expand my vocabulary. Well, that’s a lie, I hired him to be a good A&E editor, but he’s dressed so well and been so eloquent that I picked up a bit more than I bargained for in the process. He also was the most adept at meeting deadline on a weekly basis, and I thank him for being the only editor, save Tony, to come remotely close to doing so.

Speaking of which, I’ve finally come to Tony, or Zony as he’s come to be known in recent days. He has as many admirable personality traits as he does nicknames, and as I said in this issue’s shout outs, I’m proud to induct him into the International Editor’s Alumni club. In addition to being a fellow Cobourgian, Tony keeps you on your toes with his irreverent humour and always found interesting international stories that fell under the radar of the bigger newspapers.

Though I’ve probably forgotten a few people along the way, thanks to anyone I haven’t mentioned for making The Cord’s 80^th year, in my mind at least, the best.

But enough reminiscing over the past, for the rest of tonight and at the Carly’s OK party, let’s celebrate this swansong, our ‘Uno mas,’ the completion of what we set out to do; knowing that for at least this one moment in time, fleeting as it may be, we were the best.

Thank you.

My-cellaneous

2006-03-19T21:08:00.000-08:00

Well, I was going to do a post about mine and my friends' celebrity lookalikes, but after 30 minutes of trying to find a picture of Edward Norton with his head tilted the same way as mine, I gave up. I don't know what people are on about - even Photoshop can't make me look somewhat like him, even if some guy in Toronto seemed to genuinely mistake me for him. I can't promise what follows will be any more substantial.

I suppose a lot is going on right now, but it feels like I have nothing concrete to write here that won't be trite. I have a bunch of ideas: an homage to my recently departed grandmother, a tribute to a good friend's springtime poetry, how old I feel relative to most everyone at WLU, a diatribe on my melancholic and imminent departure from being EIC and my father's upcoming trip to Waterloo. Thusly, I'm just going to stick with an update of a more utilitarian nature.

Chappelle's Block Party: The best live-music movie I've ever seen. With the Roots as the house band for the different acts, it showed how good hip hop is when the beats and harmonies are played on live instruments as opposed to just rapping over a pre-recorded track. Of all the acts, Blackstar absolutely floored me with their mic presence. Whereas I find most rappers sound much worse at shows were they always seem to be too shouty, Talib and Mos Def sounded powerful and different, but in good way. Mos was more melodic and actually has a good voice (see: "My Umi said, shine your light on the world.") while Talib was authoritative and on point as always. Their little xylophone dingle in "Definition" is crack-addictive.

Shad last weekend: He was back at Wilf's, headlining a charity show, and was back in fine form. Did all the usual songs, some new material and a good freestyle, even managing to drop in a line about Ron Burgundy.

This St. Paddy's Day: turned out to be a total bust. The best part of it was playing soccer at dusk with a black ball on a frozen field with girls not dressed to be playing sports at all, let alone in the cold. Props to Blair and Pinchy for playing in flip flops and a skirt respectively. A word to the wise: don't follow extremely drunk people to keg parties thrown by second-years in very small homes with not enough kegs that have shitty beer in them anyway and it's cold as fuck outside but going inside sucks far, far more.

Cam's Departure: Last night was Cam's last trip up to Waterloo before he gallivants around the world for 4 whole months. We drank far too much beer at a Wilf's that was determined to close on us, and sat up singing to Cam playing guitar into the early morning. He'd gone in the morning before I could wake up to see him off, but it seemed easier to just mentally chalk up another friend as being geographically 'gone', rather than go through the seeing-off rituals that are usually a little awkward anyway, especially between guys.

How Jamaica got its grove back, again

2006-02-27T16:30:00.000-08:00

It appears as if the 'Jewel of the Caribbean' just got a little more of its glitter back. Yes, the always quirky Jamaica has elected its first female president, in the same semi-acclaimed style as Canada did Kim Campbell in 1993.

Progressive, you ask? Well yes, but seeing as hundreds have died over the electoral process since the 1990s, the fact that any change in government happened peacefully is a step forward for a country that's always had an interesting take on its colonist's parliamentary democracy. Such is the cycle of death and resurrection that the island always seems to be enduring. Anyone who's been there will admit it's an aesthetic and musical paradise on earth, but the nation's soul has always been tortured by a series of foreign captors.

The isle gained independece in 1962, and prospered. Buoyed by cheap oil and good prices for its exports (mostly bauxite, sugar and bananas), its currency was worth more than America's and was one of the International Monetary Fund's star pupils, exploiting its competitive advantages in primary industry. It was awash with foreign investment and hope for the future until the 1973 Oil Crisis increased the price of energy imports and ruined much of the Keynesian (state-guided) progress that most of the third world had made to that point. All of a sudden, Jamaica couldn't pay back its loans, could only grow sugar and bananas (hard to subsist on) and had nothing much to sell on the world market. It borrowed more and more just to pay off the interest on their loans and found itself in a downward spiral of debt. It devalued its currency, diverted money from social programs to loan repayment and began a disastrous system of political patronage within its poor communities. Today, 1 US dollar is worth 65 Jamaican J's (yes, that's really what it's called), and the capital, Kingston, has the highest murder rate of any city in the world, for both civilians and police officers. It's also become a major transshipment point for cocaine coming from South America to the US. This trade fuels many of the problems that currently plague Jamaican democracy.

When inner city gangs started to make a lot money selling drugs within Jamaica and shipping them abroad, they reinvested the profits into community development to win local support. The 'Don' of each slum community is an enormously respected and well-armed man. Though he's a thug who's likely murdered several rival gang members, he's also likely built schools and given families money for tuition and uniforms (public education isn't free there). Obviously, the gangs couldn't form a legitimate political party, so they began to court Jamaica's big political parties, the PNP and JLP, to give the gangs money in exchange for the residents of the gangs' respective slums to vote for whichever party. In doing so, the parties threw democracy to the wolves. Candidates often win their ridings with 100 percent of the vote, as anyone who votes against the gang's party fears violence. And with these highly politicized enclaves right beside each other in the seething West end of Kingston, the internecine killing is why so many people get shot in Jamaica.

But, as I said, Jamaica is a queer place, no pun intended. It's brashly homophobic but is widely considered to be matriarchal society. I can't even think of another nation that's considered matriarchical, let alone woman-loving and gay-hating at the same time. Now its political system, after so many years of disrepair, looks like it's undergoing something of a rebirth. In 2002, when I was in Jamaica for two weeks prior to the national election, the expected violence never came. Trenchtown, Bob Marley's birthplace and Jamaica's most notorius slum, was bitterly divided, but in a good way: the former JLP stronghold was divided evenly between PNP and JLP support. While this plurality means nothing of the political tastes of Jamaicans (the two parties are almost ideologically identical), the fact that there was even a split vote was a step forward. And now that a woman's in charge, something most Jamaicans are used to, hopefully she can bring some sort of unity to a bitterly divided population. If she can, the nation's altruistic motto, "Out of many, one people" will finally be more than another failed colonial pipe dream.

Animated GIFs, wheee!

2006-02-25T16:41:00.000-08:00

Continuing my descent into becoming a computer nerd, I taught myself how to post animated GIF files this weekend. Even though they take up a lot of bandwith, look how pretty Thierry Henry looks destroying the Real Madrid defence.

Threatdown

2006-02-23T19:24:00.000-08:00

In the spirit of The Colbert Report, I've organized things that generally annoy me into hierarchical categories. Here's the first, and least repugnant, "What sticks in my craw."

Sticks in my craw:
Rosemary-infused Triscuits
Using 'dome-piece' in reference to the head
Mr. Sub not having cheese bread
Mazda's "Zoom Zoom Zoom" ad campaign
Poor typography
The Arcade Fire
Strawberry Zinfandel
Ben Mulroney
The origin of bellybutton lint
Yop, Go-gurt and Yoplait Tubes: Any yogurt not in a cup

Coming next: What gets my goat!