I'm about halfway through this, but. . .

Holy cow you gotta read this book! I don't care what your upbringing or background is, everybody on the planet can learn from the Dalai Lama.


I finished it now . . .

his teaching is rooted in ancient traditions, yet profoundly practical, and immediately applicable to real life. Reading this guy was like having a light switched on -- he teaches such deep wisdom, so simply, in ways that translate directly into my own situations. He explains a twenty-five century old principle, and than shows me how I can apply it to the guy who drives through the crosswalk right in front of me. (And yes, I HAVE been using his techniques at crosswalks. . . and they've helped. He probably added a month to my life just like that, by nipping that tension in the bud.) Give this dude a try. Right now, he's on the shortlist with Rainer Maria Rilke, J.D. Salinger, and Jesus as the greatest teachers I've ever read.

Rare air up there!

Roboseyo's global warming idea, and seventh generation sustainability

These will never happen, but. . .

1. L.A. should be shamed into getting a better public transit system, by all the countries and cities in the world.

2. Bill Gates should offer a 1 000 000 000 dollar reward to the scientist/engineer who invents a solar panel that is cheap and efficient enough to make oil obselete.

3. The downtown core of EVERY CITY larger than one million people in the world should have cars permanently banned, and improve public transit enough that the downtown cores can be traversed efficiently by bus and subway. Those buses and subways should be hydrogen cell or electric or hybrid-run.

4. The big-ass car tax. No excuse. Just no excuse for those big-ass cars, unless it's full of carpoolers. (The big-ass car tax has a subclause called the carpooler tax break, along with the hybrid driver tax break, which makes it economically more viable to buy a hybrid, considering the gas AND tax savings.)

5. The big-ass gas tax (Vancouver does this: 9cents a liter of gas goes toward improving public transit). Along with this one goes the public transit tax break. Your primary ID card has a microchip in it and doubles as your magnetic subway/bus access charge card; a record is kept of how frequently you use public transit, and you can claim tax breaks for reaching certain levels.

6. Within a certain distance of the city center (because public transit has improved so much), private car ownership is illegal, or practically illegal because of ownership taxes. Instead, cars are owned only by companies that require travel by car for their business, and company cars are distributed as needed. For weekend trips, etc., hybrid and fuel efficient cars are readily and reasonably available for rental.

7. (This will never happen, more than any of the others, but while I'm playing around in my fantasy world . . . ) -- Any company that deals in oil must put 15% of its gross oil income into alternative energy and conservation technology. Oil companies, accustomed to being energy suppliers, ought to be looking for the next solution: THEIR product is largely responsible for this mess.


Read the book Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. It's preachy, but important.

Also, from the last chapter of "Consilience" by Edward O Wilson -- a book I tried to read after having it recommended to me by Maggie, back in third year university (anybody remember her?). I got bored of it (and I no longer finish books that fail to grip my attention: I've even ceased to feel guilty about this), and skipped to the last chapter, which was much more interesting than the chapters trying to explain the biological/genetic bases that necessitated the development of language and art.

He writes:
To summarize the future of resources and climate, the wall toward which humanity is evidently rushing is a shortage not of minerals and energy, but of food and water. The time of arrival at the wall is being shortened by a a physical climate growing less congenial [through global warming]. Humankind is like a household living giddily off vanishing capital. Exemptionalists are risking a lot when they advise us, in effect, that "Life is good and getting better, because look around you, we are still expanding and spending faster. Don't worry about next year. We're such a smart bunch something will turn up It always has."
They, and most of the rest of us, have yet to learn the arithmetical riddle of the lily pond. A lily pad is placed in a pond. Each day thereafter the pad and then all of its descendants double. On the thirtieth day the pond is covered completely by lily pads, which can grow no more. On which day was the pond half full and half empty? The twenty-ninth day.

[My words in brackets: Are these environmental warnings alarmist? It is better, down the line, to assume the worst, and prepare for it, than to hope for the best, and continue living beyond our ecological means, assuming 'we'll find our way out of the woods'] In ecology, as in medicine, a false positive diagnosis is an inconvenience, but a false negative diagnosis can be catastrophic. This is why ecologists and doctors don't like to gamble at all, and if they must, it is always on the side of caution. It is a mistake to dismiss a worried ecologist or a worried doctor as an alarmist."
(Page 313-314)

Later

The single greatest intellectual obstacle to environmental realism, as opposed to practical difficulty, is the myopia of most professional economists. . .
. . . the weakness of economics is most worrisome, however, in its general failure to incorporate the environment. After the Earth Summit, and after veritable encyclopedias of data compiled . . . have shown clearly the dangerous trends of population size and planetary health, the most influential economists still make recommendations as though there is no environment.
(Page 318)


And that's the problem -- people follow their pocketbooks to the voting booth, so until there's a financial incentive (taxwise) to conserve, people won't think about their kids and grandkids; they'll only think about next quarter's raise and the cost of living, right until humanity careens into that huge wall called "Earth's Carrying Capacity"

(Carrying Capacity means the maximum number of life forms any ecosystem can sustain.)

My friend Tamie and a group of her friends formed an integration pact, where they try to live in relationship with the earth, rather than just living ON the earth : environmental responsibility is part of their pact to live with more awareness and responsibility.

It's human nature to think about money first -- I remember one day, when I was in high school, saying to a member of the baby-boomer generation how recycling was important, and he answered, "Well, you know, the recycling program costs the government a lot of money -- I don't know if it's worth it." If you're thinking about the next quarter, maybe; there's an old Iroquois law that every decision must be considered for its impact on the seventh generation to follow, and a movement is beginning in environmental circles to pressure corporations and leaders to implement seventh generation sustainability principles in their decision making, rather than just thinking of next quarter's profits, or next year's re-election push.

It's frustrating how, in the face of the overwhelming evidence Al Gore presented in "An Inconvenient Truth", corporations and their media lackeys have gone ad hominem on him, and attacked first Al Gore for using a private jet, and then the nine scientific errors/conjectures in his documentary, enabling them to ignore the hundred other facts that are true and verifiable, and try to discredit him. It's frustrating how I can see this stuff happen, yet I still like my hot shower in the morning.

But something's gotta be done. Sooner rather than later. Population growth, overfishing, conservation, alternative energies. Humans are a pretty complex creature, and it's hard to say how much our biology could bend before poisoned air and water are the end of us, before food shortages cause regional tensions to blow up into full-scale war. Remember what happened to the Jews after they were blamed for the great depression? A lot of countries were happy to hand their Jews over to the Nazis because they thought they were responsible for the depression. Who will be the scapegoat next time?

It's good to see people are finally talking about the environment as a legitimate concern -- in the early '90s environment was still some scary thing far in the future, while now people are taking it seriously. I just hope we're ready to make the changes necessary, in time, or it will be too little, too late.

And global warming is just the beginning -- overpopulation will occur long before coastal cities get flooded with water from the molten ice caps. This article argues that the tragedy in Darfur was caused first by an overtaxed environment, that the displaced people started fighting because they had no food or water, and needed to co-opt arable land. This kind of catastrophe will become more commonplace as water supplies dry up, species go extinct, land loses its arability, and entire populations must move to areas where there is no space for them. Just wait till the water table in the American midwest is finally tapped out, and see what happens then.

Blogger action day

*** This is important.***
Tomorrow (the 15th) is blog action day. A group is trying to get every blogger around the world to write, on the 15th, about the environment, one of the most pressing issues for my generation. If you have a blog, click the link and join in! I'm kind of jumping the gun talking about it here, but this is important, and as time goes by, I feel more and more strongly about this.

http://www.blogactionday.com/


Radiohead has a new album out online.

So far, after listening to it about five times, I'm quite disappointed -- it's the first Radiohead album where I really feel like they're not covering any territory they haven't covered better before. The reduces the list to Pixar as the only creative team that I know a lot about, and still haven't repeated themselves/released anything below top-notch. (I haven't seen enough Miyazaki to say for sure about his work.)

The list:
Let-downs:
what movie/album did you expect to love the most, only to be disappointed?
Personal nominees: Radiohead: In Rainbows; Shaft (with Samuel L. Jackson); X-Men 3 (should have seen that coming), The Constant Gardener, Braveheart, Harry Potter 6 and 7,


next:
Pleasant Surprises:
What movie/album did you have full intention to hate, only to discover it was actually much more enjoyable than it needed to be?
Personal Nominees: Legally Blonde, High School Musical, Nelly Furtado (Whoa Nelly), Green Day (American Idiot), Sahara (action movie with Matthew McConaughey), Transformers, the Movie


Next:

Anyone here read The Alchemist?
One of you -- one of the people in my circle -- recommended it to me, but I can't remember which of you did.

Well, I read it. I've discovered the formula to sell a million copies of a book.

1. Short -- should be readable in a single afternoon, maximum two sittings.
2. Male hero -- young, idealistic, big dreams
3. Maximum 6th grade reading level (if it has a lower level than that, it will appeal to second language learners, which is also a plus: you'd be amazed how many times I've seen a Korean reading "Tuesdays With Morrie" on the subway)
4. A thinly veiled moral/didactic lesson/inspiration about how to live your life and realize your dreams.
5. A tone like a fable -- story moves quickly, and does not dig too deeply into the concrete details of setting and place and character description -- characters and settings are portrayed in broad strokes, so as not to distract from The Message.

I've read at least a half dozen of these books now, ranging from sublime (The Little Prince) to abysmal (Tuesdays With Morrie -- sorry if any of you liked it, but I didn't.) I've heard I REALLY, MUST read The Secret next. I'm kind of dreading it.

In order of awesomeness, here is the Roboseyo (sometimes)overbearingly-inspirational reading list.
1. The Little Prince: I think I'd trade 20 years of my life to write a book as simple and wise as this one. Die young + write The Little Prince: I could deal with that. The least didactic of the books on this list. It almost doesn't qualify for the genre, because it's too good.
2. Siddhartha - Herman Hesse -- engaging story. Not too didactic, though it IS about a young idealist's spiritual journey.
3. The first half of Jonathan Livingston Seagull -- chase down excellence and perfection with passion, even if it isolates you. Nice.
4. The Alchemist -- I liked it. It's true. It dropped in some biblical references that were a bit cloying, but not too bad. I wasn't quite bowled over, but I liked it.
5. The Greatest Salesman In The World -- (the least known of the ones I've read) by Og Mandino-- the most didactic, but enjoyable reading, for a bald self-motivation tract with a tacked-on story and an overbearing religious subtext that didn't quite fit the story, and even detracted from it. The meditations were good, though.
6. The last half of Jonathan Livingston Seagull -- it got a little weird, and too mystical/symbolic to me, and didn't live up to the simple excellence of the first half. Starts going downhill when JLS meets The Great Seagull.
7. Tuesdays With Morrie -- instead of evoking our feelings through excellent writing, Mr. Albom tells us how we ought to feel, and made ME feel manipulated. A meditation on death and moving on that left me totally unmoved.

Didn't qualify, despite being very talky/preachy:
Ishmael - Daniel Quinn (not inspirational)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (too long, actually had a story for the first 2/3)


Which other inspiration-disguised-as-story bestsellers did I miss?

In a later post:
the books I should read once a year until I die --everybody should have a handful of books that basically function like lifelong friends.

Having a blog finally justifies my using a cellphone-camera.

One of the little kids is pinching the buddha's nipple, and I had to get in on the action. I'm not sure of the story behind this statue, whether Buddha had a "Suffer the little children" moment, but I sure hope the nipple-pinch is part of the original story.



There were about a hundred steps (after about an hour mountain climb) to reach this temple where Korea's kings of old would go and visit for spiritual consultation and meditation. I ran up the steps, just for fun, and then at the top, there were eight people meditating, and I felt like a right dummy sitting there, with my legs folded, panting like a rabid duck.



I have to say, though, for a place so remote you have to climb a mountain for about an hour to access it, it just blows my mind how ornate and spectacular these temples (and especially the monuments) are.

The street below is shiny.


Today I bought a white wristband from a group who were raising funds to help extreme poverty. The wristband was wrapped in an unnecessary plastic bag. I called them out, and dolt them, "You help the poor, but this hurts the earth."

I really tire of overpackaging -- it's rife here in Korea, along with overconsumption. One common practice in Korea is to throw away perfectly good furniture (for example, when one moves) in order to get new furniture. Rather than bring things to new places, some Koreans just throw them away. The outward display of wealth is a really dismal human habit, and I wish people (worldwide) started finding more wholistic criteria for measuring those around them. At least something better than the measurement of one's TV screen + number of visible luxury brand lables one is wearing at any given time + price of one's car + prestige level of one's neighbourhood. This whole consumption thing is odd -- I was reading a book that pointed out how economists speak of growth and consumption as if infinite increase were possible, as if earth's resources were unlimited, and through growth, eventually all problems could be solved, when in reality, earth is already at or above its sustainable carrying capacity for humans. Yet politicians still almost exclusively talk about money, growth, and economy, because people follow their pocketbooks into the voting booth, and will vote for the guy who helps them keep their job over the one who tries to spend taxpayer money on making sure there's still something left on our dear old planet for the grandkids.

I'm turning into a crotchety old liberal.

I decided to chill out on the crosswalks (see previous post).

Remember this place:
Now it looks like this.

(sigh. my rainy days just got a little sadder)


Fun thing about living in the city: it may be hard to tell, but there was a camera crew in the midst of all these gawkers, filming a scene for a TV series or a movie.

I don't know from Korean celebrities, but it was fun watching all the people with their cameras out.


Also seen on that same street, later in the day.


These figures are usually carved out of dead trees. They're totems to protect a village from unhappy spirits. These ones were outside Jogyesa, one of the most important temples in Korea.

Persimmons are in season now. Mmm they're good.



More later.

something i learned today, and some pictures from Namsan

I learned something this morning.

I have a pet peeve: those cars that drive through the crosswalk even after the light has changed, and people are on the crosswalk (though maybe not where THEY are yet) really bug me. I know a kid who was killed in a vehicle/pedestrian accident, so every time I see a car disregarding pedestrian-related traffic laws, somewhere inside me I think "Killer!"

Sometimes, when the light changes green, I head out into the crossing zone as fast as I can, just to block those jerks from running the crosswalk -- it's my own personal, petty vendetta. . . but I'm RIGHT, dammit! They DESERVE me jumping in front of their car and glaring accusingly if they're going to disregard traffic laws and endanger pedestrians! I always wanted to give one of those cars a smack, just to make some noise and say "Don't be a jerk!" to the drivers (it never really occurred to me that the only thing I'd REALLY communicate to the driver might be "I'M a jerk". . . but that's beside the point.)

Well, today, I had my chance. I bolted out into the crosswalk, and some jackass in a black car took a run at the crossing zone. I was close enough that I planted a big, noisy handprint on the back of the car, and I felt a tingle of satisfaction (and a bit of disbelieving "I can't believe I actually did that) slide up my spine and massage my scalp.

But here's the thing: now that I've gotten my ya-ya's out, and expressed myself noisily and rudely on this guy's trunk (do bear in mind that this is the big city, where contact is common. You get bumped on the subway, toes get stepped on, people don't say excuse me -- me slapping a car here is not as egregious a break in protocol as it would be in a small town in Southern Ontario, for example, where Joe Crosswalk might climb out of his car and jersey me if I slapped his jackass SUV, but it's STILL more, um, communication with strangers than is common here), I realized, walking away from the intersection, that carrying this self-righteous vendetta around in me, and the spike of annoyance I allow myself to have when I see some jerk (even bus drivers will do it) disrespect a pedestrian zone. . . it doesn't hurt the twit driving the car at all. The only person it hurts is me, and my peace of mind. The fact I was in the right (at least partly) doesn't justify my answering his jerkousity with a bit of my own; in fact, by allowing HIS crassness to change MY behaviour (or even my attitude), I'm giving that driver power over me! Why on EARTH would I want to do that? Last time I heard my dad preach, he said, "Harboring bitterness is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die." (does anyone have a source for that quote?), and I realized that I was basically doing the same thing by letting these yahoos get to me.

So I may still barrel into crosswalks, but I'm not going to let these dumb drivers under my skin anymore.

Today I climbed Namsan (Nam Mountain) in the dead center of Seoul, with Girlfriendoseyo, the wonderful woman I've been dating. We had a really nice time, and a great talk. At the top of the mountain, at a lookout point, we saw this:


The whole chain-link fence was laced through with padlocks, with writing on them. I don't know the exact meaning, or where this tradition/superstition/fad came from, but it was sure neat -- from what I can tell by looking at them, couples have been writing their names on the padlocks and then looping them through the fence, probably as some kind of a "staying together" sort of charm. It was neat seeing them all. Maybe next time we climb Namsan together, we'll bring up a padlock, too.
Can any of my readers tell me what that says? Any Korean-speakers out there?


Also up on the mountain, we came across a VERY brave chipmunk:

Girlfriendoseyo got right in close, and the little stinker didn't flinch a bit.


My camera was about a foot and a half away from the little nut-muncher in this picture.


I've been climbing all the mountains I can get my feet on lately, and taking stairs instead of elevators. It really makes me feel good. I'm happy. . . and having fun. And Girlfriendoseyo's great.

Hope you're all well too.

Happy Canadian thanksgiving.

love
Rob

Konglish and wild coincidences.

so today in my business english class we started talking about brand names, and how they're such an easy yet crass way of measuring the people around us, and I suddenly had to halt the conversation and change the topic, because if we talked about brands and mob mentality and artificality and lookism and consumption for the sake of consumption or the appearance of wealth any longer, I'd have gotten upset.

it was a strange sensation. i didn't realize just how visceral my reaction really was to that topic.

This story made me happy. Korea has an embarrassingly poor track record on conservation issues -- a marsh that hosts a nearly extinct butterfly is scheduled to be bulldozed for an apartment block in a suburb of Seoul. Asking ships to reroute for the sake of a whale makes me proud to be a Canadian.

What makes me sad to be a Canadian is the fact I missed turkey dinner this year. There was gonna be a turkey dinner in Seoul for Canadian expatriates, but it was cancelled due to lack of interest, leaving me jonesing for turkey and such, but unable to get my fix.

I got some new shirts, and so had to retire my two least-frequently-worn shirts.

This one's a Konglish shirt -- the words on there aren't Korean, but they aren't English either. I don't know what to make of them, except that it must be either really easy, or really hard, to get SO close to making sense that everybody frowns and shakes their heads, yet still not making any sense at all.

I want to open a T-shirt shop in Canada where I import shirts like this

In Korean they are an earnest attempt to cash in on "english characters look cool"; in Canada, captions like this:
would be ironic and hilarious, don't you think?

Any theories as to what this means are welcome!

Short story:

1984, my family moved to Woodstock Ontario, where we became family friends of the NameChangedForPrivacy's. They moved away about in 1989 or 1990, and we saw them once or twice again after that -- not much.

Then, out of the blue, I got an e-mail from their youngest daughter, Kelly (whom I remembered as a five-year-old with way too much energy). She'd graduated university and wanted advice on getting a job in Korea. I gave her tips and we've written the odd message back and forth.

Well on Saturday, I ventured out to a drum festival in Han River Park (cool) and near the end, I stumbled into a group of Canadians (plus one brit). We chatted, and I noticed something odd about one of the girls, that I wasn't sure enough to comment upon. Something in the shape of her eyes, her body language, and especially her pronounciation and intonation of certain words and phrases seemed. . . familiar.

I heard one of her friends address her as Kelly, and I thought I'd try it out.

"You're Kelly NameChangedForPrivacy, aren't you?"

"You're Rob."

It was pretty wild. A weird mix of familiarity (her brother was my best friend for a year or two, and, after all, we'd hung out back when we were four and nine), and whatever word's the opposite of familiarity -- after all, we hadn't seen each other since probably about 1992. Maybe like your first time meeting the cousin whose picture's been on your fridge all your life. Really interesting. But totally cool. She seemed happy to meet me -- she even mentioned one of the rants on this blog, so I know she'll read this. Hi Kelly! Tell the other NameChangedForPrivacy's I send my greetings.



Cool to see her.

A paragraph from Garrison Keillor

he just made his way into my good books, for 1. calling George W. Bush "the current occupant" and refusing him the respect of using his name (speaking of people who are never named, I've been thinking of starting to refer to George W. Bush as Voldemort).

2. Writing this.

"I gave up watching television 25 years ago because I liked it so much even though I couldn't remember what I had watched the day before and could see that if I went on as a viewer my life would become a blank. And now I refuse the iPod because it is an audio bubble that shuts you off from the world, which is where good ideas come from."

in revising a play I wrote, I came up with this line -- i don't know if it will fit into the script, but it made me happy when I turned this phrase in summarizing a scene to my (wonderful) girlfriend.

"If what you have isn't making you happy, having more of it probably won't, either."

If you're a youtube junkie like me, search "Flight of the Conchords" -- Tamie started me on these guys.



Sometimes, you round a corner in a market in Seoul, and stumble across something like this.



I love this city.


One more.

I've tried and tried. . .

These guys are an independedent Canadian rock band. I've tried, but I seriously haven't managed to find a hint of irony yet in this video. In the song, as well, I've listened a bunch of times, and I haven't found any irony in there, either -- just a song about being joyful (the song's titled "Be Joyful")

If it's true, well, I can't think of a time I've seen a video match a song more perfectly.



And it makes me happy. It's like they were actually listening to the song when they planned the video, and made a list of all the cool stuff that makes people happy and put it in a video together. With puppets!

I wish my camera could take pictures of smells.

because gosh these smelled great in the rain.

New Principle for Cultural Exchange:

Principle:
Visitors (particularly monolingual North-American visitors) to a culture are only qualified to complain about their host culture as much as they are able to do so in the host language.

Result:
If you haven't even bothered to learn any Korean, I don't want to hear you bitching about Korea, buddy!


No more of that judgment from a distance junk. . . unless you're extremely well-informed and, say, a student of or expert in international relations, international environmental/gender/multicultural/etc. issues.

I'll also make allowances for people who have lived extensively in other cultures than their native one, and I'll even say the ratio of right to complain:command of the native language increases proportionally for each additional language said complainer speaks -- that is, if you are fluent in three languages, you're allowed to complain three times more than if you only speak one, because to master three languages, one must have a lot of experiences with how different cultures work, even if one doesn't speak the specific language of the host country.

[update: April 2008: we need to add "time spent in country about which one complains," because living in other countries is good; so is spending time seeing the actual country one is criticizing.]

So our formula is:

R=C*L*(0.2Y+1)*(T)

where R = one's right to complain about one's host country,
C = one's command of the host country's language,
multiplied by
L = the number of languages one speaks fluently,
multiplied by
0.2Y = the number of years spent living in cultures other than one's native culture, divided by 5 (I'd say five years living in a place is about equivalent to learning the language, as far as absorbing a culture goes, wouldn't you?),
multiplied by
T = Time in host country.

We need to add the +1 to the 0.2Y or else the whole equation divides by zero if one has never lived outside one's native culture.

Try THAT on for size, you culture-shocking, knee-jerk judging, otherness non-coping whiner!

(how's my formula, Tamie? My math's rusty, but I think that looks sensible. Feel free to poke holes in it as practice for your GRE)

Impressions are allowed, but if you aren't even willing to properly engage the host culture, don't judge it, and if you can't cope, well, nobody's keeping you here!

Why North Americans especially?

Because an entire ocean separates North Americans from truly distinct, other cultures with whom they could interact on an equal footing. I'd consider adding other island countries to the list (that means you, England). Mexico is roundly regarded as an inferior/less rich/less powerful little brother, and mostly ignored by Americans, while it's too far away for Canadians to consider, and Canada and USA speak the same language (other than French Canada). Belgians have entire COUNTRIES of otherness bordering them, while the closest Canadians and Americans come to that kind of otherness are little pockets of immigrants that (usually/often) are trying to assimilate, or at least feel a little like they should, and have kids who probably do. This means that a lot of North Americans are never REALLY required to think too far outside the box of their own cultural assumptions, and going too long in that groove leads people into the trap of assuming anything different from what one's accustomed to is automatically inferior.

Agree? Disagree?