An Amazing Guy

Need some inspiration? Counting dustballs on your desk at work? Here you go, inspiration free of charge!

The amazing guy (in a nutshell): His name is Conor. He traveled around the world on a 2 year trip. During the trip, he volunteered at an orphanage in Nepal and connected with the children. After he finished the trip, he returned to Nepal to open up an orphanage of his own that now protects about 20 children who were once trafficked. He's in his early-thirties and has no monetary income. He had no previous experience with working in/setting up an orphanage---he simply saw a thing that needed fixing and leaped.



This link will take you to a page with pictures of Conor, the orphanage, and the kiddies.

http://blogs.bootsnall.com/conor/?p=369#more-369


You can also donate to his orphanage via the blog.

Leap.

cheers,

A

"I Prefer Not To"

left: This picture has absolutely nothing to do with this post---I was trying to see if I could figure out how to post larger pictures because my snowboarding pictures (previous post) came out small. Ignore this picture...ignore it now!

Every year, there is a prefectural English camp held in Nagano prefecture. Two hundred students attend along with 60 JETs and Japanese English teachers. In a country in which people visit the dentist four or five times in a two week period for a collective hour or two of dental work simply because “it’s the Japanese way,” a place wear senseless paperwork and long, suicide-inducing work hours have swelled to mythical proportions, planning such a camp would require countless hours of cutting through administrative red tape, submitting expense reports, emailing JETs, emailing more JETs when JETs you had been counting on decide to cancel, etc. Keep this in mind as you read on.

Today, a teacher in my office, a man with over 35 years teaching experience and an educational bag-of-tricks the size of a flea turd (OK class, I hope you're ready to dream and drool because it's lecture time...again), a man who, as unfortunate as it is predictable, sits on the prefectural board of English teachers, tip-toed up to my desk and smiled and laughed instead of saying, “Excuse me.”

Smile. Laugh. I turn to face him. “Uh Andrew, the English board had a meeting recently about the prefectural English camp." Smile. Laughing. "So…we were wondering if you and Natalie would like to plan the camp this year.”

I laugh at the silliness of his request. He fails to remember that we have already planned two camps this year for our school, we planned one last year, and the previous Assistant English Teacher (AET)planned the prefectural camp two years ago, making our school next to last in line for the responsibility.

“Hmmm. I really, really don’t want to plan that camp. When I first arrived in Japan, everyone warned me about getting coerced into planning it and said it was a paperwork nightmare. Plus, we already planned two camps for our students this year. Yeah, if possible, I’d prefer not to.” I love using that classic Bartleby line in situations like this.

He laughed. I tried to explain myself some more. He tried flattery (“Well we just thought you and Natalie had so much practice with the camps at this point and you are such strong AETs that it wouldn’t be too difficult for you”) and, after making me feel guilty for refusing—or “preferring not to” to do the camp—he eventually agreed to ask an AET husband-and-wife team who have helped with prefectural stuff in the past.

Later that day, I asked my supervisor if she thought my refusal was inappropriate or not.

“Oh no no no. It’s fine if you guys don’t want to do it. You have already done a few camps and another AET who doesn’t have to organize any camps can do the prefectural camp. But I think many teachers on the English board have heard great things about you and so they have high expectations of you. You don’t have to live up to those expectations if you don’t want to.”

Huh? This is a classic example of Japanese doublespeak! Basically, it’s OK if I don’t want to do the camp, but I will not live up to the expectations of senior teachers (most of whom I’ve never even met). It’s common for a Japanese person to avoid saying “No” by saying something like “ "Hmmm, maybe that will be difficult.” I feel like I’m accustomed to this sort of hide-your-true-opinion communication, but her comment caught me off guard.

This little episode reminded me of a time I went out to eat at a cheap casino in Reno with my extended family. We only decided to go out to eat because my uncle raved about some $2-3 dinner special the casino served (they try to lure in gamblers by offering cheap food and putting restaurants in the back of the casino so you have to walk past gaming tables to eat). When we arrived, all of the kids started drooling over various expensive dishes on the menu. With wide eyes, I blurted out, "I want the steak!" My uncle said, "You can get whatever you want, but we came for the special."

It's the same idea----do what you want but...also follow expectations.

Pride and Spirit! Pride and Spirit!

Last night, sweaty and flushed after a soak in the onsen, I met a man in the lobby of my gym. He stared at me as I passed and then blurted, “Hello. English?”

I stopped with my arms full of shoes, a sweatshirt, and my gym bag.

“Hello,” I said.

My answer was all he needed to hear.

“Just a minute,” the man said in Japanese.

He pulled out a small notebook and started frantically flipping through the pages. Sitting to the left of us, two old women with beet-red faces cooled down from their dips in the onsen and looked on, amused that a Japanese person was attempting to make contact with the tall, white, silly creature they often see but never dare address. The man finally found the page he was looking for.

“This,” he pointed to the top of the page. “In English? Uhh…you say? In English?”

The words “Pride and Spirit” were written in shaky script above many lines of Japanese. I looked at the man and smiled. This sort of thing happens on occasion in Japan, a country bloated with foreign English instructors. People see white skin and assume it belongs to an English speaker.

I pointed at the words and used my ESL teacher voice—something that sounds like the voice a parent uses with a toddler (minus all the cooing and pet names.)

“This says ‘Pride and Spirit,’ ” I said clearly. Before he asked me to, I repeated it two more times, “Pride and spirit. Pride and spirit.”

The man repeated after me and used gestures to explain that he was a singer and ‘Pride and Spirit’ was the title of a song he wrote. He pointed to the lines of Japanese verse below the title and I could see that the words ‘Pride and Spirit’ were written in as a chorus throughout the song.

“Sing? Pride and Spirit? Like this,” the man said. He started singing “Pride and Spirit! Pride and Spirit!” off-key and heavily accented in the gym lobby. The two old women laughed and the receptionist acted like nothing was out of the ordinary, like the lobby doubled as a concert hall a few times a day without notice.

“No, no,” I said, laughing, “I’m a bad singer. Very bad.”

The man insisted. “Please, you sing. Pride and spirit.” He jabbed his finger at the phrase in his notebook over and over again like a preacher with his bible. His request turned into an order, “You sing. You sing this.”

I looked around. People were coming and going. The old ladies were staring as if they were observing some strange social experiment that could explode in flames or morph into a foreign dance or display of culture at any moment. The receptionist pretended to be interested in her sign-in sheet but I could tell she was listening, waiting.

Tired and ready to go home and eat, I said frankly, “I’m sorry. No. I’m a bad singer.”

The man stared at me with a flat, unshaken expression on his face. My answer was not received or even understood.

“Please, you sing.” He smiled.

Sing or not sing. Sing or not sing. Hmmmm.

Oh fuck it, I thought. Singing the damn thing will be easier than getting my point across to this man—the path of least resistance.

“Priiiiide and spirrrrrit. Priiiiide and spirrrrit,” I sang, feeling faint from the immediate rush of blood to my blushed cheeks and forehead.

The man clapped and said, “Amazing! Amazing!” in Japanese and then tried to imitate my pronunciation and pitch.

“Nice to meet you,” I said and we shook hands.

I walked away and left him singing to his small audience.

A Day at Hakuba 47

We've had an amazingly mild winter so far this year. I haven't been riding every Sat. and Sun. like last year because the snow hasn't been as good and the temperature in my apartment during the day is actually pleasant (last year, it was warmer/safer to go riding and work up a sweat than stay in my apartment sucking in carbon monoxide fumes all day).

These are some pictures from a day of back country riding up at Hakuba 47. In a full 8 a.m--5 p.m. day of riding, we managed to get 4 runs in. It was awesome, but exhausting because of all the hiking.

left: Mike and I

















left: Greg, Tim, and I













left: Greg in the trees













left: Stu, Tim, Mike, Rich, and Greg













left: Tim













left: Tim and Greg at the top of the south face of 47






























left: After a 40 minute hike from the top lift, this was the view from the ridge before we went down the north face.











left: Tim scouting out a scary, wind-blown cornice type thing












left: After we made it down the north face, we ended up in a valley and had to ride along a river /cross a bunch of dams for an hour and a half to get back to our cars. This shot is of me climbing to get to my board after throwing it down to the snow from atop the dam.

News!

left: A monkey and I last year

This blog is long overdue for a post and I apologize. After finally securing an internet connection in my apartment, my hard drive died and I had to have it replaced. Now, finally, I have a functioning computer AND an internet connection.

News:

1. The trip: I don’t think I’ve sent out a mass email to all of my readers (“mass” might not be the best word to describe an email that is directed to all three of you) about my plans post-Japan. As of now, I am planning on going on a long bicycle trip that will start in early October of this year. I will ride south from New Jersey, down to the Gulf states, through Texas and into Mexico, down into Central America. From Panama I will either sail or fly past the Darien Gap, an impenetrable tangle of rainforest, toucans, and magic, on to Colombia. South from Colombia along the western coast of South America. I will eventually cross (possibly in Bolivia) over some high and chilly mountain passes and work my way down to the eastern plains. I’m hoping to eventually end up in Rio in Brazil or Buenos Aires in Argentina. From either of these large port cities, I would like to find a job on a trans-Atlantic freighter headed for South Africa. From South Africa, I’ll ride up the Eastern coast of Africa and head towards Cairo.

This is the rough plan as of now. I expect and hope for changes along the way. I am guessing this ride will take 1.5---2 years. Based on blogs that I’ve been reading, through a combination of camp spots and hotels, self-made meals and restaurant feasts, frequent deprivation and rare indulgence, I should be able to complete a trip like this on a budget of $15,000---20,000. Some riders have traveled for the same length of time on larger budgets, some have spent next to nothing.

2. Goal of the trip: The goal of this trip is multi-faceted and revealing itself to me in thin layers, like a rainbow in a ball flashing open its trench coat to a waiting voyeur. As of now, I hope to (as cliché as it sounds—I can think of no other simple way to say it) use the trip to restore my faith in humanity, find the goodness in all people that I know must exist but have been conditioned to doubt. Traveling alone propels one into the open sail of hospitality that far too often hovers just above the chop and spray of routine. I have confidence that I will be invited into people’s homes for the night, asked to join in meals with strangers, helped when stranded on the side of the road. The interest that a loaded bike generates in places where no loaded bikes are typically seen is hot enough to spark the flame of conversation. I also hope to use this trip as a teaching tool. I’m still trying to hash out the details, but I would like to document the trip in some way (via video, writing, photo combination) so I that I might show future students in America and students along the way how people in the world are superficially different while essentially the same. I think the best way to do this would be to do what I have been planning on doing all along: 1. Accept invitations to eat with, stay with, chat with strangers I meet along the way (in my head I can hear my first grade teacher, using a dolphin puppet and a squeaky voice, saying “Never ever talk to strangers!” This logic is fine for first graders, but we also need to preach the reverse message for our high school and university students to combat ignorance and ethnocentrism and say, “Always, always talk to strangers!!”) 2. Volunteer along the way. I would like to volunteer a few times throughout the trip to kill two birds with one stone—help other people and feed knowledge into my brain’s engine at the same time. I’m not sure where I will volunteer yet, but I’ve already found some amazing opportunities at 2 orphanages and 1 outdoor education/eco-tourism outfit in Central America. I also have another goal for the trip that I think will be easy to achieve simply by seeing the trip to fruition: I want to inspire people I now know and people I meet in the future to travel, inspire people to chase goals and dreams no matter how silly or unattainable they seem, and to encourage others to find constructive ways to shatter the universal government-prescribed life cycle, one that is stifling in its inflexibility and insulting to the brilliance of life in its blandness—

Go to school, get married, get a job, produce, have kids, produce, go to church/temple/mosque/synagogue/football stadium one day a week, pay taxes, produce, pay taxes, produce, die.

3. I’m going to Vietnam over March break for two weeks. I’m excited because I will fly into Ho Chi Minh City and leave from Hanoi, thus allowing me to avoid annoying backtracking to get to my arrival airport. I have no set plans for the trip as of now (and I hope to keep it that way!) I do know that I would like to spend a few days on the beach and a few days touring the Vietcong tunnel system and visiting a good museum in Hanoi that focuses on “The American War” (as my old professor once said, Position Determines Perspective!!)

4. Since I’ve had my new and improved computer, I’ve watched a few documentaries/shows that have set my brain spinning. Two have been about religion/Christianity because I’m reading an amazing book by Mark Twain, Letters From the Earth, at the moment (in the book, Twain unrolls any shred of validity that may have once wrapped round the bible and uses it to wipe his backside.)

a. Jesus Camp—About an Evangelical “camp” for kids in Missouri. The camp is used as a training ground for up and coming belligerent, Republican lunatics and a Petri dish for intolerance, hatred, ignorance, and fear. It will make you queasy, beware! Some of these kids “feel yucky” when they are around non-Christians, the leader of the camp hopes that the children will fight for Christianity with the same intensity that fundamentalist Muslims use to fight for the “advancement” of Islam (laying down their lives if necessary), the children (some only seven and eight-years-old) are encouraged to try to convert non-Christians, one child became “born-again” at five-years-old when he felt “there was something missing in his life”, one night of the camp is devoted to anti-abortion lectures, the children (most are home-schooled) supplement their science texts with Christian texts that teach them to “trade their belief in science for their faith.” The whole thing is simply disgusting and fascinating at the same time, like a car wreck in slow motion.

b. The Virus of Faith by Richard Dawkins—A documentary about how faith resembles a virus that is passed from parent to child and fueled by fear. Dawkins asserts that the quest for truth via science is threatened by the blanket of faith that stifles curiosity and concern for the environment. There’s a great section of the film where he interviews a woman who was forced into Christianity as a child by her parents. The woman describes childhood religious indoctrination as a form of child abuse because children are forced into believing in an ideology because of different fears-----fear of things like hell, fear of disappointing their parents, and if they live in a very religious society, fear of being a social outcast.

I wonder: Why can’t children be educated about the religions of the world so that they can choose their own religion when they are adults, when they are old enough to fully understand the implications of their belief in faith??? To decide for your child that he/she will be a Muslim or a Christian is to make a decision that no human is qualified to make for another. Dawkins is articulate and the questions he poses are immense and thought-provoking. I first heard of him because I read that Douglas Adams was influenced by Dawkins and impressed with the simplicity and strength of his logic regarding faith and evolution.

c. The Power of Myth—Interview of Joseph Campbell by Bill Moyers before Campbell’s death at 82. Campbell spent his life studying world mythology and, over a 6 part series, tells Moyers about all he’s learned in a lifetime of study. AMAZING! Covers many religions, countless countries and cultures, dozens of myths and their implications, and how to “follow your bliss.”. Moyers said Campbell was “one of the most spiritual men” he knew and I think it shows in this series. Campbell knows. So many people say they know, but he glows it. You have to see it to believe it; it’s spectacular.

d. Burning Man: Beyond Black Rock—A documentary about the Burning Man art festival held in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada every year. If you want to learn how a group of people are able to build a city for 35,000 people in the middle of the desert, hold a week-long festival, and break it down without leaving a trace (largest “Leave No Trace” project in the entire world) only to do it again the next year, check out the video. In terms of organization, it makes my trip seem like a walk to the toilet.

5. In the past month, out of necessity, I’ve been writing by hand a lot. I usually don’t write by hand because I’m left-handed and I always smudge my writing across the page. Also, on those rare occasions when the writing rushes from me like a mouse from a house fire, I feel as if I can’t write fast enough by hand. I like to type because I can type quickly and can edit as I type (some might argue that this weakens and thins the filter of the mind and prevents thoughtful censorship. Kerouac would say the filter can’t be destroyed soon enough). I can also keep a certain visual format throughout a poem as I type (sometimes this itself helps me think of material by just seeing how long the next line should physically be) and when I write by hand, I often cross out lines and scribble over the text and distort the shape of my writing. I also think that a page covered in scribbled lines and cross-outs is one that is less inviting for the writer to re-visit. I’m intimidated by a messy page and find it harder to sit down and finish something when mistakes are screaming out at me from under a pile of crossed out words. I think I’ll continue to prefer the computer for a long while, but I’m fascinated by how simple format/process changes can affect writing. I’m sure this information is interesting to no one except me, and after re-reading this paragraph, I’m annoyed that I just wasted time writing it.

More to come as life unfolds,

Andrew