Friday, September 16, 2011

One of us is an Idiot: Persuasion and Climate Change

As a hockey referee, I would often find myself entertaining unsolicited advice from coaches.

“You are an idiot,” they would helpfully suggest. This tended to result in more penalties for the team in question, at which point the coach would, rethinking his strategy, attempt to deepen it (“You are a giant idiot”) reframe it (“Have you considered the possibility that you are an idiot?”) or broaden it (“You are an idiot and a moron”). I have to confess that none of these strategies was particularly effective in altering my decisions. Indeed, owing to my years of experience, I am prepared to categorically state that telling someone they are an idiot is a singularly ineffective way to influence human behaviour.

But at least the coaches were open and honest about it. It’s one thing to be called an idiot, but quite another to be treated like one. The latter tends to be even less effective in influencing behaviour, which is why I am surprised that environmentalists continually resort to it.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Summarization: She ain't gonna happen, man

My Philippines experience continues to struggle, push back and otherwise resist my efforts to bundle it up into a tidy little blog. There are strings of environmental non-sequiturs going everywhere, giant pieces of cultural misunderstandings that I can't squish down and dangerous bits of corruption and intrigue that just won't allow themselves to be nicely summarized with a bow on top.

What has surprised me most is how quickly and easily I've slipped back into Western ways of eating, talking, washing, travelling, watching hockey, eating lobsters, etc.

To be fair, it took a minute or so.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Branding Your Hippopotamus: The Asia-Pacific Cities Summit

It’s not every day that one has the opportunity to present an elaborate hippopotamus metaphor at an international conference, and so I felt it would be remiss (not to mention intellectually irresponsible) of me not to work everyone’s favorite semi-aquatic mammal into my talk on “Green Cities” at the 2011 Asia-Pacific Cities Summit in Brisbane.

The summit, attended by nearly a thousand civic and business leaders, culminated in the signing of the “Brisbane Accord” by more than 40 city mayor’s from around the region. City mayors turn out to be curious animals in their own right, alternating been the signing of serious accords and the formation of enormous conga lines. The latter activity was fuelled by only a relatively small percentage of the truly impressive quantities of free booze on offer throughout the conference.

Of course, the whole kit and caboodle was designed to impress people who are far more difficult to impress than I am. In fact, they may have inadvertently overdone it: I needed to watch only 2 seconds of this act before deciding that sustainability is for chumps. I’m going to be Laser Man when I grow up.

Thursday, June 30, 2011

"My friend, where are you going?"

“My friend, where are you going?”

The question is a fair and reasonable one, since I am a young, white man towering, somewhat confusedly, over a sea of Filipinos.

However, months of experience have taught me that an honest answer to this particular inquiry is not likely to yield much in the way of directions or impartial touristic advice. An admonition to buy some unidentified meat is much more likely. Now I happen to be a big fan of unidentified meat – some of my best friends are unidentified meat – but if I stopped every time I was called I wouldn’t get very far in this city.

It was never going to be possible for me to blend in here, no matter how much Ilokano I learned. Figuring out all the ins and outs of any new culture is hard; it’s just much more obvious when you look so different as well.

Still, the market seems to have been specially designed to thwart my vegetable-purchasing aspirations, which brings us back to the question: “where am I going?”

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Heisenberg and the Plight of the Modern Backpacker: A Tour of Thailand

I went to Bangkok, saw oddles of temples, and didn't take any pictures.
This is partly because to do so would expose my laughable photography skills, and partly because I think that the photograph is increasingly relied upon as the only legitimate means of demonstrating or absorbing new experiences. We don't bother to remember, because a photo can do it better. And along with remembrance goes thought, because this cannot be digitally documented and thus lacks legitimacy.
Of course, there's only so much thought that should really go into a drunken photo of your friends pretending to have moustaches, but Bangkok's temples are something quite different. A temple is nice to look at – covered, as they are, by dragons – but simply to look at them without thinking about what they represent seems to me somewhat akin to hoping to know about bees by staring at the outside of a beehive.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

The $#&! I Deal With

I know more than I ever wanted to about septage. Since what I wanted to know was more or less “nothing” I have been acutely aware of this insipid, creeping competence for the past several weeks.

But today, I realized with a start that I am doing something that might actually have an impact on the world. Which means, of course, that I have no one to blame but myself. I spent the months after my graduation telling everyone who would listen (too many to knock off) that I wanted to do ANYTHING that would have a tangible impact on the world.

So here I am. Wadding through shit.

And I admit it here in this blog post, for the first time anywhere, including my own head: it's not the least-interesting job in the world.

The sheer volume of vaccines one must receive before coming to the Philippines serves notice of the kind of sanitation problems faced in this part of the world. Hepatitis A, typhoid and cholera (which recently killed 21 people in another part of the country) are all very real concerns.

A great part of the problem can be traced to inappropriate contact between groundwater and wastewater. An average septic tank needs to be desludged (i.e. Emptied) every 5 years or so. With 67% of San Fernando's inhabitants having never desludged their tank (perhaps, like me, having never heard the term “desludged” before), it doesn't take much of a leap to imagine that many of those tanks are overflowing into the groundwater.

In fact, we don't really need to imagine: 58% of groundwater in the Philippines is contaminated with coliform bacteria and 56 of 59 wells sampled in San Fernando are contaminated with the same.

What we're working on now is a mandatory desludging program, which will empty every septic tank in the city on a repeating five year schedule. In order to get there, we've got to deal with a lot of shit, both figurative and literal.

But it's kind of interesting.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Whacking Enormous Rodents

Every couple of days, I have a moment that causes me to ask myself “is this really my life?” The answer is typically ‘yes’, but I generally repose the question, just to be sure: so I really am singing in an Ilokano song competition? There really is a perturbed-looking owl sitting in a box beside my desk at the office? Yes to both.

I think I have, in part, simply adjusted enough to the daily ins and outs of Filipino culture that I forget to expect differences. But also, I bring it on myself.

I had promised myself at the outside of this little adventure in the Philippines that I would seize every opportunity presented to me. I like to think of it like a whack-a-mole game, where there’s no time for hesitation:

“Hey Stu, want to go zip-lining with some middle-aged women from Manila”

WHACK! Gotcha, mole! (“Yes I do, Firth, thank you for asking.”)

“Want to give a speech?”

WHACK!

“Want to eat this disgusting food?”

WHACK!

“Want to...”

WHACK!

I would be tempted to believe that this is not real life at all, if it were not for the realities of work. I am, in turn, reminded of all the work yet to be done as the smell of burning garbage wafts through my windows at the end of a long day. If this is all just a whack-a-mole game, then the segregation (rather than burning) of waste in the Philippines is the King Kong of moles; a 300ft rodent spewing chemicals and smog into the atmosphere.

But I've only got six months to tackle the beast, so there's no time for hesitation. Good thing I carry a big stick.


Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Into the Heart of Chaos

The water from the broken air conditioner drips down onto my lap, making it look for all the world as if I've pee'd my pants. As recently as perhaps even two years ago, I might have felt like it: an unplanned trip from my small city of San Fernando into the heart of Manila could easily have caused me to lose control of my bladder just a little bit. But a year in Amsterdam and another two months in the Philippines have me feeling – with a touch of ill-advised hubris – like I can handle the chaos of one of the world's largest urban centers.

The drip has become more persistent, and I move to the neighbouring seat. This one is stuck in a reclined position, but I consider it a fair compromise. It wouldn't be good for one's blood pressure to get upset about such things in this country; the Filipinos themselves just shrug it off with their typical good humour.

A couple of vendors pop onto the bus as we pass another unidentified town, and start selling food down the aisle. I think it's pork skin, but I can't be sure, so I sneak a peak.

Friday, April 1, 2011

Fear and the Great Poohead

Fear rules.

It ruled when thousands of Americans lost their lives driving after 9/11, during a time in which zero were killed in/by airplanes.

It ruled recently when Angela Merkel – apparently confused by the concept of tectonic plates – shut down Germany's nuclear plants for fear that tsunamis could come streaming up the Rhine any day now.

I can't keep the disappointment out of my writing, but I do try not to react by condemning the entire human race for this inescapably bit of humanity. Economists have for years divorced themselves entirely from the realities of human existence in designing theories to explain a 'rational' actor (e.g. a person who behaves according to invented economic theory) who does not exist. Humans are not that simple.

Fear is a part of human nature, and as much as it can lead to poor decisions, it can neither be legislated out of existence nor ignored as a reality. Attempts to do so constitute relatively minor sins, but they stem from good, or at least ignorant, intentions.

It's those who exploit the fear of others for whom I reserve my venom. I would very much like to have, to take a random example, a chat with Mr. Stephen Harper about his use of ads implying that refugees are terrorists. Or perhaps about his shrill fear-mongering over the possibility of that most deadly of democratic ills: the coalition. Never mind that this is the man who led the first Canadian government in history to be found in contempt of parliament.

Geez, thanks, Steve, you poohead.

I've digressed to childish name-calling in my displeasure, which still leaves me at a level of discourse one or two steps above that of an election campaign that has so far merely couched similar points in more overblown language. Michael Ignatieff will form a coalition and there are bad things going on in the world and you should just generally be afraid.

We will, sadly, never be able to entirely remove the potential resonance of such claims on at least some segment of the population. But just as living on my own hasn't left me snorting lines of cocaine off surfboards, so we should hold political discourse to a slightly higher standard than 'anything goes'. Preying (and I really think this is the best descriptor) on the insecurities of the populace is irresponsible to its core and bereft of any ethical compunctions at all.

We struggle enough with our fear without politicians exploiting it for their own ends. But I'm missing the more important point here, which is clearly thus: Stephen Harper is a chicken-butt.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Pointing Fingers in the Heat

There seems to be an emerging public consensus that the recent global rash of extreme climatic events can be more or less directly attributed to climate change. The theory is this: climate change increases climatic variability, thus increasing the incidence of extreme weather events such as hurricanes and floods.

This is interesting, because it remains entirely uncertain whether the science actually supports this conclusion. It has become climate change denier double-speak to say that “the science is uncertain”, but I think it does more damage to the movement to allow false beliefs to propagate in the public sphere.

The belief that natural disasters can be directly linked to climate change is part emotional reaction, part logical fallacy, and this fallacy – let's call it the Edmonton winter fallacy – has already played a significant role in shaping opinions on both sides of the debate.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Trying it once: On relationships with food

Jumping off a cliff.

Stepping on a kitten.

Cheering for the Toronto Maple Leafs.

These are all things I don’t need to experience to know that they are galactically unfortunate ideas. But everything else? Worthy of at least a try.

Of course, this is an easy philosophy to both invent and uphold when one lives in Halifax, and the most outlandish activity one could possibly engage in would involve somersaults down Citadel Hill.

But there’s nothing like travelling precisely halfway around the world for encountering an unidentifiable food or two; globalization or not.

The roughly 8 billion different types of fruits here are not particularly frightening – no one ever won an iron stomach competition by holding down an entire papaya.

The meats are a different matter. Some are identifiable: the Filipino practice of cooking and eating whole fish generally makes them visually traceable, upon consumption, right down to the underwater neighbourhood in which they were spawned (“The Mariana trench? Me too!”). On the flip side, some meats are not so easily attributed back to the source ruminant or barnyard fowl.

There are two schools of thought on whether one should know what one is eating before consuming it. I generally belong to the group that would prefer to know, but my boss – a man with an evidently questionable sense of humour – delights in refusing to tell me what I’m eating before I eat it. It is, however, when he won’t tell me what I ate even after I eat it that I start to fear I’ve consumed something particularly egregious. Still, I’ve stuck to my policy of trying everything once, which has thus far taken me a good chunk of the way through the rather impressive roll call of “Filipino foods that would bring an abrupt halt to a first date back in Hamilton”.

I've thus far ingested chicken embryos, parts of the goat that I didn't even know existed and a variety of unidentified dishes from a cow-like animal called a Caribou (pronounced: care-I-bow). Also, bile.

Complaining – or worse, condescendingly laughing – at the unfamiliar foods in a foreign culture is a trite and inane activity, and I won't engage in it. What I would like to do, however, is to suggest (somewhat paradoxically) that eating unidentified foods is a great way to connect with one's food sources in a way that often eludes us while eating processed ham and frozen pizza.

Fish provides the best example. I conducted a bit of an experiment during my time in Hamilton, wherein I would ask the seafood worker to identify for me the species of tuna to be found in steak form behind the counter.

“Tuna,” they would announce, after a few moments thought. Further prompting led, on my most successful excursion, to the confident answer, “sushi grade”.

Compare and contrast: Last week I came face to face with an enormous Yellowfin tuna. I know it was a tuna because its big, stupid tuna eye was still looking at me as I dug into it with a fork. Also because the guy who caught it was spitting out bones from the other end of the beast. Does this connection make my tuna any more sustainable? I don't know. Am I at least acutely, unavoidably aware of what I'm eating and where it came from? Absolutely.

Similarly, when chewing part of a goat, it's well-nigh impossible to dismiss from one's mind the fact that one is eating a goat part. Happily, Filipinos generally delight in volunteering this information as one is mid-chew.

Since I believe that a lost connection to our food is a major hindrance to efforts to increase food sustainability in the Global North, I'll be looking for ways to export the food-connection I've found here. It will ideally involve a new animal or experience that forces people to think about what they're eating. For sustainability's sake, it should be relatively cheap and otherwise valueless to society.

Deep fried Toronto Maple Leaf, anyone?

You've got to try it once.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Old and Unnecessary Roller Coasters: The Environmental Kuznets Curve

It doesn’t take more than 5 seconds on a jeepney to imagine the kind of environmental improvement that could be made through efficiency gains in the Philippines. The switch to gas from coal, for example. Or even installing 4-stroke (as opposed to 2-stroke) engine in the uncountable trikes which zip about this country like great swarms of motorized bumblebees.

This is precisely the thinking behind what is known as the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), which posits that all economies follow a pre-determined roller coaster ride of relative pollution levels.

Beginning at a point of relative poverty, a developing country’s pollution levels increase until, at the top of the bell curve, greater efficiency, concern for environmental degradation, and the cost of pollution abatement relative to the utility of continued pollution combine to bring about a cleaner economy.

So things are supposed to get worse before they get better, but might it be possible to take a short cut? What if, instead of switching from coal to gas, we moved to renewable energies; and instead of upgrading engines, we installed bicycle lanes? We could cut across our graph, like so:

Having one’s environmentally-sustainable cake and eating it too. But I would be remiss not to point out that, as a Westerner, I have an enormous vested interest in this outcome. Like the children’s game “King of the Castle” there’s not room for everyone at the top of the pollution curve, and a source of much climate negotiation disagreement has been the disinclination of those on top to either step down from their perch or help others up.

Let’s daydream for a moment, and pretend that, since I’m in the development field, I might actually be able to help the Philippines develop (momentarily leaving aside the larger question of whether that would be an inherently good thing). If I succeed in my ultimate goal, I will eventually be clotheslined by the fundamental problem facing international development: if the EKC represents an inevitable path, then it is almost certainly also true that not everyone can become “developed”. What happens after I single-handedly raise the quality of living of the Philippines’ population of 90 million to become equivalent with that of, say, Oakville, Ontario? And then, since I’ve apparently acquired God-like powers, I move on and do the same for China’s 1 billion people.

Now we have a good chunk of the global population perched on the top of the castle, enjoying the equality that one cannot – in good faith – say that they do not deserve. Here we take our lesson from the eminent philosopher Seuss, whose hatted cat clearly demonstrates the unsustainability of massive balancing acts.

Given that the NGO for which I work has the word “sustainable” right in its name, I feel that professional considerations alone should be enough to give me pause before flicking my magic wand in that particular direction.

But then where are we? If development isn’t an option, and neither is the status-quo, what course of action is left to the Philippines’ of the world? How can we achieve the holy trinity of sustainability, development and equality?

If an easy answer were forthcoming, then Copenhagen would have just been a giant excuse for world leaders to spend a week daring each other to ride on the world’s oldest roller coaster.

Even with my acknowledged self-interest in this outcome, I think the EKC shortcut represents the least-unappealing option open to those countries to the left of the curve, but only if those countries on top are willing to meet them there.

Am I dreaming in technicolor? You bet your Filipino fish sauce I am, but I’ve seen this movie, this movie and also this one, and I know how important it is to know what I want the world to look like in case I ever develop super powers.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Raising Money for the Environment

I've been writing a work plan for my next six months at the City Environment and Natural Resources Office (CENRO). It includes the following primary projects:

1. Implement a solid waste management system in two of the city's barangays (neighbourhoods of approx. 10,000). We'll need to take this project all the way from the formation of a council, to the passing of an ordinance, to the implementation of the plan.

2. Sewerage and Sanitation (oh yes). The city recently mandated that every septic tank in San Fernando needs to be desludged every 5 years – I need to figure out how to make that happen, and how much money needs to be collected.

Additional side projects (as if one could ever tire of septage) include a study of residual and hazardous waste in junk shops, a recycling project in schools and a composting initiative.

Here's what I've accomplished so far:

1. Learned the names of more than half my co-workers.

2. Figured out how to express, in Ilocano, the basic concern that my hovercraft is full of eels (Napno iti igat ti hovercraftko).

So it's been a productive first couple weeks.

One emerging theme is that of money. There are some rich individuals in San Fernando, but the city itself is not exactly rolling in cash.

We spent a good deal of last week trying to figure out what kind of septic tank desludging fee we needed to level against the city's 25,000 households in order to raise the 3 million pesos required to build a new septage treatment facility. Water quality problems led to the city's recent pronouncement that every septic tank in the city needs to be desludged every 5 years. Without the infrastructure to treat so much waste, the money will need to be raised quickly in order to begin construction of a new facility.

To contextualize the 3 million peso figure a little bit: the average city worker makes roughly 10,000 pesos per month. Three million might not break the bank, but it's nothing for the city to scoff at.

On the weekend, a friend and I were out with San Fernando's richest Bucla (the Tagalog term for a particular type of feminine gay man). We were inspecting her1 doll collection, when there came an enormous WHUMP!

I spun around to find that she had slammed 1 million pesos down on the coffee table.

I said something incredulous to the effect of “what are you doing with so much money”?

Spending money, sweetie. You're coming for dinner, aren't you?”

Given that the most expensive dinner in the city costs less than 400 pesos, the stack of 1 million seemed moderately excessive, but the point of this anecdote is to illustrate the divide between rich and poor within San Fernando.

The city's relative poverty is going to inform how we approach all of our environmental projects. Whereas moral and ethical factors drive environmental sustainability within Canada, economic concerns are paramount here. Nobody takes a lot of convincing to recycle cans and bottles for which they receive money, but something like composting, with no immediate financial benefit, is a tougher sell. The most common means of disposing of waste – though illegal – is burning. Providing a financial incentive to instead segregate and recycle waste is going to be a big challenge.

But not as big as cleaning these stupid eels out of my hovercraft.

1Ilocano does not differentiate between male and female pronouns. As a result, the Bucla use them interchangeably.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

The Post Where I Indelicately Use an Analogy to Compare a Minority Group to a Tropical Lizard

Like a 3D painting, San Fernando shows more of its depth everytime I look at it. I was shocked when Friday's boxing event featured two designated “gay boxing” cards. Dressed in full drag, the combatants clearly had no formal training, but easily had the best time of the night. The crowd loved it.

A Lady Gaga impersonator came into the ring and did a dance during the intermission. The crowd loved that too. I was enjoying it as well, all the more so after the vice-mayor leaned over and asked me “Have you met him? He works for the city library”.

These are the outer layers of San Fernando's attitude toward its LGBTQ population.

Further down presents increasing shades of grey.

Locally known as “the gays,” the mayor refers to them as the “third sex”. Locals will casually remark “look, a gay!” in the same tone that one might exclaim, “look, an iguana!”

And just as everyone likes iguanas, enjoys having them around and goes to see them in zoos, so “gays” are generally liked, and 5000 people showed up to see them at the Miss Gay San Fernando Universe pageant.

But you wouldn't want to bring an iguana home to meet your parents, and you certainly wouldn't want to be one, no matter how much fun it is to watch them crawl around on stage. The “third sex” implies an equality which is not, in reality, more than a thin layer deep.

The crowd at the Miss Gay pageant seemed to feel that it's okay to enjoy such events, but only to a point; there was something in the volume of laughter that suggested a cautious distancing and perhaps an element of derision. It would appear that, for all of the superficial acceptance, gays, like iguanas, remain spectacle.

Which is too bad, because neither gays nor greys deserve to be lumped together.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

The Mayor and Me (Or: How White Privilege Taught Me the Art of the Left Hook)

I've had the tremendous fortune of arriving in San Fernando during the annual city fiesta – a two-week long party and all-around good time.

Friday was boxing night.

I hadn't really gone into the city, at that point, except in a work-related capacity. I was standing outside the central plaza where the event was to take place, when a security guard from inside pushed through the crowd, pointed at me through an even larger crowd and offered me a seat in the (still empty) VIP section.

Surprised, I told him I was waiting for friends (the truth). Friends arrived an we tried to sit in the corner somewhere, but were quickly accosted by a gentleman whom I was later able to identify as the mayor's personal bodyguard.

In Canada, one is usually able to determine which offers it would be rude to decline, and which it is not really expected that one will accept. The offer of a beer is probably genuine, but the offer of one's house (after several beers) may not be. I still struggle with this distinction here, but it was clear in this instance that the request fell under the former category, so off we went to sit front and centre next to the mayor, the vice-mayor and Manny Pacquiao's trainer.1

Then there was the boxing. I'd never seen a live boxing match before, but the conceit of unearned privilege had me discussing the finer points of the left hook with the vice-mayor, as if I could possibly have done more in the ring than just bleed. Maybe whimper a little.

The following night, another Canadian and I were whisked around a crowd into an event without so much as a cursory glance at our tickets (which were free to begin with). On the rare occasions I've been given VIP treatment at home, I've lived it up like I were the Prince of Monaco, because I know that my limousine will turn back into an oversized gourd at midnight, and I'll be back in the cheap seats with the rest of the suckers.

The problem is that the cost of the cheap seats at home can pay for a whole heck of a lot over here. I don't want to be given the key to the city, for several reasons:

1) I haven't done anything to deserve it.

2) The people in San Fernando's cheap seats don't live in nice suburban houses. They're hungry.

3) The specter of neo-colonialism follows me around like an over-protective parent; escorting me through the poorest parts of town and ushering me into VIP seating.

4) Part of my purpose here is to encourage the participation of marginalized groups in environmental activities, thus decreasing their relative marginalization. I see some pretty easy conflicts of interest on this count.

No problem: I'll just implement a solid waste management plan in a couple of communities, and the entire city, if not the better part of the country, will surely be immediately hoisted out of poverty.

In the interim, a quick bout with Manny Pacquiao should be enough to keep me (permanently) grounded.

1Possibly the most famous person I've ever met, now that I think about it.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Languages: Lots and Lots of Languages

The usual binary language choice I face while travelling is the following:

A) Learn the local language.

Or,

B) Fail to learn the local language, thus resigning myself to weeks or monthly of bumbling indelicately and obliviously through a foreign culture, like a delirious sea lion performing Swan Lake.

But the Philippines is – to understate things slightly – an interesting place. Depending on who you ask, there are between 110 and 175 separate languages spoken in the Philippines. I am perhaps fortunate that my choice here is limited to two of them.

It's going to be a difficult decision to make. Ilokano is the local language here in San Fernando, and is spoken by perhaps 8 million people in the world. Tagalog, on the other hand, is one of two national languages, and claims 22 million native speakers, while being understood by 55% of the population.

It's simple enough on the surface: according to the current interns, Tagalog is the language spoken in meetings, and the resources to learn it are plentiful. If I learn Tagalog, I'll stand a decent chance of being understood anywhere in the Philippines (whether you agree that that would be a good thing or not).

It might be a bit strong to suggest that Ilocano is dying, but the vultures are already circling. One of the previous interns here has become extremely invested in language preservation. He shares an anecdote in which he addressed a young child in Ilocano, only to find that his parents had made the decision not to teach the child the local language; he spoke English and Tagalog instead. Increasingly, upper class families in the region are making this decision, opening up the first cracks in the stability of Ilocano as a vibrant language.

So, sigh, I'm left to make a philosophical decision, and I already know that I couldn't make any other choice.

My insightful partner recently quoted Wittgenstein on the subject of language: "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world". A lost language represents a lost way of knowing, thinking and understanding the world; all items for which I believe in increased, rather than reduced diversity.

None of this is to say that I will actually succeed in learning Ilocano, but fueled by my residual guilt over having failed to properly master Dutch, I'm going to give it my best shot.

Vegas would give the sea lion better odds.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Mangoes and Other Dangers of Excess

With so many things to feel guilty about as a Westerner in a developing country, I’ve been casting about for things I can feel good about. My chief candidate at the moment: mangoes.

I love mangoes, but since mangoes don’t love -30 degree temperatures, they tend not to grow in Canada. In order to acquire them, as a Canadian, one needs to import them from overseas and I find it difficult to justify enjoying a fruit with such an enormous carbon footprint. It’s sort of analogous to melting the arctic ice with a blowtorch; one mango won’t make all the difference, but it doesn’t seem the right thing to do. Anyway, the Philippines is reputed to produce the world’s best mangoes, and I intend to consume them until I start to look like one.

But over-exuberant mango consumption isn’t the only way in which I will be tempting fate. No, I will also be learning how to surf. And how can I not? I’m living 200 metres from one of the best surfing beaches in the Philippines. San Juan is, in fact, a town populated primarily by surf bums. I suspect that my new home’s sleepy nature will provide a welcome antidote to the nearby barely controlled chaos of San Fernando City, where I will be actually working.

In theory, I’m supposed to be working on community-based waste management projects in several of San Fernando’s unserviced districts. For the moment, however, I can hardly envision a future in which I am able to navigate San Fernando’s chaos, let alone harness it.

Predictably, I haven’t been helping my own chances of survival. But in my own defence, I was brought up to believe that when the mayor personally invites you on a bicycle race, you accept the offer. And if that race happens to consist of a 5 hour climb up a mountain in the searing heat, then you plan your funeral with dignity and grace. He gave me a mug with his picture on it; how could I say no?

I admit that I was feeling a little pressure to please, since the first thing I saw upon entering the city was a welcoming poster with my name on it. But I suspect they would have evicted me anyway after I ate an entire season’s worth of mangoes.

Coming soon: context for the mayor’s declaration that “with the modern times, even fish can now have their own condominium”.


Sunday, January 30, 2011

The Great Problems of the World

In this world we live in, many people have many problems.

There are children starving in Africa.

Tampa Bay Lightning goaltender, Dan Ellis, continues to lose sleep over his measly 3 million dollar contract.

The president of the United States has to deal with, on top of everything else, accusations that he was born outside of the Milky Way galaxy.

Even contemporary philosopher, Jay-Z, claims to have ninety-nine of them.

Everyone on Earth has problems, and many share the same problems. But for all the overlap, there are relatively few people complaining about my new problem: being a white male.

Yeah I know, boo hoo.

And for every way that it will be a problem, I'm sure there will be a hundred embarrassing benefits. But I don't like to stand out. I want to blend into new environments, like a tall, inept ninja. In the Netherlands, I could just keep my mouth shut and/or express a dry sense of humour and I fit right in. In fact, I've never been somewhere where I could be identified as “foreign” on sight.

It makes me uncomfortable. So sure, it's not as bad a problem as starving in Africa, but it may perhaps be on par with at least a few of Jay-Z's troubles.

San Fernando is small enough (100 000 people, give or take) that I'm likely to gain some degree of recognition after some spent wandering about town. I'm given to understand that there are few white people there, excepting the current interns and an endemic problem of old, white sex tourists.

Or perhaps these are the predictable fears of a nervous narcissist. Perhaps no one will notice me at all. Here on the very edge of my departure, the uncertainty is such that I'm not sure which eventuality would be worse.

So the only solution, for now, is to contextualize the problem.

At least I don't make 3 million dollars.