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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.