Tiny Little Fractures

The dumbest statement of the decade 

I saw a rather disturbing thing while on the treadmill at my local gym today. And no it wasn’t the hideously overweight thing that waddles across the floor at 6.30 every day. Someone so fat I still haven’t figured out whether it is female or male, as to how one eats oneself to the point of asexuality I don’t know. No the rather disturbing thing I saw was on the TV screen in front of me, where the figures flashed on CNN showing the projected cost of the Iraq and Afghan war for the next 10 years, a rather jaw dropping 14 trillion dollars.

An impressive figure but one of those that is really in the end too large to comprehend but then CNN did something very smart (I know I was surprised myself). They broke it down, that’s $8,000 per person over the next 10 years. I was so surprised my knee buckled and almost ended up face first on the person next to me. Giving the girl a rather weak smile I straightened by knee with a quick blow to its back and went back to running and tried to slowly absorb this figure. 

Now that’s a fair fucking amount of money and of course it being a true democracy out here when there are costs for such a thing like a war both the rich and the poor (and of course the middle class) will probably pay equally for it. To be honest I don’t want to pay. I mean the Afghan war maybe. After all those Islamasists (as one person I know who despite being nice is rather stupid refers to them as) flew planes into those towers and killed some 3,000 people. Fine, I mean most of the nutcases were Saudi but apparently they were being kept in bed and breakfast by those turbaned nutters the Taleban. So smoke them out, that I can understand.

Of course 6 years after the event apparently Bin Laden is still waltzing around with his dialysis machine and is nowhere being closer to being caught than when he was being groomed by the CIA to fight the Russians. Then we get Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with September 11, a country that was pretty much secular that was invaded on the pretext of a preemptive strike in the ‘war against terror’ by a president who cheated his way into the White House. Riiight…so Saddam (who is..er..was..I will endorse a complete wanker) was captured, executed, no weapons of mass destruction were found and a bollocking shit storm was ignited in the newly liberated land. 

What was really funny was how within a few months of the invasion and it was painfully obvious no weapons of mass destruction to be found, suddenly the nitwit who leads the land of the free was bleating the line of ‘saving the Iraqi people.’ Of course while they are busy saving them they haven’t even bothered keeping count of how many have lost their lives. I mean that’s a bit strange, you go into ‘save’ some people and don’t bother keeping count of how many have died since you ‘saved’ them.

Anyways I could go on ad naseum about how stupid all this is, how those people who lost their lives back in 2001 have still not seen justice, how the old white men have fooled the American people and made a bundle of money but then I’d be here all day. The bottom line is I don’t want to pay, I have better things to spend my money on than paying Blackwater to knock off Iraqi civilians. And my solution is rather simple. Get the triumvirate of fools who started this mess, George, Cheney and Rumsfield pay around 80% of their wealth. I think that would be fair. I don’t know about Rumsfeld but Cheney seems to rake in a fair amount of dough and George is rolling in it. 

So you three wankers, put your bloody money where your mouth is, pay up!

It was a strange thought to have while struggling with impenetrable chaparral on a site visit. What was supposed to be a simple task to photograph some future geotesting sites turned into a four hour odyssey, literally bushwhacking to the sites wondering when a rattlesnake would launch out of a bush and go for my jugular. Maybe it was the sun but all I could think of while I inhaled about a tonne of pollen was that I never thought I would end up here. 

Mind you it’s not a bad thing, I enjoy my job and site visits are the best part of it. I just never thought I would be a development consultant when I was growing up (this might be a bit obvious though as I cant imagine a kid who would know what a development consultant is, much less want to become one). I knew from the tender age of 10 what I wanted to be…well before I was 10 my ambition was to be a tracker at Yala. But after 10 I wanted to be Gerald Durrel, a brown version of him at least. A life dedicated to obscure species and the saving of them from extinction. I had it all planned out. A breeding center up in the hills, tanks in a climate controlled building, enclosures for the larger animals. Yes I was an ineffably weird kid.

And then I grew up, well actually I went to college and learnt what conservation really was about. That it as about people, livelihoods, habitat protection, poverty alleviation and a plethora of other related and diverse factors. I also discovered (well before college) that I enjoyed drinking, clubs, girls and those other material frivolities that interfere with being a hermit up in the mountains obsessing about frogs. There was also the rather frightening discovery that the biologists, ecologists and conservation biologists I met were rather boring people. 

In fact even through grad school I came to the realization that I couldn’t, didn’t want to be someone who did one thing in life. I found that I was deadly scared of being pigeonholed, of being known as an environmental scientist, an engineer, anything that involved doing one thing. It doesn’t really matter if the projects are different every day but the concept of a fixed career path scares the beejesus out of me. That probably explains why at various times of my life I have been an office manager, a biologist, a mortgage salesperson, an environmental scientist, a failed arrack importer, a fundraiser for a non-profit and a land use planner. It’s why I want to do a PhD in International Development; it’s why I’m obsessed with photography, why I want to start my own company.

It’s because at the end of the day, when I grow up (and some might say that’s going to be awhile) I want to be a land use consulting, social entrepreneur, regular entrepreneur, development consulting, writer, photographer. That’s not asking for much is it?

 a tad smoky up front

Coming into Simi Valley yesterday was like a ride into the apocalypse. Despite it being around 4pm, the sun was a fiery, hellish ball behind a screen of smoke. The fire season has kicked off here in the heartland again with the Santa Ana winds blowing across the land and fanning the flames. The winds are something else; coming down the Keuhner pass, every second was a fight with the steering wheel. The wind shear tried to fling my car to the left, the curving road, gravity and centrifugal force tried to swing it to the right all the way down the pass. Then there was and me trying to remember my high school physics and alternatively praying to the pantheon of higher beings, fighting to correct the steering and not trying to wet my pants. 

Being the inimitable photographer that I am as I came down the Pass I took a few moments out of my nervous breakdown to take a couple of pictures. Not too impressive, but then this was at 60 miles per hour with a camera phone and a Denali up my ass. So cut me some slack.

This morning was no better, not only was the wind howling around the house but a stray breeze had blown open my bedroom door. I woke up to the sweet strains of the Schizo Schitzu trying to find his metaphorical keys in my garbage can. Stepping outside was no better, the early morning sky was still a muted angry orange colour and the smell of embers was nauseating. I was a bit miffed because of all the ways to enjoy second hand smoke; bushfires are pretty way down my list. And besides, I don’t smoke in the mornings and not having a choice in the matter was sort of pissy in an ironic way.

Right now things are still literally heating up, N just emailed saying he was being evacuated and I’m religiously checking the Ventura fire updates hoping the fire doesn’t spread south to Moorpark. Hopefully these damn winds die down and everything comes back under control…after all I am rather too fond of the pooch to see him barbequed.

The sun obscured by a haze of smoke.
 

One of the most overwhelming feelings that I used to experience when sitting through the classes that compromised my Masters in Environmental Technology was that of hopelessness. The statistics were just too depressing, the levels of pollution, poverty, extinctions, CO2 increases and the policy inadequacies and political idiocies that were making change a slow painful process when any progress is made that is. The naïve ideas that I grew up with reading Gerald Durrell that conservation and protecting the environment was all about breeding species, fencing off protected habitats were quickly lost. The reality is environmental protection is as much about people as it is about animals and plants.

This was really brought home to me during a couple of research stints in Agrapatana and in Moneragala, where the forest ‘reserves’ are ridiculously disturbed. The thing is you can’t really stop it, how do you tell a villager that she cannot use wood from the forest to boil water for her child? And for what, an obscure concept of biodiversity dear to people who already have all they need to survive and more. The only way to really protect the environment is lift people out of poverty, give them alternatives to chopping firewood, lives that are more than just about survival. Entrepreneurs, both the regular kind and social ones have as much to do in the battle for saving the life systems that support us as do conservation biologists. 

But this is where I lose hope. I’ve worked for a non-profit in the US but was a bit disturbed by the general attitude I found, a lack of understanding in the ground realities in the developing world. The people were admirable but showed hostility towards things such as outsourcing that I found hard to stomach as for me, activities like outsourcing are about giving people chances. A way up in the world letting poverty go, a way for countries to get less reliant on their natural resources. Of course raising people out of poverty is a double-edged sword, the more affluent they become the more they consume, the more pressure they put on the ‘system’ so to speak. Whether a balance will be found and more sustainable ways to provide for the billions who live on the bottom of the pyramid is an answer that will probably only be evident in hindsight.

Another reason that I lose hope is the lack of inclusiveness in the environmental movement. Everywhere I look there is a lack of cooperation, a lack of understanding of an alternate view. It’s the developers vs. the hikers, NGO’s vs. governments, governments vs. the common people, etc, etc. As usual everyone is looking out for their own interests and the messages get lost in the confusion. Of course there are exceptions, but they’re frightfully rare. 

Where do I see my part in all this? I started out as a kid wanting to save species at all costs, heal the environment and all that good stuff. I have lost hope in that in my opinion the battle is already lost. We will lose a lot of species in the coming decades, maybe even suffer an environmental catastrophe, one that is probably necessary before humanity will change the way it conducts its business that will cause a lot of people to lose their lives. Whether humanity will survive or go the way of the Mayans is to me a dicey question. I know I sound pessimistic, but it’s better to face the truth than bury your head in the sand. For one thing just because the fight is lost doesn’t mean there is nothing left to save.

I for one want to keep fighting.

Pre-flight scorpion

My boss gave me a scorpion. Well he didn’t as much as give it to me rather I asked for it. As P mentioned I probably made all brown people the world over proud and upped my weirdness factor at work by asking for the little critter. My boss had come across him nestled in his kid’s clothes, unfortunately when the clothes were already on the kid (he lives up in the mountains so this wasn’t as surprising a discovery as it seems, well unless you were the kid).

The boss wasn’t really fond of the scorpion, especially since it had nicked the kid a couple of times. Luckily it was only a baby so obviously didn’t have as much venom in its system so no long term damage had been done. This story of course made me aware that in addition to rattlesnakes, cougars and mentally retarded mule deer I had one more creature to keep a wary eye out for on my site visits (as if I needed another threat to my well being).

On inquiring, surprisingly without any raised eyebrows, as to what in tarnation I was going to do with the scorpion the boss was somewhat mollified by hearing that I was going to kill him and take some macro photographs. Now before the animal lovers get on my case, the boss was going to kill the scorpion already so I was just taking on the sin for him. Also I really, really wanted to take some good macro shots of the little bugger…and since it’s a scorpion…I wasn’t really going to do it while it was alive. You know with that sting and all.

So I spent the day with the scorpion perambulating eerily around its jar on a shelf in my office before I took it home. I scheduled the shoot for Sunday following my whale watching trip and let P know to grab me some Kenko extension tubes while I jury rigged a temporary lightbox. The scorpion appeared to have kicked the bucket as he lay motionless in his jar and staid like that for a couple of days.

Sunday dawned and just to make sure that the scorp as dead I poured some water into the jar. To my surprise he immediately arched his back and scrabbled his legs. But it was brief and then he was still, lying in his watery grave as I assumed. Note I know this sounds cruel but I didn’t really have a choice. Remember that weirdness index at the office I was talking about? Well one of the reasons I figure so highly on that is because every time a spider shows up in the office, while everybody is ready to splat it I’m usually to be found on my knees wasting valuable client billable time rescuing it and setting it free outside. So there, I kill with great reluctance!

P rolled over and we had a quiet smoke on the balcony and then experimented with the lightbox, minimum focusing distances, lighting and all that jazz that us aspiring photographers like to talk endlessly about. After a few shots of cigarette packs and miniature cologne/perfume bottles we decided to bring out the main show. Using a pair of tweezers I fished the scorpion out and placed him in the lightbox. P and I noted with some interest that it seemed to be a bit ‘twitchy.’

So there I was taking pictures of the ‘dead’ scorpion moving his little claws around when it suddenly dawned on us that maybe he wasn’t really dead. For one thing he was starting to look mighty alert and aggressive, which is something dead animals rarely do. Loathe to end our photo session I suggested P take over with the camera and I would empty the jar and bring it back just in case the scorpion got more active.

Of course as luck would have it as soon as I walked out of the room the scorpion decided to leg it, obviously emboldened by P’s lack of experience with creepy crawlys. All I could hear as I hurriedly threw out the water in the jar was P’s rather frantic, slightly high pitched entreaties for me to come back as he was ill-equipped both physically and mentally to handle a scorpion. I re-entered the room to find that the scorpion had disappeared behind the TV stand that we had set up our mini studio on. 

A conundrum if I ever came across one. Especially because this was a baby scorpion and the prospect of spending the next year growing old with a scorpion wandering around my room was not a prospect that I was looking forward to. The only thing worse that I could think of at that moment was the possibility of growing old with the last ex. Spurred on by this cheerful thought I bade P spare himself and I put myself in harms way. After all I was the older and more experienced of us two. The first thing that I noticed behind the TV stand apart from a plethora of wires was an old towel that had made its way behind there. Figuring the best thing to do would be to remove that I cautiously fished it out. This was when I made a rather startling discovery.

It appears that scorpions can fly. A fact that I was far from happy to discover as it suddenly the scorpion flew out from the towel, missed my leg by a whisker and landed on the carpet. Needless to say I was shocked. But being the inherent woodsman that I am I quickly recovered, grabbed the jar and trapped the scorpion. P and I had another smoke, this time a bit shakily after all the excitement and debated how to go ahead killing the scorpion. 

I had read that nail remover imbued cotton wool works on insects but I searched high and low and couldn’t find any. We decided to compromise with the miniature perfume bottles and poured them out on cotton balls and placed them in the jar. I’m not sure who suffered more from that exercise though, us or the scorpion. He didn’t seem to like the perfume that we provided much and as P was leaving he was still spiritedly attacking the cotton wool. When I checked on him last he appeared to be dead so now I just have to extricate my sinuses and then pull him out for the photoshoot…maybe sometime this coming weekend.

Of course now every time I’m out on a site not only do I have to be wary of rattlesnakes (which at least rattle) and panthers (which are fairly large)…now I have to look out for flying scorpions. How one protects oneself against that I know not…

There she blows again… 

It may have been a side effect of waking up so early on a Saturday morning that a decidedly odd version of that infamous Sixpence none the Richer was playing in my head. It’s been awfully long time since I’ve woken up late on a Saturday in my own bed…and in fact it looks like it’s going to be awhile until I get to in the near future. The fact that I was hauling my congested self out of bed at six in the morning to see the mightiest animal that has ever existed on the planet may have also had something to do with the bizarre lyrics.

Actually early mornings are starting to grow on me, especially those that I wake up sans hangover and with an exciting day to come. The throaty growl outside indicated N had turned up in his Z, about 15 minutes early which was very un Sri Lankan off him. We scarfed down some McDees breakfast while I gave my camera equipment a final look see. 

Body…check

4 gig card (would prove to be horrendously slow)…check

1 gig card (high speed)…check

1 gig card (high speed)…at P’s…I reckon I should start renting him rental for that.

2 gig card (high speed)…forget…dammit

zip lock bag jury rig (necessary to keep spray off my lovely L lens)…check

batteries (useless performance for some reason)…check

And it was off to Santa Barbara to meet S, J and this chap whose name escapes me but who I’ve pegged in my head as the seasick chap (now I don’t have to explain that do I?). The Condor Express which was to take us out into the Channel and traverse Santa Cruz island was an impressive sight in the early morning light. I yawned, chewed on 10 altoids to keep my sore throat at bay and climbed on board. We all, being the chandyias that we are decided to go to the bow and stand in the full might of the wind as the Express tried to prove exactly how high speed it was.

It was exhilarating, if a bit chilly. The boat bounced through some moderate chop and the back kicking spray somehow miraculously missed us and drenched a rather surprised girl next to us to the bone. Laughing at her (discreetly) and sympathising with the seasick chap, who almost immediately felt dizzy and had to sit down, N and I enjoyed clearing our lungs and lowering our core body temperatures. After awhile we were both a bit cold and bored, but neither of course wanted to admit this to the other. So we stood and froze until finally the captain yelled out “there she blows.” 

Now if I was a blue whale and I heard that yelled out, I would most probably lift my skirts around my ankles and skoot (or whatever whales do) and with good cause because for the last couple of decades that cry was usually followed by a booming sound and a curious burning itch followed I’m going to guess by incomprehensible pain as the harpoon grenade explodes. It is somewhat scary that we puny humans almost managed to wipe out the largest living creature that has ever lived in the course of a few score years, from around 300,000 prewhaling to less than 5,000 now.

The first whale we saw was a pretty young though and thankfully must not have experienced the niceties of the whaling industry. The experience of watching a whale is almost like that of elephants in Yala. The whale breathes on the surface for awhile, entertaining us with its spouts and then with a graceful arch of its back and a goodbye wave of its tailfins goes down deep. We would then wait out the whale until he surfaces anywhere from a few 100 feet to half a mile yonder. The sort of like the safari jeeps in Yala the boat is gunned to where the whale is languishing and the cycle is repeated….well…maybe in hindsight it not very similar to watching elephants in Yala. 

The trip was a fascinating way to spend four hours, a bunch of Dall’s porpoises came by to check the boat out and left without posing for my camera and then we did a perambulation around the island of Santa Cruz. I’m not sure if anybody out there is as geeky as me, but I was quietly excited to see this island close up because of a book I loved as kid, the Island of the Blue Dolphins in which the main character was marooned on one of the Channel Islands. The book was actually based on a true story and looking at that island I could only think that being marooned on such a god forsaken place would suck…there was not a single tree to be seen. I personally like palm trees to be present if I get marooned on an island.

The trip back to shore was dramatic to say the least. We were initially joined by what seemed like a couple of hundred dolphins which took a break from lunching on some bait fish to come leaping over to play with the boat. I’ve decided to petition whoever is in charge of reincarnations that once I die, I want to be reborn as a dolphin. Seriously it just looks like they have so much fun. The speed at which they flew through and out of the water was breathtaking and with such little body movement. N and I couldn’t keep our cameras straight and I almost beamed a little kid in the head taking what seemed like a couple of hundred pictures of the dolphins. 

As if that wasn’t enough excitement there turned up not one, not two but three blue whales. And these guys were not juveniles. That was one of the few times that I have felt true awe in my life. The majesty was just unexplainable, all we could see was the grey backs as they came up to breath but the sheer size was inescapable. There were two males fighting over a female, the female leading and the males following (thus proving that even with a brain the size of a small car, common sense does not prevail). All three gave us a fascinating show with their habit of arching their backs excessively during their preliminary breaths and then on their penultimate breath heading down with a languorous wave of their huge flippers. It truly was a sight I felt privileged to see and that’s no hyperbole.

As we saw the last tail fin whip out of the water and the boat started heading back to shore I looked behind. Seasick chap had his head between his knees and seemed to have missed everything. Poor guy…and that silly song was still in my head.

Whoever said life is weird wasn’t kidding. Work’s currently bollockingly hard, I mean ulcers, stomach churning hard. But the weird thing is I like it, I like getting those billables  out (heck I even made it to the top three in the company in my fourth month) and I like learning about buildings and land use policy and geology and the other myriad of things I have to learn and apply to get my projects through. The life of a consultant is full of stress, but at least for the next couple of years should be interesting.

On a personal level life has taken an upshot as well. For one thing the photography is getting more and more interesting. What was an inkling of a fascination has turned into a full blown obsession. All I seem to think about now is aperture, f-stops, composition and the other bewilderments that play a part in trying to capture that perfect image, you know the one ‘where the whole world holds its breath.’

I’ve also rather encouragingly met a couple of buggers who are fun to hang out with, real chilled out island boys. The type that can drink, joke and take a joke (unlike these pesky, tootsie Yanks).  I still miss my boys, R and his jokerness, which is probably only matched by me, CP who is getting married and will be going down that road of housewifery, Evil, Bounty and PV. Not to mention the girl, who seems to be intent on mentioning coming down to SL every time I’m in touch with her. The lack of communication is more a survival mechanism for me than anything else. The fact that I really don’t have time to text at random hours, etc does in a way help my cause. My take on that is blind faith, if it’s meant to be circumstances and timing will make it happen. If not, well that’s just the way things were meant to be. 

Where my enjoyment really hits a clunker is with the family, speaking to the grandparents is something I try to avoid as well. Again that self preservation instinct kicks in, it’s just too tough to hear that they miss me, especially considering the fact they are old now and I don’t know when I’ll be home again. That I’m thousands of miles from the only family I’ve ever been close to, really close is something I try not to think about, just for the sake of my sanity. The plus point is that my relationship with the sibling is a lot better, which considering the growing pains we had a few years ago is nice.

That’s the trick actually. Everything has a plus point. I look at myself in the mirror and I don’t have to trick myself to be happy, I actually am. Life’s active, fun, I managed to somehow download the new Band of Horses album, there’s plenty of pictures to take, sites to see and friends to drink with. Yet at the same time I miss the grandparents trying to tell me how to live my life, R’s brotherhood,va certain pair of smouldering eyes and the looking glass light of home.

I guess this is what bittersweet is.

Mamme being taken for a walk (from here)

 I’m leaving the floor open to anyone who can come up with a funny caption. The funniest one gets a bottle of Old Reserve on me in Lanka in Dec ‘08. Alternatively if you come over here  I’ll take you to Disneyland and drink a bottle of my latest addiction with you (I would offer a bottle but at nearly $30 a bottle, I need some as well).

My humble contribution:

 Its like the buffalo leading the buffalo (rather obvious play on the blind leading the blind)

Politicians eating out (from here)

That’s what I think every time I read about the grinning fool and his idiot brigade of 200 munchkins wandering around China, New York and LA wasting our money, or when I read about how the nitwit with anger management problems is waltzing around Colombo in fine Italian sports cars.

Of course as it turns out its not only the Lankan government that feels like the public’s money is there to fiddle away with whenever they feel like it. It turns out the US Feds are just as bad, wasting a spectacular $146 million (that’s a gadjillion, trillion rupees at tomorrow’s exchange rate as I predict it) on premium business class travel. This is where my 30% Fed tax goes!!? Fucking business class tickets for a bunch of nonces? To think I’ve started to despise local governments (after dealing with them day in and out) now I despise the Feds as well. I have to save up for yonks for this beauty of a lens so some prick at the Pentagon can get champagne on his flight!

Fucking wankers.