Don

Children and Farms

2008-11-23T19:13:00.000-08:00

It’s really amazing how beautiful the Bayonnais Valley is. It’s lush and filled with banana trees, rice fields, and rows of sorghum blowing in the wind. There’s always water gurgling down the irrigation canals (at least during the wet season). The people are beautiful and always quick with a smile. Even the sternest of face, which is quite uncommon, can be turned with a quick “Bonswa”.

Of course, that is not to say that life is easy for the people of Bayonnais. Even though the valley is covered with crops, and there are three growing seasons a year, there is still not enough arable land to feed everyone. This problem gets even worse when you have, as they did 2 months ago, 3 hurricanes in a row that wipe out crops, destroy houses, kill people, and wash away what little belongings people have. The loss of crops is particularly devastating because that can mean that the farmer has no seed left with which to plant crops for the next season. The floods accompanying a hurricane, or even heavy rainfall can wash out the unpaved roads and bridges, cutting the community off from the rest of the world (as happened in September of this year).

This means that the nearby city of Gonaives is usually much better off than the valley, although this is not currently true. While the hurricanes caused great devastation in the valley, things turned out much worse in Gonaives. The city is in a basin on the ocean, and all of the rivers in the nearby mountains drain directly towards the city. This meant that, in the aftermath of the 3 recent hurricanes, Gonaives was completely flooded, with mud up to 10 feet high in places. This has completely shut down the city, including all of it’s services, such as electricity, water, and the local hospital, which apparently looks like a bomb hit it. Even though Bayonnais was damaged significantly in the floods, the valley has rebounded: new crops are planted, the road has been repaired, and things are more or less back to normal.

Besides the rich cropland and abundant water, Bayonnais’ biggest asset is it’s social strength. It is a small community, where everyone knows everyone else, and this leaves the community significantly happier and safer than in places like Port au Prince, which has more food and material wealth. There are no strangers in the valley, and if a new person walks in, they will quickly be asked why they have come. Since there is not much past the valley, they will probably either be here to sell goods in the marketplace or visit a friend or relative, in which case they will be quided to the right place. The people here don’t show any of the guarded wariness of the people in Port au Prince, or even in the small towns along Route 1 down the coast.

There is no need for a hi-tech communications system, since news flows quickly here. For instance, if Pastor Actionelle announces something in church, the whole valley will be aware of it in a day or two. One day when we where here, it rained in the morning and school was cancelled because the teachers couldn’t make it in from the city of Gonaives. When we asked how the children would know if school was cancelled or not, they didn’t really understand the question. After all, growing up in a farming valley, the children would simply know if they would be able to safely walk the 2 or more kilometers to the school. While students in America hope and pray for a snow day, I think the difference here is that the children here feel very privileged to be able to attend school, often as the first in their family.

My first experience with the kids in the valley was when I sat down on the front porch of the guest dorm at the school the first day. I quickly had several small children snuggled up to my sides, with the older children seated nearby, all eager for a glimpse of the newest strange blanc to visit their valley. The small children stroked my arm hair, and pointed at my earrings and tattoos, all rareties in the valley, while the older ones asked “What is your name?”, a refrain that would quickly become all too common. It was also very difficult to avoid slipping into the formal English that they had learned in school when replying that my name is Don, asking them “What is your name?”, instead of the more natural “What’s your name?

If you stop anywhere for long, you will quickly gather a crowd of interested children, the smallest of whom will reach up to hold your hand as you walk along. There is actually quite a bit of competition for the hand-holding, with the rule seeming to be that first come is first served, for the duration of the trip. That afternoon when we went to visit the newly constructed granary, we all walked with 3 or 4 children in hand, and several more crowded around; our own personal entourages.

The young girls seemed particularly interested in my earrings, since while many of them had their ears pierced, they rarely seemed to have earrings to wear. Quite a few simply had loops of string through their ears, while many just left them empty.

Aside from learning your name, the biggest thing that the children wanted was to be photographed. If you even showed the tiniest bit of camera, they would gather around you crying “foto, foto”. It was also almost impossible to get a picture of a single child in the school campus, because as soon as they saw that you were taking pictures, children would come running to make sure that they were in the photo, so a shot of a single child quickly became a group photo of between 6 and 12. After the photo, an even larger crowd would gather to look at it on the camera, with each child pointing in turn and saying “Moi” excitedly. Given that there are not a lot of mirrors in the village of Cathor, this may have been some of the few times they saw themselves. They all loved to pose, the boys with a googly-eyed hand sign, or simply the classic claw hands. The girls loved to squat down on the ground for their pose, or stand with jutting hips and arms akimbo.

One of the other engineers from San Francisco, Blake, had learned the national dance of the year the previous year, called Gai Pai, and would dance for the children. They loved it and instantly there’d be a throng of children twisting and spinning around him. Walking outside the campus, having heard of the Gai Pai’ing blanc, children would come up and ask me to Gai Pai, whereupon I would usually point over at Blake, not being as advanced in the local dance styles as he was. Several of us became known for several things; me for speaking Spanish, Blake for the Gai Pai, and Terry, our drag racing battery expert from North Carolina, for the balloons, chiclets, and recorders (fifa) that he handed out, and the children would come up to us hoping that we were the one they had heard about, causing numerous cases of mistaken identity.

Consistently, the one thing everyone can agree about in Bayonnais is that the children are the highlight of the trip, with their bright faces, beautiful smiles, and incredibly friendly demeanor. The adults are also among the friendliest people I’ve met, but they don’t walk down the paths holding your hand. Some might argue that we need to help the people of Bayonnais move towards a more sustainable future so that they’re not dependent on outside help, which is an excellent goal. However, these people fail to take into account the child cuteness and general friendliness trade imbalance between the US and Bayonnais. Everyone who comes there is glad to be there and tries to find excuses to come visit as often as they can so they can enjoy the cute child mobs and the relaxed atmosphere of the village of Cathor.

Haiti

2008-11-19T21:07:00.000-08:00

This week I travelled down to Haiti to volunteer with Engineers Without Borders at a local school. The school is located in the Bayonnais Valley, near Gonaives. It's about a 4 hour drive from the nearest airport (Gonaives is completely flooded after the recent hurricanes), and the last hour or so is up a winding unpaved mountain road that crosses several rivers. The bus drives through 2 rivers, and then finally crosses a bridge that EWB (Engineers Without Borders) built.

There is no electricity, sewage, or paved roads in the Bayonnais Valley. There is an irrigation system that provides pretty clean water from a local mountain spring, but that's about it.

The school and church was founded in 1993 by Actionelle Fleurisma and others, and has been helped for the last decade or so by the South Mecklenberg Presbyterian Church (SMPC) from North Carolina, along with several other churches. Amilore, one of the people that helps run the school told me that when Actionelle drove the first school bus into the valley, everyone stopped what they were doing to watch the amazing sight. They couldn't believe it when the school actually opened, and they were really blown away when SMPC flew a helicopter with emergency food into the valley after Hurricane Gustav this year. They had seen helicopters passing overhead before, but no one ever expected one to land in the valley.

Engineers Without Borders installed a solar system at the school to power reading lights for the students and a computer system for the school administrators.

We came down to do some repair work on the system, as well as survey work for some repairs on the road to the bridge and soil tests for the septic system for the new hospital.

OFCB (Organisation de la Force Chretienne des Bayonnais), which is the Haitian group that runs the school and church (Orginizacion Force Chritian de Bayonnais), has been sending students away to college to come back and help in the valley. They already have several students who've returned, and their first nurses and doctor are about to come back. EWB is planning the hospital/clinic building, which is very exciting. OFCB has the land, but it's up to us to figure out how to create a hospital in the middle of an area with no electricity, sewage, or real running water. Which, as I'm sure you can guess, is kind of difficult.

But we're engineers, so we like that.

It's been really amazing coming here to the valley. It's a beautiful place, and the people here are very friendly and kind. It's a small community, so everyone knows everyone else, and they all know who we are and why we've come. Within a day or two, people who'd never even seen my face were calling out my name and trying to talk to me in spanish, since they'd heard through the grapevine that I speak it. Haitians mostly speak Creole (Kreyol) and French, although the students also speak English, and some people speak Spanish so they can go work in the Dominican Republic.

Every where you walk, people greet you with a friendly Bonjour or Bonswa (same in French and Creole) and a really big smile. Of course, some kids do want candy or balloons or recorder flutes, or whatever it is that someone gave away during their visit, but mostly they just want to know your name.

It's really been a joy helping out down here, and I only wish I had more time to do it.

Which leads me to my next point. I've been up and working since 8 am, and now it's after midnight. Time for me to finish this post, shower, and go to bed.

Freedom in Tibet

2008-09-05T18:09:00.000-07:00

My friend Tom just made a nice Free Tibet music video based on his filming during the Tibetan Olympic protests. Check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fRa2Jery6k

Here are some of my thoughts on a free Tibet:

It's sad how quickly worldwide attention has fallen away from the Tibetan cause after the Olympics.

After having lived in China for a year, I personally think the only way to actually achieve anything is to aim for cultural and religious autonomy as a special cultural zone still within the chinese borders. It's not what everyone wants, but I don't think a free tibet is possible within the next 50-100 years, whereas a special cultural zone (similar to the special economic zones already in place in China) is actually feasible.

Politics and Government

2008-02-05T16:42:00.001-08:00

As I sit here wondering who I'm going to vote for today, some thoughts cross my mind.

If people like Obama say "My religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman", then shouldn't marriage be sanctified by the church, not the state? Due to the separation of church and state, the state should ratify civil unions, and individual churches should ratify marriages, which would leave churches free to choose if they want to do gay marriages or not.

Wouldn’t that solve the problem?

Also, I think California's proposition process should be reformed by requiring that signature gatherers be unpaid, which would hopefully put an end to big companies paying for signatures to put some junk on the ballot and return it to grassroots movements.

Finally, I hate it that smokers tend to leave cigarette butts on the ground everywhere. While I don't necessarily want to outlaw smoking, I think it would be interesting if we had a law that forbade people from smoking anywhere there were cigarette butts on the ground, even if they weren't theirs. It might at least get people to pick up after themselves.

Now, off to the polls.

Riding across India

2007-12-20T20:33:00.001-08:00

Well, I'm about to leave on what promises to be a pretty insane trip. A bunch of my friends are running in a charity auto-rickshaw rally (tuk-tuks) across India, and I'm going to go with them and ride an Enfield Bullet. We've raised a bunch of money to support Mercy Corps in some of their India projects and we're going from the south in Cochi (about 200 miles from the bottom) to Kathmandu in Nepal. No route other than that.

Wish us luck.

You can see more about it on the web page and our blog.

We are Crazed Weasels (Max, Don, Rachel, Matt) and the QuakeCityMadCaps (Annie, Dain, Adam).

Steampunk Treehouse

2007-09-10T23:59:00.000-07:00

I just got back from Burning Man. It was an amazing experience, because this was the first year I participated in creating a large-scale sculpture. My high-school buddy Max pulled in on this project, and I am eternally grateful. Together with about 40 other people, we built a 30 foot steel tree with a Victorian treehouse in it and various steam whistles and effects.

Sean Orlando is the man with the vision, and he brought everyone together. One of the most amazing things about this project is that even though there were so many people involved, and the project was of such a large scale, there was basically no drama. People bought into Sean's vision, pitched in, and made things happen. Things just got done. A lot of the other large-scale projects had problems with budget, or volunteers, or just getting things done in time, but not the treehouse.

I didn't really do anything artistic on the project; I just did basic metal fabrication. I worked on the frame for the trunk, the skin on the trunk, the roof, and the branches. I really learned a lot about working with metal on this project. Some of the things I learned are:

One of the hardest things about welding is getting everything in the right place.

The other hard thing is the positions you have to get into to properly weld something.

Make it fit right.

I'm a little bit regretful that I didn't step up to own some tiny piece of art in the tree and make it my own, but not that regretful. I just showed up and did what needed to be done to get the tree finished in time, and I had a blast doing it.

I'm really excited to do more art, and more metal fabrication. I'm also really grateful to have met the other steampunks in the crew. It's a really amazing group of people and I'm just glad to be able to spend time with them.

You can see more about the treehouse at http://www.steamtreehouse.com/ or at http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=steampunk+treehouse

Micro-loans with Kiva.org

2007-05-02T23:57:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking lately how I want to do more to help the world. Since I love living abroad and studying other languages, I've been thinking about moving somewhere, probably Southeast Asia, for a while and trying to start some kind of program to help people. One of the things that seems to make a lot of sense is micro-credit. This is where you loan small amounts of money to poor people who don't normally have access to credit. They can then use this money to start a small business, fix their home, or any number of things. Often, poor people are involved in production of some product or food item, but they have to borrow money from local moneylenders to buy the raw materials they need. The moneylenders often charge ridiculous interest rates of 100% or more. This ensures that they will recieve barely any money back from their efforts, since most of the profit will go to the moneylender. By lending to people at a normal interest rate, these people can take control of their lives.

Kiva.org is a site I just found out about that allows people to be micro-lenders. Local partners find people who need micro-loans and post profiles of them and their businesses. People can view these profiles online and loan money to them. When enough people have loaned money to supply the full amount needed, Kiva sends the money to the local partner, who disburses it to the recipient and collects payments every month. They also send out occasional updates so you can track how the businesses are doing. Kiva tends to loan out larger amounts than a lot of micro-credit organizations, probably because it's not worth it for the partner organizations to post profiles for people who only need small amounts.

I'm really interested to see how this works out, as this is right inline with what I want to do, so I've donated some money to see how it goes. You can see my Kiva profile at http://www.kiva.org/lender/donh.

Big Wheel Racing

2007-04-08T21:15:00.000-07:00

I now have a new favorite San Francisco event that suits me to a tee. I just took part in the 7th annual Bring Your Own Big Wheel race down Lombard street (the twisty, curvy, touristy section) on Easter Sunday. It was amazing. There were about 150 big wheel racers, many in excellent costumes, and about another 250 friends and tourists watching the shennanigans. Some of my favorite costumes included Beaker from the muppets (x2), Lego man, Nun for you, and a perennial favorite - a gorilla. I was a little bit costumed out from the Hare-itics Ball the previous night, so I just wore bunny ears with camo pants and a sweatshirt for protection. I still managed to scrape myself up pretty well, and my ankles weren't too well-suited for controlling the slide down the street. The only rules to the event were no rubber wheels. All plastic, baby.

The races were a little bit disorganized, since they jumped from around 30 racers for the last 6 years to 150 this year, but it still worked out. The racers were packed 10 deep at the start. I got there late, so I missed the first race, but this worked out well for me for the second race. I lined up next to Nun for You on the starting line and waited for all the racers to climb up the hill from the bottom. And waited, and waited, and waited. We couldn't believe how many racers kept coming up past us. It was insane.

For my first race, I was gridded on the front row, near the inside. This turned out to be a pretty decent spot, because almost everyone crashed going into the first corner, and every subsequent corner. Big Wheels are not known for their handling abilities, especially on a steep, winding brick road (27% grade), and this meant that most people failed to correctly negotiate the corners. They'd slide past the corner and into the wall, whereupon everyone behind them would crash into the back of them and create a huge pile-up. Thankfully, as a racer I was able to cut tight on the inside of the corner and shoot past this tragedy, gaining innumerable positions. It seemed like the same thing happened every corner, and I was able to get by 4-6 racers per corner. With 8 corners on the street, that's a lot of moving up. After the last corner, I saw one racer dissapear into the crowd across the finish line, and then I was past. After a quick spin to a halt, plus intentional roll-over for the crowd, I looked around and couldn't see any other racers besides the one who finished in front of me. There was no one keeping score, so I could easily be wrong on this, but I think I finished second in that race. Could have been as far back as 5th, though. It was a little chaotic and disorganized.

For the next couple of races, they let people go in waves, sending the first four rows down the hill and letting the next four rows run their own race. This was good, because there's no way you could be competitive starting in row 8 behind a massive pile-up of Big Wheels. The race track was constantly littered with stacks of Big Wheels, with axles, wheels, and seat backs often sliding down the course separated from their racer.

Afterwards, some of the races barrelled down the rest of Lombard to Columbus Ave, which was crazy. It's one thing to go down a steep, curvy street, and it's quite another to bomb straight down a hill, trying not to get hit by the spinning pedals of death right near your knees. Other spectators/racers blocked traffic from the side street so we could race all the way down uninterrupted. The speeds got so high that I saw one guy at the end try to stop by putting his feet down, but his front wheel (girly tricycle with 3 big plastic spokes) exploded into a million pieces as the strain was too much for the spokes. He was okay, though.

Here are some links to photos from the event:

start (me on the far left): http://www.flickr.com/photos/troymccluresf/452639091/
Nun for you and I about to pass a spun out racer: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mark_phillips/451856340/
Nun for you and Tigger: http://www.flickr.com/photos/troymccluresf/452603034/
Article + photo:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2007/04/09/BAGNLP54EC1.DTL&o=1
Great action shot: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimgoldstein/452183155/
Crash 'n burn: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremybrooks/452002611/in/pool-byobw/
Luigi crash: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremybrooks/451993324/in/pool-byobw/
Crash victim: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gmh/451961884/in/pool-byobw/
Turn 2: http://www.flickr.com/photos/yorkie/451906594/in/pool-byobw/
Lego Head and friends: http://www.jmg-galleries.com/blog_images/byobw2007_web/
The organizers (me just to the left of the block head): http://www.flickr.com/photos/troymccluresf/452637843/

They also published a photo of me coming into turn 3 in the SF and Peninsula Examiners.

Oakland

2007-02-22T23:59:00.000-08:00

I'm house sitting for a friend in Oakland right now. Got here Wednesday night. Thursday night went to drive over to Eva and Tim's house in Berkeley. When I started up my truck it sounded like a hot rod! I looked under the truck and a 3 foot section of my exhaust was missing! They stole my catalytic converter! WTF? I was completely flabbergasted and flummoxed, to name a few things that start with F.

I drove my truck over to a safer neighborhood in case they wanted to steal the gate from my truck bed or something. The truck was so loud it was setting off car alarms!

The next morning I called up some muffler shops and found out that this was pretty common in Oakland. Apparently there are some people going around chopping the catalytic converters off of late-model Toyota pickup trucks (probably 4x4 so they're easy to get under). I guess they sell them to metal recyclers for the platinum, etc... that's in them. The guy at Ron's Berkeley Muffler Shop (great place, I'd recommend them) said that mine was the 3rd catalytic converter theft he'd seen that day! Apparently they only steal the old ones (more recycleable metal in them?) so I'm not likely to be a repeat victim (knock on wood). Also, the newer trucks have the converter above a frame member, so they're harder to get out. Doesn't help me, though.

They chopped off the mounting bolts and all that factory goodness, so it would have been like $1200 to replace everything to factory specs! Thankfully they could just throw in a universal catalytic converter and weld it into place for $200. They even gave me the pity discount for having it stolen in the first place. They had a sign in the bathroom listing the 9 common reasons why catalytic converters go bad, but I guess they forgot the most common East Bay reason. On the plus side, there's a good BBQ place across the street. Super nice people, and great ribs. Another recomendation.

At least I got a good story out of it. :(

Pillow Fight Club

2007-02-14T23:10:00.000-08:00

On Valentine's Day this year there was a huge flash-mob pillow fight at the Ferry Building in San Francisco. Pillow Fight Club. All you could hope for, and more. Remember to bring a handkerchief to put around your mouth and nose so you don't choke on all the feathers!

http://www.pillowfight.info/

There were over 1000 people there going crazy with the pillows. I didn't know about it until the day of, but thankfully I ran into a friend there who loaned me his pillow (thanks Adam!). By the end of it, though, people felt that somehow their pillows were not worth taking home again so they were just leaving them there or giving them to other people to use. The fight went on for over an hour with little kids and big kids alike giving it their all (although the little kids were a bit overwhelmed by the scale of the thing).

I'll upload a photo of this later.

Dreams

2006-09-26T19:59:00.000-07:00

I had a dream the other night that we were driving in two cars through the woods, when all of a sudden some bears attacked us. I think they were attracted by this guy wearing a silver sequined full-body suit who looked like he was a performer in a circus. Somehow we escaped the bears and then we were home. All of a sudden there's a knock on the door, and someone lets in a giant panda. Only, it's not a giant panda, it's a bear dressed in a panda suit. Somehow I'm the only one to realize this, so I run over and push him out of the room, saying "No bears, no bears, no bears". Everything seems to be fine, but then a pair of bears come into the room carrying a couch, as if they're helping to move it into another room. Once again, no one seems to realize that this is solely a trick so that the bears can get inside the house and attack us, and I have to push them out of the house to protect everyone.

Burning Man

2006-09-05T20:04:00.000-07:00

I just recently got back from Burning Man, and it was a blast. There was so much great art out there. It was really cool to see how many different kinds of installations people can make.

I think my favorite part of Burning Man is getting ready. I helped out making the Conexus Cathedral. They had work parties over in a warehouse in Oakland where I learned how to weld. We built 15 foot long arches for the flying buttresses out of rebar. They were then covered with industrial shrink wrap for a much-more-proffesional-than-they-really-were look.

Welding is actually ridiculously easy, at least just making something that will stick together, rather than something that will look nice. Since I learned how to weld, I decided to make some art bicycles for the playa as well.

The first was what was supposed to be a simple chopper bmx bike, although it took a few revisions before it was rideable. My friend Max let me work at his shop, and I chopped the front fork and added 2 feet of steel to it. Unfortunately, this put the seat behind the rear axle, so it basically fell over backwards anytime you pedaled hard. We then chopped and flipped the headstock, making the forks stick out super far, but then when you rode it it just collapsed to the side. Finally we had to cut the frame and add some extensions to put the handlebars up high enough for the forks to work while still keeping the seat in front of the rear axle. I got quite a few comments on this bike on the playa.

The second bike, however, was much more popular. I found a bmx frame on the sidewalk, badly abused, and decided to resurrect it by combining it with a cheap mountain bike I had lying around. I took of the pedals and chain from the bmx so the rear wheel spun free, and then attached the front fork of the mountain bike to the rear wheel of the bmx. I then pulled the bmx bike front wheel as high as it would go into wheelie position and welded it there (along with welding the handlebars solid). You then sat on the mountain bike seat and steered using the bmx handlebars. The Perma-wheelie™ bike got compliments from about every 5th person. It was especially fun to see at night because only the bmx bike was lit up.

You can see photos of both bikes here at our camp: bikes!

I had so much fun working on the cathedral and building these bikes that I'm hoping to keep building stuff outside of Burning Man season. Even though I get to be creative at work, it's nice to be able to build a fun, physical, artsy thing sometimes.

Look for a baby-godzilla t-shirt, and maybe some rebar garden art and indoor el-wire stuff.

Beijing Punk / Underground Scene

2006-06-23T14:33:00.000-07:00

I just watched a great documentary last night about the Beijing underground music scene. It's called Post Revolutionary Era by Zhang Yang and produced by Lola.

It's a little bit rough, which is only to be expected given the level of technology available in Beijing (at least to the average person), but it paints a vivid picture of the scene. When I visited my friend Rafi in Beijing sometime around '99, we hung out with some local punks, and this movie really seemed true to their lives. It also gave me some new insight into their world, however.

The lengths they go to for their music are pretty extreme. They've all moved to Beijing to follow their dreams, and they just barely scrape by while practicing and playing every day. Many of them rent apartments in a village on the outskirts of Beijing called Shu Cun (树村), which means Tree Village. This is a farming community that has opened it's doors the underground musicians, many of whom now rent apartments there. An entire band of 4 or 5 people will rent an apartment with several rooms, one of which they convert into a practice room. They're so poor that they can only afford about 200 yuan per month for rent, which is around $25. In fact, they're almost always late on rent, even up to 6 months late! One group mentioned that they couldn't afford to use their makeshift coal heater in the winter because it cost them up to 100 yuan ($12.50) per month for coal (at 1.8 yuan per brick) and didn't even heat them.

Chinese water is so polluted that even the locals can't drink it (unlike Mexico, where only the tourists get sick). All the apartment buildings I visited in China had a hot water boiler on the first floor, where everyone would fill up their thermoses with purified water. These guys were drinking water straight out of the tap even though it made them sick, just because it was too hot during practice in the summer.

One artist mentioned that he had lost 50 yuan ($7) once, and that was his entire monthly budget for food. This is especially shocking since a bowl of noodles on the street costs about 5 yuan, and dinner costs 10-15 yuan. When a band plays a gig, they'll often get about 25 yuan per person, which they usually blow on dinner and a couple of beers afterwards.

In spite of all their hardships, none of them were complaining. They were simply explaining their situation to the interviewer. No matter how hard their life was, they were free to follow their dreams, which is more than their parents had.

I highly recommend this film if you can get a chance to see it, which is unlikely given that it took a couple of months for the Yerba Buena Film Society to get a DVD of it, and that DVD was missing the last 45 seconds! The music was great, at it was really interesting to see the different directions all the bands go in.

Since mainstream Chinese culture is so monolithic musically (traditional, and pop), anyone who's doing something different is pretty much underground by default. There's a lot more mixing between styles than you'd probably see here. Punks and Rockers don't usually hang out that much in the US, but when I was visiting the punks in Beijing, they were hanging out after the show with Ciu Jian, China's Godfather of Rock, a hugely popular national rocker. Even though he is a commercial success, he hasn't been able to play much in Beijing because of government censorship of his music, although that may be changing slightly as he played his first official concert in Beijing in a decade in late 2005.

It was really inspiring to see the verve with which everyone pursued their music in spite of the challenges of extreme poverty and living in a Communist society.

Trip to Spain and Morocco

2006-03-21T20:26:00.000-08:00

I just got back from a week and a half trip to Morocco, only to go straight to work for 2 days, and then race motorcycles for 2 days. You'd think I'd give myself some time to get over jet-lag, but ... well, it was all worth it.

Spain was great. We travelled along the Southern coast of Spain in Andalucia, which has a very heavy Moorish (Islamic) influence. The architecture is simply amazing. The detail work on the Alhambra in Granada is mind-boggling. It seems like every square inch of the palace is covered in intricate Arabic calligraphy praising Allah. Since Islam in general looks down on depictions of humans and animals, the decorations are entirely calligraphy and geometric designs, which are quite beautiful to look at.

My favorite part about Spain, however, was the language. After having spent so much time studying Chinese and Japanese with so little to show for it, it was a pleasure to be in a foreign country where I could actually read! Even though I haven't studied Spanish for almost 15 years, I was still able to follow the political articles in the local newspaper, El Pais. While Japanese is much easier to read than Chinese, I can still barely make out signs on the street, much less a newspaper article. The vocabulary is just too daunting. Of course, since Spanish and English are so closely related, it makes things a lot easier.

After Spain, we took the ferry from near Gibraltar to Tangiers, and then hopped on an overnight train down to Marrakesh. Marrakesh has a huge medieval market place which is simply astonishing. You can buy anything you want there, assuming you can haggle well enough for it.

Djema el-fna and the market area surrounding it looks exactly like a scene from Tattoine in Star Wars. Reddish-mud covered buildings with narrow winding alleyways, and all of the older generation wear full length robes with pointed hoods (djellaba), just like Obi-wan. We kept turning corners only to run into various wizened old men in brown robes who would have been perfect for any of the Jedi parts. I picked one up for myself because they are simply too amazing. You can't buy anything like that in the States.

The main square is teeming with performers and storytellers, as well as people selling all sorts of things. Many of the acts are purely for tourists, but the majority of the action is aimed towards the locals, since few tourists have much hope of understanding the Moroccan Arabic stories being told. At night the square really comes alive as the air cools down and people sit down to eat at the market stalls. It's a very vibrant place.

Even though it's a bargaining based marketplace, the locals are incredibly friendly and polite. While I did have one or two vendors go overboard trying to sell me something, most simply smiled and told me "Buy or no buy, it doesn't matter". They also give the Cantonese shopkeepers in San Francisco's Chinatown a run for their money in terms of linguistic skill. Since most of the tourists are from Europe and Morocco was part of the French empire, everyone speaks French, but many also speak Spanish and English quite well. Most of the tourist menus were in French only, so my limited understanding of French based on a 2 week journey to France over 15 years ago got quite a workout.

The heat was out of this world, especially since it was only winter, and it gets much much worse in the summer. I can't imagine travelling there during the hot season. Even with the local siesta, I don't think I'd be able to do much of anything during the day.

On the way back, we stopped off for a couple of hours in Tangiers, which had been described to us as the Tijuana of Africa. Thankfully, we found that it wasn't nearly that bad, although we were travelling before lunch, and in the low season.

Both Morocco and Spain were great places to visit, and Spain really rekindled my interest in Spanish.

My first tattoo

2005-07-08T00:45:00.000-07:00

I just got back from the shop, and I love my new tattoo. It turned out different than I had imagined, but that's why Paul is the artist, and I'm the bill paying guy. It turned out really crisp and clean, with nice bold lines. I'm happy.

When I first got there it took us a while to get on the same page about the design. I showed him a bunch of designs from the book I mentioned earlier (probably too many different designs), as well as the sketch I had made earlier from one of my favorite designs in the book. I also showed him the photos of negative tribal tattoos I had found on the web. He got started drawing the dragons based on my sketch. The first round was fairly western style tribal dragons, which wasn't really what I wanted. Then I showed him a few of the pages that I really liked, and he started drawing freehand based on those. That worked a lot better. After we were finally talking about the same thing, it still took a while until Paul could really flow with the kind of design I wanted.

Once he was done with that, we made a couple of minor changes in order to keep things fairly traditional with the book. I kind of felt like I was being super picky through this whole process and just being a pain in the ass, as I am wont to do. I thought he didn't like me and for a second I wondered if I should just forget about the deposit and try to find someone else. But then the design started to look like what I had in mind, so we were good again. I guess that's just part of the design process.

Then we photocopied the design to the right size and taped it up to my shoulder to see how it would look, figure out what angle it should be at, etc... I had wanted to do the tattoo in a negative style with shading on the outside of an empty design, but after seeing the design on my shoulder, it was pretty obvious that it should be a traditional piece of blackwork. Time to just go with the flow, I guess.

After a quick dinner break, he mimeographed the design and started to put it on my arm. It's amazing how much ink comes off the back of a mimeographed piece of paper. I wonder what all the old teachers would think if they knew how much a part of modern tattooing mimeographs have become. Once he started tattooing, I couldn't believe how much it hurt. At first it was just a really annoying pain, but then it turned into this scraping burning sensation that just sucked. I quickly realized I don't have that high of a tolerance for pain. I remember thinking it's going to be a long while before I get another tattoo. I'll definitely need some time to forget how painful tattooing is. Of course, as I sit here typing this, I can already barely remember how painful it was. I'll probably have forgotten completely by tomorrow. I'm definitely glad I got the tattoo, though. It's a gorgeous piece of art. Paul is really talented.

Since Paul broke his back skiing a year and a half ago, he could only sit for about 30 minutes before he had to take a break and do some PT exercises. I was glad for the break, since I'm a wuss. I've never had a problem with needles before. Getting a shot at the doctor's was a piece of cake, but this is more like getting a shot for a solid 2 hours. Not nearly as much fun.

After getting there at 5 pm, I was finally out the shop door at about 11 pm. 2 hours of sketching and design, and then 2 hours of tattooing plus about an hour of breaks. Not bad for a work of art. Would I do it again? We'll see. Am I happy I did it? Definitely. No regrets.

My last pre-tat day

2005-07-07T15:57:00.000-07:00

I'm about to go in to get my first tattoo done, and I have to admit I'm a little bit nervous. I've wanted a tattoo forever, but I've never found anything that's right for me.

Then, a couple of years ago I went traveling in the rain forest in Borneo with my friend Andy Marshall and found my design. Andy was studying primate ecology with an eye towards conservation in the Gunung Palung Rainforest in Southwest Borneo (check out the Gunung Palung website to see some amazing rainforest pictures). One of his friends was doing work to catalog and preserve the traditional Dayak weaving, and she had a copy of a book on Iban design (the Iban are a group of Dayak head-hunters who live in Kalimantan, or Borneo) that hit me right away as what I wanted. Since there was no place to buy the book there, we had to get it photocopied, which, thankfully, is not something they have a problem doing in that part of the world. In case anyone is interested, the book is called Basic Iban Design, and it was written by Augustine Anggat Ganjing. The next step, of course, being as lazy as I am, was to let the book sit on my desk for a couple of years until the idea had really matured for me.

I traced a design that I kind of like out of the book, and I'm going to take it down to the artist today. I want something that fits in with the traditional design style and belief system, while still being unique to me. I think it's important to try to preserve and build off of the cultures that are in danger of being lost today. Along that line, I wanted to find someone who could do a hand-tapped tattoo for me, which is how the Dayak tattoos are traditionally done. Japanese tattoos are also traditionally done by hand, but they put the needles on the end of a stick and poke, whereas the Dayaks put the needles perpendicular to the end of a stick, and hit that stick with another stick, hence the tapping. I asked around at a lot of tattoo places before finding the right artist. When asked about tribal tattoos, most artists said that they would do it, but you could tell they didn't have their hearts in that style because of how trendy it has become.

Finally I talked to Paul Taylor from Sacred Rose Tattoo and he loves tribal tattoos and blackwork, and specializes in hand-tapping Indonesian tribal designs. Unfortunately, he broke his back in a skiing accident a year or two ago, and has been unable to do hand-tapped designs until recently. I was really excited to have him do a hand-tapped design on me because I want to support artists who are helping to preserve the traditional tattooing culture. We planned on doing a hand-tapped design, even though a lot of my friends warned against it because of the pain involved, but he tried to do one last month and it really screwed up his back. So, that's out. Convincing someone to do a tattoo in such a way that it will cause them serious pain seems like a really lame way to get a tattoo.

I think that actually works out in my favor, though, because a little while ago I saw a couple of negative tribal designs that I really liked, and I was torn between the hand-tapped style and the negative style (shoulder and sleeve). The negative tattoo style is where the actual design of the tattoo is outlined but left blank, and the outside is shaded to set off the design. So, I'm just going to go with the flow, and the way fate seems to be pushing me, and get a negative Dayak tribal design on my shoulder.

As currently planned, it's going to be a semi-abstract circular double dragon design. I want to make sure that, while done in a modern negative style, the design doesn't break any Dayak tattooing rules. For instance, dragons are very powerful and can be dangerous, so they should be tattooed in pairs so they have a playmate and with food in front of them so they don't get hungry and cantankerous. Even though it's my design, I want to respect the tradition that it came from.

I was also originally planning to come back from Japan, have a consultation, and then get the tattoo done, but Paul's grandfather passed away last week, so we have to skip the consultation step. I'm a little bit concerned about creating the design and getting it done right away. I really want to get the right design, since it's going to be on my shoulder for the rest of my life. Normally I like to think about things for a while and make sure they're exactly what I want, but that's part of the reason why it's taken me between 3 and 10 years to even get started on this tattoo.

Paul explained to me that he doesn't feel consultations are necessary on tribal tattoos, since he's been doing them for 14 years and they just flow right out of him. If they are so complicated that they need a separate consultation, then they aren't really appropriate tribal tattoos, as they are supposed to be simple and bold. Like I said, I'm a little bit nervous, since a tattoo is forever, but I'm going to try to put my faith in the artist and see what happens.

I'm just glad to finally get started on this. I keep looking at my naked shoulder and wondering what it will look like in a couple of hours, but I can't picture it. I've been waiting for this for a really long time, and it seems like a nice 30th birthday present to myself. Happy birthday to me!