Sigh. What a low! I've been looking forward to Friday all week, and now that its is here I'm ready to just go home. To do standard transmission type classes: ask a question, look at tired sleepy faces, listen to the silence of bored children, grudge it out and go home.
I had a really good day too...I woke up, just predawn, and watched the sunrise. I had really good Oatmeal (hmm I sound like a bit of a hippie...) went to yoga (a lot like a hippie). I exchange English lessons for yoga lessons and i always enjoy them. But today especially so, my yoga teacher bought me a Korean vocabulary book. So now we have a real language exchange going. It was a lot of fun. Yoga was great. That's i suppose when things started to get noisy.
The whole way home it was like there were just people everywhere, noise everywhere, thousands of construction projects, motorbikes on sidewalks, cigarettes, honking impatient drivers, cars doing 140km/h on city streets. Just noise noise noise. Even when I got back to my apartment it was filled with humming buzzing noise. My one neighbours television, the others instant messenger. More construction, more cigarettes, more cars, more children...now usually I like the sound of children, but it wasn't laughter and shrieks it was demanding voices balli-wa, balli balli...
Now I'm trying to find something nice to do on a spring Friday to give the students new ways of using language, and all I can find is noise. Videos ordering people to act. News stories complaining about the ineffectiveness of protest. Nothing just posing a question to talk about, only opinions, orders, demands and reprimands.
Sigh. It is such a battle against all this global and personal hopelessness.
Well Buy Nothing Weeks are still going well at least. I'm really enjoying it a lot, in fact. It's so easy now to just say, "No I don't need (or really even want) that." It's probably not good to remove myself so much from everything, but it's nice to live in a world where consumerism isn't the normative writ. Where there are choices, and they each feel valuable, like they matter. So it's cool if other people think it is weird. I'm enjoying myself. I suppose I should just teach TOEFL and get on with it. If they do well we can have a debate about hair cuts or something...
Friday, March 28, 2008
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Any ideas?
Can you imagine a world without strangers? Could you function without doubt? Would you know what to do without a computer? How long would you last without a phone? What would you do with one litre of water? What would you do with one set of clothes? What would you do with one meal a day? What would you do for one hour without electricity?
These are all the wrong questions, I think. Because it doesn't really matter what you would do. I have to ask myself first.
As I continue to read and prepare for Earth Hour on Saturday I have stumbled on many different and interesting questions. Each of which I am posing again and again to myself. What would I do? Could I do it? The more I think and wonder about these questions the more I am sure that thinking and wondering won't get me very far. I will have to try. So I took the stairs. I get 1 hour on the computer, to make three class handouts, a report about my classes, check the news and email and write this blog. Then its power down again. It's loose leaf tea in my reusable strainer.
But I keep coming back to this last question. What will I do for one hour without electricity? I think, go for a walk, or to play rugby in the dark. I could pick up garbage. Or just sit around in my apartment. Maybe I will invite a friend over, light a candle and talk, about something or other. I could read, because there is a lot of light pollution in my apartment. I'm just not sure...not yet. Any ideas, suggestions?
These are all the wrong questions, I think. Because it doesn't really matter what you would do. I have to ask myself first.
As I continue to read and prepare for Earth Hour on Saturday I have stumbled on many different and interesting questions. Each of which I am posing again and again to myself. What would I do? Could I do it? The more I think and wonder about these questions the more I am sure that thinking and wondering won't get me very far. I will have to try. So I took the stairs. I get 1 hour on the computer, to make three class handouts, a report about my classes, check the news and email and write this blog. Then its power down again. It's loose leaf tea in my reusable strainer.
But I keep coming back to this last question. What will I do for one hour without electricity? I think, go for a walk, or to play rugby in the dark. I could pick up garbage. Or just sit around in my apartment. Maybe I will invite a friend over, light a candle and talk, about something or other. I could read, because there is a lot of light pollution in my apartment. I'm just not sure...not yet. Any ideas, suggestions?
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Earth Hour
Join the march. Join the chorus. Do it for and hour. Do it for a day. Do for the rest of the week or month. Heck, do it for life. Do it for yourself. Do it for your friends. Do it for me. Just do it. This March 29th is global lights out. At 8pm local time(s) in at least 29 cities globally, people will be participating in a lights out protest. They will be turning out the lights, turning of computers, cell phones, ovens, other electricity consuming devices. For one hour we are challenged to make greener choices and to try to avoid wastefulness.
But don’t get swept up in the rhetoric.
Don’t just mark the cursory occasion a novelty, think no lights for an hour... but to take to heart the message. We don't stand against waste...we work with every choice we make to reduce it, recycles it, reuse it and replace it with a new way of thinking. A new way of living and interacting with the world. We can't really protest environmental abuse with a 60 minute commitment, but its somewhere to start.
In myself I am slowly kindling the belief that every hour is Earth's hour. I am super excited for the big Earth hour celebrations this week. Granted, I'm sure nothing is happening here in Korea; in my own little world there will be. A class in the dark. A day without computers, ovens and other nonessential. A challenge to myself and to those around me.
I don't want to spend sixty minutes inconvenienced by darkness, but 60 minutes thinking about a new way of working. A new way of thinking about how I will and should and could interact with this earth to help keep it beautiful. To help make it a place of continuous health and positive growth. I want to challenge myself to make the choice...take the stairs...go for a walk...buy local...buy organic...put my money where my mouth is, and put my actions ahead of my words.
So how has my adventure been? For the past few weeks I have been working on a buy nothing scheme. My aim to buy nothing I don't need. It seemed amazingly difficult, and there are some things that get me often (chocolate for example). But it has been an amazing experiment. Already I've noticed I'm putting out less garbage. I have more recyclables because I'm choosing to buy foods in recyclable packaging, if packaged at all. I now always carry bags with me to the grocery store. I'm choosing to buy less and be sure to use all the food I buy, wasting as little as possible. And the biggest surprise, I don't want things as much. Every day it gets easier to buy nothing.
It was amazing to me at first, how many times a day I would think, oh I'll just get this or that. Or I'd buy a snack on the way home from work or yoga, instead of eating the food I already have in my home. How I would have to tell myself forcefully "no" and would usually argue with myself at length that it was essential enough, or it was silly to deny simple things like chocolate bars, notebooks, pens. But I have enough of these things at home, I would eventually agree.
But the greatest lesson is this ongoing lesson about choices. There is never one choice to make and that's that. It is a continuing process, a thousand choices everyday. So I hope you all have a beautifully peaceful Earth Hour. Send someone your love. And think about the choices you get to make today.
Love you all!
But don’t get swept up in the rhetoric.
Don’t just mark the cursory occasion a novelty, think no lights for an hour... but to take to heart the message. We don't stand against waste...we work with every choice we make to reduce it, recycles it, reuse it and replace it with a new way of thinking. A new way of living and interacting with the world. We can't really protest environmental abuse with a 60 minute commitment, but its somewhere to start.
In myself I am slowly kindling the belief that every hour is Earth's hour. I am super excited for the big Earth hour celebrations this week. Granted, I'm sure nothing is happening here in Korea; in my own little world there will be. A class in the dark. A day without computers, ovens and other nonessential. A challenge to myself and to those around me.
I don't want to spend sixty minutes inconvenienced by darkness, but 60 minutes thinking about a new way of working. A new way of thinking about how I will and should and could interact with this earth to help keep it beautiful. To help make it a place of continuous health and positive growth. I want to challenge myself to make the choice...take the stairs...go for a walk...buy local...buy organic...put my money where my mouth is, and put my actions ahead of my words.
So how has my adventure been? For the past few weeks I have been working on a buy nothing scheme. My aim to buy nothing I don't need. It seemed amazingly difficult, and there are some things that get me often (chocolate for example). But it has been an amazing experiment. Already I've noticed I'm putting out less garbage. I have more recyclables because I'm choosing to buy foods in recyclable packaging, if packaged at all. I now always carry bags with me to the grocery store. I'm choosing to buy less and be sure to use all the food I buy, wasting as little as possible. And the biggest surprise, I don't want things as much. Every day it gets easier to buy nothing.
It was amazing to me at first, how many times a day I would think, oh I'll just get this or that. Or I'd buy a snack on the way home from work or yoga, instead of eating the food I already have in my home. How I would have to tell myself forcefully "no" and would usually argue with myself at length that it was essential enough, or it was silly to deny simple things like chocolate bars, notebooks, pens. But I have enough of these things at home, I would eventually agree.
But the greatest lesson is this ongoing lesson about choices. There is never one choice to make and that's that. It is a continuing process, a thousand choices everyday. So I hope you all have a beautifully peaceful Earth Hour. Send someone your love. And think about the choices you get to make today.
Love you all!
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
A Little Prayer
My thoughts are with you Jessie. That we caught this early, that you recover swiftly and shine on with the grace and strength, with the beauty that your cousins wish they had! Love you always!
Cous.M
Cous.M
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Someone has to pay
What is criminal justice? Two interesting cases in the papers today. In Indonesia three men have had death sentences commuted to life in jail over drug smuggling charges. Their lawyers argued that they were first time offenders and not likely to repeat, thus death was a rather steep way to pay for their crimes. In Canada a man who murdered his neighbours, brutally, was found guilty but not criminally responsible for the deaths. The court has agreed that Despres who lives with schizophrenia , was delusional at the time of the attck, and thus cannot be found responsible for his actions. A member of the family is quoted as saying "I just think that you're responsible for your actions regardless of what you do. If you're not responsible for your actions, who is? Someone should pay for these two people being murdered, and I don't think we got justice today."
I find criminal justice one of the strangest ideas we ever came up with.
I find criminal justice one of the strangest ideas we ever came up with.
Monday, March 03, 2008
Patience
How long does it take to forget your history?
As a supermix of nations my siblings and I stand in a unique position, none of our parents, grandparents or great-grandparents were born in and grew up in the same country. We have, for generations, been a globally dispersed family. We have moved for all sorts of reasons from prejudices to royal orders, because of military or individually driven free spirit. My parents stumbled into Canada I guess nearly 2 decades ago, and my siblings and I did most of our growing up there.
We often ponder and talk about our history, or our confusion about our history. There are many races in conflict in our genealogy, so it's hard at times to hold part of our history as valid and important because it directly conflicts with another part of that history. But, in the end, we usually agree it doesn't matter too much; what matters is what we do now and next and after that.
I recently stumbled on a pleasantly bigoted Facebook group striving to keep Canada Canadian. Purporting that there is a proud history that must be upheld, that is being diluted and forgotten by us newbies. Not only must the new guy adapt to the entirely new world, but he must do so to inculcate in himself the old stories and beliefs, the mythologies and semiotics of this thing called Canada. "Learn the language," the group argues, "get a job, stop sucking on the government for handouts."
Come on people. I know we have the freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of press in whatever form press might take. But that doesn't mean we should use those freedoms to further divide our country, to generate antagonism, persecute new Canadians, to scapegoat the government and anyone else we can for our own lazy uninformed opinions about the woes of our land.
Some of the best signs that this idea of the "Canadian Canada" is that the national anthem was written in English and shouldn't be sung in any immigrant languages. Well, first off, English is an immigrant language. Second, our anthem was written in French. Thirdly, at many time throughout its history it has been sung in different language, in native Canadian languages at NHL games and other official events. And who cares what language it is sung it, especially when that translation helps make O Canada dear to the hearts of even more Canadians. It the act of singing a song that symbolizes our unity and pride as a nation that is of importance...isn't it? I mean you'd think this group would be more offended by the regular booing of the anthem at NHL and CFL games in Montreal...maybe.
A friend just sent me a youtube or googlevideo or something from the Ellen Degeneres show about little billy and bobby somewhere in the US. Billy killed Bobby because Bobby asked Billy to be his Valentine. Ellen's message that it is not alright that we are perpetuating the message that it is wrong to be (different). It is not okay that we make being different the punch lines in our jokes. That we can hate difference so deeply so vehemently that we can commit heinous crimes in an attempt to stamp out difference around us. Degeneres is talking specifically against the message it is wrong to be gay, but it has deeper implications.
We must change the message that it is wrong to be different. What is more it is our responsibility to find ways to make our differences what makes us strong. We must find ways to use our conflicts to generate positive change. And find ways to accept that sometimes that difference will be difficult to understand. Sometimes that difference won't make sense, especially when we are unwilling to ask for or to offer help.
But mostly we need a little patience. I learned the most wonderful expression while I was in Japan Shogyo mujo (諸行無常). It means All things in the world/phenomena are impermanent. I.e. all things change. The philosophy promotes the idea that things change so we should wait and watch, observe and delay so we can see what will change and what needs our intervention or help. We must accept that our history that was will not repeat, but create a new and different self as it continues to move forward in time, and these changes are for us to experience and embrace, for us to enjoy and be challenged by. For us to protest and for us to challenge. There may be similarities and redundancies, things we can avoid by knowing and not forgetting our past, but that past is a greater memory and a greater tool, when it is out diverse and diverging pasts used to help those who are new to the situation.
As a supermix of nations my siblings and I stand in a unique position, none of our parents, grandparents or great-grandparents were born in and grew up in the same country. We have, for generations, been a globally dispersed family. We have moved for all sorts of reasons from prejudices to royal orders, because of military or individually driven free spirit. My parents stumbled into Canada I guess nearly 2 decades ago, and my siblings and I did most of our growing up there.
We often ponder and talk about our history, or our confusion about our history. There are many races in conflict in our genealogy, so it's hard at times to hold part of our history as valid and important because it directly conflicts with another part of that history. But, in the end, we usually agree it doesn't matter too much; what matters is what we do now and next and after that.
I recently stumbled on a pleasantly bigoted Facebook group striving to keep Canada Canadian. Purporting that there is a proud history that must be upheld, that is being diluted and forgotten by us newbies. Not only must the new guy adapt to the entirely new world, but he must do so to inculcate in himself the old stories and beliefs, the mythologies and semiotics of this thing called Canada. "Learn the language," the group argues, "get a job, stop sucking on the government for handouts."
Come on people. I know we have the freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of press in whatever form press might take. But that doesn't mean we should use those freedoms to further divide our country, to generate antagonism, persecute new Canadians, to scapegoat the government and anyone else we can for our own lazy uninformed opinions about the woes of our land.
Some of the best signs that this idea of the "Canadian Canada" is that the national anthem was written in English and shouldn't be sung in any immigrant languages. Well, first off, English is an immigrant language. Second, our anthem was written in French. Thirdly, at many time throughout its history it has been sung in different language, in native Canadian languages at NHL games and other official events. And who cares what language it is sung it, especially when that translation helps make O Canada dear to the hearts of even more Canadians. It the act of singing a song that symbolizes our unity and pride as a nation that is of importance...isn't it? I mean you'd think this group would be more offended by the regular booing of the anthem at NHL and CFL games in Montreal...maybe.
A friend just sent me a youtube or googlevideo or something from the Ellen Degeneres show about little billy and bobby somewhere in the US. Billy killed Bobby because Bobby asked Billy to be his Valentine. Ellen's message that it is not alright that we are perpetuating the message that it is wrong to be (different). It is not okay that we make being different the punch lines in our jokes. That we can hate difference so deeply so vehemently that we can commit heinous crimes in an attempt to stamp out difference around us. Degeneres is talking specifically against the message it is wrong to be gay, but it has deeper implications.
We must change the message that it is wrong to be different. What is more it is our responsibility to find ways to make our differences what makes us strong. We must find ways to use our conflicts to generate positive change. And find ways to accept that sometimes that difference will be difficult to understand. Sometimes that difference won't make sense, especially when we are unwilling to ask for or to offer help.
But mostly we need a little patience. I learned the most wonderful expression while I was in Japan Shogyo mujo (諸行無常). It means All things in the world/phenomena are impermanent. I.e. all things change. The philosophy promotes the idea that things change so we should wait and watch, observe and delay so we can see what will change and what needs our intervention or help. We must accept that our history that was will not repeat, but create a new and different self as it continues to move forward in time, and these changes are for us to experience and embrace, for us to enjoy and be challenged by. For us to protest and for us to challenge. There may be similarities and redundancies, things we can avoid by knowing and not forgetting our past, but that past is a greater memory and a greater tool, when it is out diverse and diverging pasts used to help those who are new to the situation.
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Facebook you Frustrate me
Here I am again. Again facing this apparently growing sentiment that the world is not welcome in Canada. That if you are not of the majority you can stay where you are, my home is not your home. And the source of this confrontation, a group a colleague joined on Facebook. It may just be time for me to leave that monstrosity of a creation. It's a useful tool for networking and communication, but there is no order to it, you can say what you want and not have to care not what other's think about it, but the reality it creates for others.
The group is called Let's Keep Canada Canadian. And is supports and propagates the idea that to be Canadian you must speak one of the two languages. You must not cost social security a nickle. You should not feel you can proudly display your religion unless it is of Christian roots. You should not proudly share your cultural heritage, unless its the food and its favourable to our Canadian palate. You should not expect the help of the government in settling, or of the community. You should not settle with others of similar culture/history/heritage unless you are a WASP (or former WASP), otherwise you are ghettoizing our country.
I am afraid of this growing community of Canadians who have this vision of Canada as an anglo-saxon pseudo christian nation that doesn't change. And yet if this is so, many of their complaints are actually cries for change.
Some of the complaints on this group: Canadians should speak the language of the land;immigrants must adapt; new Canadians should not expect handout from the government; new Canadians should not be a burden. When our colonizing forefathers never adapted, they didn't learn the language of the land nor the customs and beliefs of the people whose lands the emigrated to. Or when the government used to offer all sorts of incentives and bonuses to new settlers from cheap land to cash and food allowances. When it was their "burden" to come and settle and civilize the new world.
But lets think about the true implications of the person who we would all readily recognize as a new Canadian and how they behave in their new country. I'm talking about an infant born on Canadian soil. Infants don't speak the language of the land. It takes several years of immersion and constant education before they learn the language. There are numerous handouts and benefits and tax breaks for these non contributing new Canadians, and yet we never balk or brawn over paying for them, because we know they are an investment in the future of our country. Not only do these new Canadians not contribute economically often for 20 (even 30 in my generation) years (living off family and society), they are an enormous burden to the system requiring billions (probably 10s or 100s or billions) of dollars in education, childcare and social support. Yet, we have no problem making that investment for an infant, why? And why is it different for a new Canadian who experienced infancy elsewhere?
What more, who are these immigrants hurting? Are your taxes too high? You can't survive on what little the government leaves to you because of this hulking burden to our society? You can afford to surround yourself with pure luxury and stuff and stuff and more stuff. I don't understand this ongoing and ever growing aggression directed at the new guy. Get over it people. The fact that your grandfather established your family though hard work and sacrifice 50 years ago, doesn't give you any right to balk at this woman or that man who is working hard and sacrificing so that his grandchildren will be equally establish IN TIME!!!
And this is the greatest piss off about these opinions and voices that balk at the new guy. They don't even take the time to realize in the first generation their family was in Canada, their family too was a burden. Didn't know how to get education, work, food, money. Needed help from their neighbours and from yes even the government.
The group is called Let's Keep Canada Canadian. And is supports and propagates the idea that to be Canadian you must speak one of the two languages. You must not cost social security a nickle. You should not feel you can proudly display your religion unless it is of Christian roots. You should not proudly share your cultural heritage, unless its the food and its favourable to our Canadian palate. You should not expect the help of the government in settling, or of the community. You should not settle with others of similar culture/history/heritage unless you are a WASP (or former WASP), otherwise you are ghettoizing our country.
I am afraid of this growing community of Canadians who have this vision of Canada as an anglo-saxon pseudo christian nation that doesn't change. And yet if this is so, many of their complaints are actually cries for change.
Some of the complaints on this group: Canadians should speak the language of the land;immigrants must adapt; new Canadians should not expect handout from the government; new Canadians should not be a burden. When our colonizing forefathers never adapted, they didn't learn the language of the land nor the customs and beliefs of the people whose lands the emigrated to. Or when the government used to offer all sorts of incentives and bonuses to new settlers from cheap land to cash and food allowances. When it was their "burden" to come and settle and civilize the new world.
But lets think about the true implications of the person who we would all readily recognize as a new Canadian and how they behave in their new country. I'm talking about an infant born on Canadian soil. Infants don't speak the language of the land. It takes several years of immersion and constant education before they learn the language. There are numerous handouts and benefits and tax breaks for these non contributing new Canadians, and yet we never balk or brawn over paying for them, because we know they are an investment in the future of our country. Not only do these new Canadians not contribute economically often for 20 (even 30 in my generation) years (living off family and society), they are an enormous burden to the system requiring billions (probably 10s or 100s or billions) of dollars in education, childcare and social support. Yet, we have no problem making that investment for an infant, why? And why is it different for a new Canadian who experienced infancy elsewhere?
What more, who are these immigrants hurting? Are your taxes too high? You can't survive on what little the government leaves to you because of this hulking burden to our society? You can afford to surround yourself with pure luxury and stuff and stuff and more stuff. I don't understand this ongoing and ever growing aggression directed at the new guy. Get over it people. The fact that your grandfather established your family though hard work and sacrifice 50 years ago, doesn't give you any right to balk at this woman or that man who is working hard and sacrificing so that his grandchildren will be equally establish IN TIME!!!
And this is the greatest piss off about these opinions and voices that balk at the new guy. They don't even take the time to realize in the first generation their family was in Canada, their family too was a burden. Didn't know how to get education, work, food, money. Needed help from their neighbours and from yes even the government.
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