Messing with Texas

trash, admin and vacations

Oh Dear. I'm afraid I might have had a bit of a trashy week. I am going through a bit of an icecream phase, and I saw the Devil Wears Prada twice (but that counts as career research, given my PA to the developmentally fabulous aspirations), and might have accidentally bought OK mag instead of The Walrus or The Economist (well, I did buy the latter but passed it quickly on to the boyf). I must admit also that there is a recently finished Candice Bushnell novel on my shelf. And then to top it all off, I rented the first season of Desperate Housewives.

But, in the midst of this extremely Western propaganda, I have been making exciting progress on my impending Southern excursion. The task at hand is securing a work permit for Ethiopia (an inch closer- still a very elusive item). I have been pricked with sharp but useful medical objects both to protect and determine my general health (though they are less effective against "wellness"...or rather towards wellness). My Centre for Intercultural Learning course is confirmed ("your request is important to us"- yet still it takes two weeks for them to email me back!) and Ella is giving it a test run for me as we speak. And I have an appointment with the lawyer for Tuesday.

I am about to leave, however, on my so-called Summer Vacation. Destination: Texas. More on that?

There you have it.

the CITY

The city is a great place to be at the moment. The temperature has risen to a nice baking heat, conducive to patios and beaches. Friends are returning from various ends of the world and keeping me busy with social engagements. Yesterday a friend and I stumbled upon a street festival in Little Italy in honour of the World Cup game against the US. Each terrace was packed, and all the 'free-stuffers' were out in full force. The old Italian choir was out, in their green vests and Canadian flag ties; all the women had big flowers in their dyed graying hair. I had to drag myself away in order to get to work, but I arrived there to the rehersals for the Much Music Video Awards taking place across the street. We heard a bunch of bands, including Fallout Boy, and some Canadian Idols. The 'allstars' won't come out until Sunday evening. I don't know if I'll see the show- the Stanley Cup will probably trump Much for my attention.

As this weekend comes to an end (beach volleyball this afternoon), the plans for next week shape up: Ella's birthday, doctor's appointment, Holland versus Argentina, and PRIDE. If summer has just started, I've certainly started as I mean to go on.

Bike to CAPAIDS

Speaking of CAPAIDS, they're having a Bike-A-Thon fundraiser on June 10.

Sign up for BIKE TO CAPAIDS

See you there!

So, it's settled (though I won't believe it until I'm on a plane on my way to Addis). I am going to Ethiopia with CPAR (canadian physicians for aid and relief) for my placement. There I will be working with two groups, CPAR and CAPAIDS.

With CPAR I will help with a variety of tasks, including communicating with the Canadian office, monitoring and reporting on their Moving Beyond Hunger program, and helping to increase in-country funding for the Ethiopia office. The Moving Beyond Hunger program includes projects focussing on water and sanitation development, food security (tree farming, for example), and safe livelihoods (vocational training, HIV/AIDS education).

With CAPAIDS I will hold the position of program officer, and will monitor and evaluate their Safe Livelihoods for Older AIDS Orphans project. This group of older orphans, often the head of their households after the death of their parents, frequently turn to the sex trade to provide for their siblings. This leads to problems for the individual, and to the spread of AIDS. So, CAPAIDS works with two local NGOs in Ethiopia (and two in Uganda) to provide the orphans with vocational training (like hairdressing, for example) so that they can have more secure livelihoods.

I'm excited as well that I'll be able to work with CPAR and CAPAIDS here in Canada before I leave, so that I'll have a familiarity with the projects and recent developments, rather than just being thrown into the mix upon arriving in Addis. And also that I've met the in-country Director already, so when I arrive, I'll see a familiar face.

Fun is Paramount

I always get an icky feeling when I go into mega movie theatres like the Paramount. For a while I thought it was the people, until I realized that I’m mostly fine with crowds in other situations. Then I thought maybe it was the glossy perfection of the surroundings, contrary to my current obsession with “urban derelict”. But today I read an article that helped me to better articulate my concerns in its discussion of media conglomerates. Current media market trends are encouraging the concentration of media. Take for example, AOL Time Warner. That used to be three companies (and more), and they’re now all led by one boss (and one mindset). This raises some concerns. For me, it’s primarily the streamlining of media content- the diversity decreases and the quality of journalism becomes questionable. This is increased by the location of media directors on the boards of other companies, such as pharmaceuticals and oil companies. The result is media censorship. For example, if Disney is involved in both manufacture in Bangladesh and owns ABC, the likelihood that you’re going to see a story on sweatshop labour on the ABC newsreport is unlikely. So, important issues are not getting covered in the mainstream media.

Further, and I think this is what prompts my negative emotional reaction to places like the Paramount, the incredible skills of media conglomerates to cross promote and cross sell (like the advertisements for the Pussycat Dolls at the movie theatre) can dilute influences from other places, such as families, schools, and other sources that are grounded in real-life experience.

It bothers me to think that a) we’re not getting all the information b) while some of us may be getting the information, not everyone is, and without everyone getting it, how is change going to happen and c) that my kids one day might actually think that “Fun is Paramount” and not know where else to get their knowledge and/or kicks from.

View the article here:
http://www.globalissues.org/HumanRights/Media/Corporations/Owners/asp

Finally, a placement update!

I've been hesitant about posting about my placement proceedings on my blog after what happened last september. I was so embarassed by my failure to get a placement, and even more so by the fact that for months afterwards people were sending me emails saying, "So where are you...aren't you supposed to be away this year?" That everyone (family, friends, friends of family, etc etc) was expecting me to leave made the situation worse, as I had to explain "well, no, I'm not going. Yes, yes, it was my fault." So, I have been reluctant to talk about, or post about, my potentials for placement this upcoming year. Until now. While nothing is for certain, and I could find myself in Toronto once again come September, there are three potential spots in the works. First, I have been recommended for a placement with CUSO in Ghana- this means that the Canadian office has chosen me, but the field office and local NGO get the last word, so I am waiting to hear from them. Second, CPAR (who I've been volunteering with for the past year) has expressed an interest in sending me to work in their Ethiopian office in Addis Ababa. I've spoken with the Canadian program director and the Ethiopian country director, and the placement is contingent on them finding cheap accommodation for me and the job meeting the IDS coop's standards. Hopefully I will get more information on this possibility later this week. Third, I have been interviewed with WUSC Sri Lanka (who chose not to send me last year) and apparently they have placements for all who were interviewed.

All three placements are very interesting (though I don't have details about the WUSC one) and would certainly be a rewarding experience. Each has it's own positive aspects, and if granted all three, it would be a difficult choice between them. That said, because of my previous work with CPAR, my familiarity with their organization, the fact that Addis holds many interesting features (such as being the centre of the African Union, for example), and the fairly flexible job description, a placement with CPAR Ethiopia is my first choice. However, it is also the least certain of the three.

So, there you have a brief outline of my current placement status. Regardless of my geographic and employment status as of September 2006, I feel that I have grown tremendously as a result of my initial placement rejection. I understand my weaknesses better, I have consciously become more involved in the Toronto development community, and have spent a wonderful year in Toronto. Stay tuned for more details.

Kate

Cucurrucucu Paloma

Have been spending some time today listening to music from the films of Almodovar (I stumbled upon Habla Con Ella four years ago and have been crazy about them ever since). There's something very intense about the music that I don't find in my Whitney and Assorted Trance Singles. And so I got to thinking, using my general music choice as indicative of the whole Kate psyche, and realize that I actively pursue the avoidance of responsibility. I like thinking about real things, but fear experiencing them. What is it that holds me back? The ever pressing fear of failure. Perhaps I feel it more than others, but likely I am in precisely the same human boat as the rest of us. And so, I grab hold of things that give me confidence when I can. So today, as I listened to AT Ariyaratne, who started the Sarvodaya movement in Sri Lanka (development according to Ghandian and Buddhist principles), I grabbed hold of these sentiments:

Be Constructive, Not Destructive. Don't waste time defending yourself and what you're doing- just go and do it.

Those of us who want to change the world don't get much rest, while others spend quite a bit of time sleeping.

[If you see something bad in the world] don't worry about it, just work harder.

This is action without fear- I've got the thinking about it down pat, I've just got to have confidence to take action. And if you're in the mood, download some songs from Almodovar.

Kate

oh, Chinatown!

My spacial proximity to Chinatown has many benefits and delights, including readily available cheap produce, an abundace of milk crates for creating fashionable furniture, and the presence of co-passengers on the streetcar, laden down with plastic bags with exotic scripts and strange smells. But today, the concept of a "city within a city" has been taken to a new level. All day there has been a tremendous comotion outside our house. While the comotion is usually due to either drunken students, or recently released patients from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health across the street, today it centres around a huge pile of dirt. Presumably, this dirt was placed there by municipal workers in preparation for the spring gardening they'll be doing at the park across the way starting Monday morning. I'm affraid, however, that they will have to start a new pile afresh, come Monday, as there has been a steady stream of Chinese ladies from the neighbourhood poaching the goods! They come with carts, waggons, buckets, spades, garbage bags, and (occasionally) husbands to supervise, and in little more than three hours, the pile is down to half what it was. Every once in a while I'll hear the screech of car tires and a house-wife type will be out there, in her kakhis and sweater-around-the-neck, filling the back of the SUV with precious, precious sod.

In a more serious note, I like how this event fits in to my post-colonial studies mind frame. WHat? It's just dirt. No, wait. In my political science course last semester, we talked about various ways in which citizens revolt against authoritarian post colonial states, from revolution to what is known as "quiet encroachment of the ordinary". In this form of revolt, individuals undermine the state through a variety of (primarily urban) actions, such as tapping the power grid. While it's simplist to understand today's dirt theft through a purely pragmatic lense- why buy dirt when you can get it from the sidewalk for free?- I like to think of it in more political terms. Despite our government's highly "developed" nature, we, as Canadian Citizens, still reject the notion of complete complicity to the State, and choose instead to express our non-compliance through simple acts of soil appropriation.

Une petite space

I have just aquired a new apartment. Hurrah! Enough waiting for rent from others, enough unmatching perspectives on "clean" and "tidy". As much as I love love love my roommates, and have had wonderful habitation experiences since leaving Victoria, I've been waiting for this moment of solohabitation for what feels like EVER.

So, the details. It is tiny. Ity bity. And it's across the street from where i live now, so move in time is expected to be a full fifteen to twenty minutes. Faster if I have the help of current roommates and current boyf. Then it will be three minutes or less. It is a square, and I can basically cook breakfast while still in bed, but it has two big windows and a fire escape. And there's a huge tree outside one of the windows that will be beautiful in the summer.

Hurrah for my new space! Only two or three weeks until you can find me in it.

IDSers are crazy. I'm at Scarborough, and I just spotted one, dressed in a padded suit and helmet with "poverty" written all over it. He had a really big stick and was offering people the chance to fight him...to fight poverty. Is this what it's come to? I generally applaud clever publicity gimicks, but in this case I worry. Is our political and societal dialogue so beyond caring about the world's rampant poverty that we have to resort to non-mainstream protests to get poverty issues included in the global agenda? It seems like such a no-brainer, as poverty is the root cause of so many problems we are currently fighting against (terrorism, drugs, for a couple of examples).

Speaking of poverty, this is an interesting take on Make Poverty History, conceptualized by my neighbour:
Make Affluence History

hungry for communication

I'm so connected it scares me sometimes. I am currently sitting in the pub, having a beer and msning with my mother. Ingo's on the phone with me, and I'm expecting an email. And as soon as I get off the phone, I need to send you a text message. This is ridiculous. And I'm not even that high tech. Wait for the blackberry...

applauding diversity

I have recently realized that I've achieved a long-term lifestyle goal. While in the past I've felt like Kate Living and Kate Doing, where I have point of extreme play, and extreme travail, this is not the case at the moment. The success comes from an extremely diverse weekly to do list, and diversity keeps me interested. It avoids extremes. The component parts of LIFE at the moment are various and interesting: volunteering at CPAR and developing a possible placement with them, three courses at school, new volunteering at Bioline International, three or four shifts a week at Cafe Crepe, time spent with i and ella, random development engagements, and a little bit of Kate time and assorted errands. Most recently, I've just gotten a position as an e-mentor with DreamNow.ca...this is very exciting! I'll be helping to lead other youth through community and international development projects, starting with action planning with students at the YouCan Resolve conference. So, I'll be in Winnipeg next week, at this conference, hanging out with 400 other youth who are interested in Peace Building and Conflict Resolution, and I'll keep contact with about 50 of them, helping them to achieve their action goals! And they're going to pay me!

So, while the positive aspects of my lifestyle as illustrate here are numerous, I'd just like to highlight to parts. In general, hurrah for diversity in daily life. And more specifically, hurrah that I've got a job that is more relevant to my goals and interests than being a waitress!

Fall into life.

Someone just wrote me an email with the question, "so has anything new, boring or wonderful fallen into your life lately?" This is the perfect question. How-are-you-good's binary opposite. I love how it recognizes that the good, the bad and the ugly that are all equally exciting in the process of living. I love that it makes reference to extremes rather than neutrality. I love how it highlights individual moments, situations, and experiences rather than general wellbeing. I love how it celebrates chance, spontaneity and serendipity by suggesting that events and things "fall" into life. I love that all these components make the question very answerable, and encourage the answer to enter into the realm of conversation.

I love that I know people who ask me questions like these.

So I extend the question to you: has anything new, boring or wonderful fallen into your life lately?

kate

ps. check out DreamNow for more info on the exploits of the questioner in question.

nukes, terrorists and US hegemony, OH MY!

While this is a fairly useless post, as it has no recommendations for action and only big unanswerable questions, I will post it nonetheless to let you into my current view of things international.

We live in a very interesting time. Look at the democratic election of a so-called terroris group in Palestine, the purchase of nuclear capabilities by Iran, and the emerging power of China if you don't believe me. At points in my young life I'd thought that we were coming to an era, or even a permanent future, of peace and international cooperation. But as I study more and become more aware of international dynamics (especially in relation to US hegemony) I see more chaos and negative action than order. The question is if we see it this way, and there seem to be many that see it this way, why is the world continuing on this trajectory?

Please respond to my slightly pessamistic, but not opressive, view.

shades of grey

Development, academically speaking, contains grey areas for me. But each semester I’ve taken here at U of T has sought to increase the vibrancy of my development understanding. It seems that each semester, by accident, tends to answer an overarching question of mine. I’ve had the overview semester, the health and development semester, and the development economics semester. The most recent theme took place outside of school: understanding the Canadian development community and my place within it. And just when I felt my understanding of macropolicy, in Canada and Internationally, was so grey as to hamper moving forward, I happened upon this semester. I am taking International Political Economy of Trade, the New International Agenda, and International Studies and Communications, which all fall into this theme. The actions, principles and policies that have undermined the development of the third world are now being presented to me. And in the end I hope that they will help me to understand these aspects of the international order enough to enable me to see how these tools of power used by the West can be used to improve the climate for Development. Greyness be gone.

Viva Cuba Libre!

Just back from Cuba. Pics up soon. Holy amazing batman.

Now for some more real life.

kate

seriosity

I am very anti serious conversations at the very beginning or the very end of something. Seriousness is best situated in the middle. I think this is my biggest parental beef, as mine are notorious for using seriousness as bookends. This either starts things off wrong, or leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

This is especially pertinent when you've just done something LOVELY, such as watching Bride and Prejudice, and then the parental unit switches immediatly to scheduling and to dos without a brief "basking in bollywood" intermission.

However, I suppose it could be argued that I am never in the mood for serious or to-do oriented conversation with my parents, regardless.

[disclaimer: despite serious beef, I love you both dearly and am having a wonderful visit!]

Retrospective on Exams

Last week, I was grumpy. I had exams that were consuming me, and no distractions of work to get me out of them. But...wait. What did I spend my exam week doing? I spent the majority of the time sitting in lovely coffee shops, sipping tasty warm beverages and reading interesting articles. And to top it all off, I'd "reward" myself for a hard day studying by going out for dinner with a good friend, or maybe to a movie. I realized that I have a wicked deal! My life is significantly worthy of envy.

The title, emphaisis on retrospective, indicates that I'm NOW ON VACATION! I'm going to stop blogging and write a list of all the things that I want to do with my free time, and start working my way through the list. I think I'll start with sangria for lunch with Ella before she takes off for Halifax.

Hurrah!

kate

Kate-living, Kate-doing, or just Kate

The getting through it time of year is upon me once again. I've been glowing and flying for the past couple of months, busy with school, the theatre, CPAR, work, crepes, thoughts of cajun food, a clean room and walks through the city. But, today I am full of responsibility and forgetfulness of the WHY. So, I am going to take a moment to remind myself why I do exams, placement applications, job interviews, meetings with professors, work. I am going to take a moment to realize that there's an end in sight. I once told someone that to get through school I always told myself "do well in school to justify adventure". Today I have to tell myself do well in life to justify LIVING.

I love new things. I try to do or see something new every day. More than that, I love introducing other people to new things, seeing their reaction, watching them adjust their world view. Apparently, "you see what you know" (Tony Price), so if I know a lot, I will see many things. I go to school to see new things, to learn how to see things in different ways, and in the long run try to help people to see things in new ways. I want to show people that living is not a zero sum game, though the dominant world system seems to think so. Sure, our resources are scarce, but if the rule says matter cannot be created nor destroyed, obviously a rearrangement of the status quo is possible.

I apply for placements and slightly scary responsibility-full jobs to expand this goal out of my comfort zone. I want to be part of the BIGGEST and the BEST things, but that requires me to start somewhere. I will not feel comfortable with something until after I feel a little uncomfortable, and comfort is mediocre at best. This is the hardest part. I've been told not to fear failure, and that I will miss 100 percent of the shots I don't take. So, I do scary things to face this fear of failure, and prove to myself that it is an illusion.

So often work seems like the odd thing out. Time spent with little relevance to my hopes, dreams and fears. It is comfortable, time consuming and irrelevant. But, it is also the easiest to understand. I work so that I can go to Cuba over christmas, so that I can drink second cup raspberry tea, so that I can buy Midnight's Children, so that I can take the bus to CPAR, so that I can chew gum and do yoga. I work so that one day 'work' won't seem like the odd thing out, but rather the vehicle to face fear and show others my world.

It takes me remembering these things to realize that this is not a getting-through-it phase, but part of life. I will always have times that aren't fun fun fun, but this doesn't mean that they are separate from real life. I used to classify life into kate-living and kate-doing, the former being the good parts of life and the latter the less interesting. But, in truth, the getting-through-it bits are fully integrated into the whole thing. I am not going to wake up one day and be grown up and settled and happy. And if I look at them this way, the getting-through-it bits aren't really just about getting-through-it after all.

And with that I can get back to work.