Eaten by Tapirs

Oh yeah...

2006-10-09T10:34:00.000-06:00

My new blog, now that I'm in Thailand, may be found here. Enjoy!

The greatest thing ever...

2006-07-23T21:27:00.000-06:00

My thesis is done! Now I may resume a life of alternating corporate slavery and semi-bankrupt travel. Yay!

I'm home!

2006-07-19T08:51:00.000-06:00

And I'm going back to bed!

Paul sleepy...

2006-07-17T11:02:00.000-06:00

But I'm coming home tomorrow (hopefully without my thesis tagging along).

Ye gods, I need a vacation.

With but nine days to go...

2006-07-09T22:41:00.000-06:00

I have 17,000 words written on my thesis, the weather is rainy and lovely, and the local social life has become an increasingly maudlin series of farewell parties for departing students. Perhaps two-thirds of the student body have departed, and the remainder are scrambling to wrap up theses. Good times!

Most of the students wrapped up their courses in early May and turned in their theses by the end of June. for these lucky souls, the graduation ceremony and subsequent nifty party were a real turning point. For those of us whose courses ended the week before graduation, and whose theses are due at the end of July, however, the long, anticlimactic month of July has become a bit the downer. Everybody's leaving, we're still slogging through the work, and Ciudad Colon and the University are becoming ghost towns. It's my turn soon enough...I handed in an incomplete draft yesterday, while belatedly realizing that this bloody thesis may be the most intellectually demanding thing I've ever done.

To celebrate my ongoing academic progress. I accomplished nothing of value today. I played videogames, watched Shaun of the Dead and Dodgeball. I earned it, dagnabit! I had four hours of one-on-one Spanish instruction every morning last week, and then slogged through my studies (in accursed English, no less!) in the afternoons and evenings. I spent my Saturday rearranging my incomprehensible 60-page opus into something marginally legible, and finally fired off the draft to my adviser at 1:30 AM this morning. (She leaves for Iraq on Tuesday, hence my rush). I realized as the clock passed midnight that my brain and body whad been grinding to an ugly halt all week... so today, I wasted the entire day! Yay! Totally worth it, too.

Okay, enough of this exceptionally dull post. Back to the grind tomorrow! More news on my return as it looms nearer.

More importantly...

2006-06-29T22:18:00.000-06:00

I graduate tomorrow!!!

Not graduate in the sense of actually finishing school, but graduate in the sense that they will fork over a blank sheet of paper simulating an actual diploma! You see, my program finished 6 weeks after everyone else's (just the way of things here) and our theses aren't done. Once that minor 23,000 word hurdle is vaulted, my time here will be complete and my academic career finally, thoroughly, irreversibly over (for now).

Ah, the thesis. I have but 8,000 words left to pen, and each comes slower than the last. But gradually daylight is beginning to creep over yonder hills... I'll be done soon enough. Anybody who actually wants to read the dang thing (80 pages on the evolutionary psychology of suicide terrorism! Joy!) is more than welcome to do so.

But wait- there's more! On Monday I'll start two weeks of intensive Spanish classes, wherein I'll attempt to achieve in 10 meager days what I should have focused squarely on for the last ten months - Spanish fluency. Wish me luck!

Still more! In less than three short weeks I'll make my triumphant return, having exchanged a year and thirty thousand dollars (not counting opportunity cost) for a piece of paper that will hopefully serve me well. I'll be back on July 19th... and starting work on the 20th, oddly enough. The same PR shop that helped fund this trip will thankfully be sponsoring my next one...

... to sunny Thailand! In mid-September, subsequent to Bree and Will's nuptials, I'll be departing for Chiang Mai,Northern Thailand, to begin a job teaching Burmese activists. Good times, and it'll do wonders for my development street cred! But I'll need a new blog name... any suggestions?

Ok, much to do, and graduation starts in 8 hours. Up next - pics! Joy!

In which I return to the world's most neglected blog...

2006-06-29T22:05:00.000-06:00

Wow, it's been a while. I make no apologies, however: school's been sucking up my brain and little of particular interest has happened in the last three months other than a procession of classes of wildly varying quality. Watched a bunch of movies, went to a handful of birthday parties (including my own) and toiled away on my thesis. Not exactly the stuff bloggy dreams are made of.

Let's see... classes...

Understanding Terrorism: The name says it all. Taught by two profs: one for Islamic terrorism, and one for everything else. The "everything else" prof presented a pleasantly comprehensive picture of terrorism the world over, but the Islamist terror guru really shied away from answering my questions, preferring instead to give a general history of the Middle East from the days of Isaac and Ishmael. A minor disappointment.

Middle Eastern Studies: Pretty much what you'd expect, but taught by a trio of profs (Iraqi/American/French) with some impressive experience between them. All of them have been to Iraq lately - one even served there with the US military... just the kind of perspective you can't really get from the news. Well worthwhile.

Urban Violence: Utter drivel in which our prof explained in droning detail that there was some sort of a "Cold War" between so-called "Superpowers" during the latter half of the last century.

Conflict Resolution and Mediation: Downright nifty class on negotiation and makin' folks get along, by a visiting professor from Israel/Turkey. Good times - highly inventive, lots of different techniques covered, and oodles of video clips from the Emperor's New Groove. Should have done this at the beginning of the year.

More news to follow!

I miss my dignity...

2006-04-06T13:19:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was a very dignified day for me at school. In the midst of a discussion about the roots of Islamic terrorism, I attempted to turn my head and yawn quietly to myself – I was up too late the night before reading about things I no longer remember. Would that it had ended there.

In the middle of the yawn, without warning or choice, a great wrenching burp tore loose from somewhere deep inside my lungs, and forced itself out my throat. I had no option in the matter – my muscles were otherwise occupied with the yawn. I had a split second to think “Perhaps that only sounded loud in my head. Perhaps no one else in the class is even vaguely aware of my crudeness.

Then the student next to me slumped quietly in his seat, hiding his head. The lecture stopped, and all eyes latched onto me. The teacher, mid-word, swiveled to face me, asking “Was that what I think it was” while the rest of the class detonated into awkward laughter. I pleaded for clemency, tried to explain to everyone that this was a biological glitch, no more an act of rudeness or will than a heartbeat. Then I simply suggested that, as everyone had had their laughs, it was time to move on and salvage what we could from the smoking wreckage of the class.

Two hours later, some of my classmates were still laughing so hard they had to periodically flee the room and cackle in the hallway. This morning, my professor made three separate references to the incident in the first eight minutes of class. I’m fairly certain someone will make a speech about my burp at graduation.

Movies, part number ?

2006-04-04T11:03:00.000-06:00

As you may have inferred, there's not a lot to do in the tiny farm town I currently call home, so the movie theatre a few miles away and the video store down the street get an awful lot of my attention. So, without further ado, here's my next installment in my ever-fascinating blather about the movies I've seen!

Walk the Line: Sad, sweet, and occasionally melodramatic but a generally good time with romping great music. Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix both vanish completely into their roles, showing far more depth than I knew they were capable of. While it certainly affirms the apparently universal rule that all blockbuster movie musicians must be drug-addled philandering idiots, I found it rather less grating than Ray. Perhaps that’s because it accomplished the previously unthinkable feat of making me enjoy 2 hours of country music. Three and a half stars out of five.

Brokeback Mountain: Stunningly photographed, smartly written, and possibly the saddest film I’ve ever seen. Heath Ledger, in particular, gives one of the finest performances of recent years, ably supported by Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Williams. Weirdly enough, it wasn’t even all that gay – just a very well-made, very moving flick. Five stars.

Good Night, and Good Luck: Small, smart film about resisting the subtle tyrannies that undermine everyday democracy. Like Munich, this is a fine examination of today’s problem through the lens of history. David Strathairn is phenomenal as Edward R. Murrow, fighting the good fight against Joseph McCarthy, who is here largely a metaphor for the specter of totalitarianism that crops up from time to time in American political life. This otherwise excellent film is overburdened by unnecessary supporting characters, and suffers from occasionally lumpy pacing, but still delivers a potent message in a simple package. Four out of five.

A History of Violence: There’s a lot I didn’t get about this movie, but I could dimly perceive that there were brilliant iceberg-like layers of meaning under the surface. The violence is appropriately awful in this examination of redemption and deception, and Viggo Mortensen is surprisingly apt as a man attempting to bury a cruel past. This already-excellent movie will, I’m sure, improve markedly once I can watch the commentary track and have David Cronenberg spell out all his arcane symbolism for me. Four and a half out of five stars

Ice Age 2: What can I say about a movie that features the immortal, incomparable, indefatigable Scrat? It didn’t have as many layers as a Wallace and Gromit adventure or a Pixar film, and it was perhaps a little more targeted at the kiddies than the first Ice Age, but so what? If the dancing mini-sloths, musical quips like “if your species will continue, clap your hands”, and (of course) the Scrat himself don’t win you over, then you’re beyond hope already. Suppress your higher brain function and giggle happily through the whole thing.
Four stars out of five.

Jarhead: I guess it can’t be easy making a movie about how boring war is without making the movie itself dull as dishwater. This exploration of the dehumanization of military training is buoyed by uniformly excellent acting (especially from Peter Sarsgaard, and the visuals of the Gulf War are hideously, unmistakably authentic. But after starting well, Jarhead begins to flounder halfway through, and stretches on at least a half-hour past its bedtime without any substantial resolution. I know that’s the whole point, but it still brought me down. Three (generous) stars.

Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid: Not even so bad it’s good. This is the kind of crap I find on TV when I’m cooking for two hours and need something to occupy my eyes as I chop garlic. There aren’t enough hours in the day to discuss the ways this movie sucked. One star.

Well, that’s it for now, ladies and gentlemen. My viewing itinerary for the coming days includes: Downfall, V for Vendetta, Inside Man, Hustle and Flow, and perhaps even The Chronicles of Narnia. I’ve nearly drained the pool of fine movies available at the video store.

A whole lot's happened...

2006-03-23T12:32:00.000-06:00

First up, I offer a world of congratulations to my brother on the birth of his son, Raine Michael Rushton Sonelle, whose existencec became known to me merely a week ago. Can't wait to meet the little guy, who currently resides in Montreal.

The blog has suffered a bit of late as life has taken on some frenetic proportions. Commitment number one was the UPeace Model United Nations conference, which drew some 150 delegates, mostly from within Costa Rica, and threatened to devolve into a nightmare of Bushian proportions. Fortunately, much of it came together at the last minute and most delegates were unaware of the great well of chaos behind the scenes. My committee, where I represented China, addressed the issue of Iran's nuclear weapons program over three looong but entertaining days (Iran got quite snooty at times). I passed a resolution and won the Best Delegate award - yay me!

Other than that, my thesis looms and I'm busily digesting all I can about evolutionary psychology, while attempting to keep fed. I have approximately 300 pages of papers due in the next 3 months, so life is a touch busy. I'm also writing endlessly stimulating tracts on the symbology of terrorism and Iran's nuclear weapons, on which I have a short paper semi-published here. Another yay me!

In other news, I'm still hoping to visit Panama in April, when the entirety of Central America apparently enters a coma for the week leading up to Easter. I've applied for the aforementioned job in Thailand, as well as another in Afghanistan (not to terrify Mom, I swear), but still have no firm plans for what to do when school ceases to exist in June. Although I still plan to take a month to learn Spanish, but I know not where to head after that, nor how to fund said wanderings. We'll see.

P.S. In political affairs, I'm thrilled by the news that Basque separatist/terrorist group ETA has declared a unilateral permanent ceasefire. Who knows if it'll stick, but it would be nice to see an end to one of history's stupidest guerrilla campaigns.

Hugs 'til next time (when I post about the latetst crop of movies I've seen)!

Baby steps...

2006-03-11T12:33:00.000-06:00

Slobodan Milosevic, the Butcher of the Balkans, has been found dead in his cell, apparently of natural causes.

I'd certainly be happier if he'd been successfully tried and convicted first, but this is better than the travesty that occurred when Pol Pot died a free man. The wheels turn slowly, but they do turn.

That didn't work...

2006-03-03T16:16:00.000-06:00

So the Flickr Uploadr which was to bequeath my vacation photos on the wired world ran afoul of the perplexing instability of the University internet access. I'll try again tomorrow or Monday. Argh.

In other news, I'm attempting to determine how I feel about taking a job in Thailand teaching Burmese refugees about sustainable development. It's a phenomenal opportunity, but would take a long two years, pay next to nothing, and might pull me away from the string of friends' weddings and other commitments I've sworn to uphold. We'll see. I'm thinking hard about it.

Shower monkeys!

2006-02-28T22:41:00.000-06:00

Even poor students need a little time away once in a while. With that indulgent bit of self-pity in mind, Rachel and I hitched a ride with an outbound classmate this Friday and wound up in Quepos, a largely unremarkable village on Costa Rica’s wondrous Southern Pacific Coast. Quepos is a tiny tourist hamlet replete with passable but extortionate restaurants, criminally mendacious hotel owners (argh), and more tour operators than residents. Yet it is affordable, and serves an indispensable purpose as the gateway to Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio, a minute collection of seashore, fertile estuary, and verdant rainforest that easily ranks as one of Costa Rica’s finest treasures.

Though truly tiny at a mere 1625 hectares, Manuel Antonio has one of the most vast and varied collections of wildlife in this extraordinarily diverse country. The trees teem with the fascinating white-faced capuchin, a preternaturally nimble and wonderfully expressive monkey with little interest in humans. We lurked gawking beneath a palm tree as one of the little beasties wrench palm fronds loose from the tree and dropped them dismissively, so to feast with obvious glee on the immense ants, spiders, and associated bugs previously sheltered within. Fresh from their banquet, the monkeys observed us, ignored us, and only interacted with the tourist world when they leapt onto the head-high pipes feeding the freshwater showers off the beach. Naturally, this brought endless amusement as swimmers wandered up to rinse off the sea salt only to find thirsty monkeys wrapped around the showerheads.
We also met some aloof and nearly invisible three-toed sloths, rare in much of their former habitat but plentiful in Costa Rica’s many parks. They weren’t particular responsive to our requests for closer photos, but possibly we were too impatient. The park was absolutely littered with geckos and iguanas ranging from baby-finger-size to larger than my arm. A volleyball-sized turtle hid impassively while I tried and failed to photograph him. I reluctantly left him in peace and wandered throughout the park’s countless picturesque beaches and sweeping lookout trails, only marginally impaired by the merciless heat and tropical sun. Birds hollered in every imaginable fashion, but were nearly invisible in the thick brush; besides, I would have been unable to put names to them even if I could spot them. Brilliant blue butterflies larger than my hand periodically flickered from the bushes, stopped us in our tracks and mystified our cameras, and vanished abruptly. It’s a magical place, diminished only by the omnipresence of some… other… wildlife.
Manuel Antonio National Park is also one of Costa Rica’s greatest refuges for a rather less rare but still amusing species: the Great-Bellied Gringo! I feel marginally guilty for noting this, but it’s astonishing to see the number and girth of the horde of American tourists who frequent the place. I am perpetually mortified whenever I glimpse the obvious poor health of most Americans… the dimensions (pun intended) of the national obesity epidemic there are immensely visible

Manuel Antonio is not the region’s only draw. The strip of luxury hotels and million-dollar condos that lines the road from Quepos to Manuel Antonio also hosts one of Costa Rica’s worst-kept secrets, a unique, erm… restaurant called El Avion. El Avion hosts Ollie’s Folly, a 50’s-era US military cargo plane built right into the middle level of a three-story open-air restaurant. The plane is (you guessed it) named for Colonel Oliver North, the charismatic thug who lent a veneer of deniability to Ronald Reagan’s attempt to finance an illegal gorilla war in Nicaragua by selling guns to Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran. The plane was bound for the Nicaraguan Contras by way of Costa Rica when the US Congress got wind of the whole sordid affair in the mid-1980s and terminated the program. So El Avion simply lurked in a hangar in San Jose for fifteen years until some wily entrepreneurs bought her up, carted her piece by piece to the coast, and built a restaurant around the reassembled aircraft and a bar inside. I’m reasonably certain this is the only restaurant of its type anywhere. Food wasn’t bad, either; best fajitas I’ve had in the last six months.

That was Saturday… the very best was yet to come. The following morning, largely out of curiousity, I plunked down $60 dollars I really, really, really don’t have, and asked the helpful American at a tiny tour kiosk for the most “extreme” experience available in Quepos. Not long thereafter, a pleasant Tico showed up in a battered SUV and whisked Rachel and I about fifty kilometres out of town and up a mountain, where one of the most genuinely exhilarating and foolish experiences of my life awaited me.
In Nicaragua in October, I tried something called a “zip-line” tour, where helpful guides attached me to cables 15 metres above the ground and sent me gleefully gliding among the immense shade trees that dotted a hillside coffee plantation. Silly me; in my ignorance, I failed to see that my Nicaraguan experience wasn’t even worthy of the zip-line name. Now I know better.
Where once I zipped from tree to tree, Quepos’ Sky Mountain experience sent me careening literally from mountaintop to mountaintop, again and again, along half-kilometre steel cables anchored to enormous alpine platforms. Attached only by a waist harness, I clamped my hands onto a simple but sturdy pulley and zoomed, cheering and only occasionally terrified, through the trees and sometimes hundreds of metres over them. The kinetic view from the cable was indescribable; the glories of the Pacific coast, the distant green parks, the vast palm and pineapple plantations, and the impossibly lush rainforest mountains created a panorama like virtually nothing I’ve ever seen. Photos were impossible - survival was a rather more pressing concern. Before the tour, I whined about the $60 fee; now I think I’d go hungry for a month just to try it again with a camera in hand.

Now I’m back at school in Ciudad Colon, more’s the pity, but I’m cheerfully proselytizing the whole experience to everyone in sight. That includes everyone reading this… and if you’re not willing to bet your life on an implausibly thin piece of nylon, will you at least wire me the money to do it again myself?

Ok, hugs to all, to my readings and thesis I flee. Next up – photos on Thursday!!!

In which all bodes ill...

2006-02-23T10:41:00.000-06:00

I just wanted to rant, briefly, that it seems awfully bloody likely that the destruction of the Al-Askariya Mosque in Iraq is a portent of profoundly ugly things to come, and the last nail in the coffin of the comprehensive American failure there. Damn it... there's no way this can end well.

The symbolism of destroying this, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam and closely associated with the Imam Mehdi, the Shia saviour of humanity, will almost certainly be too vicious for Shia Iraqis to eventually forgive. Sunni mosques are burning all over Iraq after reprisal attacks. Though it's tempting to think this is just another round of the periodic spasms of violence in Iraq, I suspect this is in fact the final straw that finally drives Iraq into all-out civil war.

Happy Hug Day!

2006-02-14T16:15:00.000-06:00

In keeping with my huggy traditions, I've been attempting to earn the title "Huggiest Person in Central America", which has turned out to be considerably more difficult than being the huggiest person in Africa, inasmuch as the UPeace crowd are a pretty huggy bunch.

But it's a worthwhile effort all the same, and given a few more months, I'm certain I'll persevere - wish me luck!

In keeping with my tradition...

2006-02-13T10:37:00.000-06:00

...of pirating post ideas from Bree, I'm hereby briefly blogging about the movies I've seen in the last couple months. One of Costa Rica's oddities is that most movies arrive in the video stores before they hit the theatres, but between them I've been able to catch a solid selection of films in the New Year.

January to Mid-Frebruaryish

Munich
Complex, a touch overlong, and occasionally absent-minded, Steven Spielberg's rumination on the moral costs of counter-terrorism is still profoundly moving and expertly forged. The performances are uniformly excellent, Kaminski's cinematography is better than anything else of the last year, and the violence is excruciating - as it should be. Spielberg seems to have turfed his endless need to redeem his characters in the final frame - no one ends the story any safer, any wiser, or any happier than when they started. It left me pondering for days afterwards, and worthy of another viewing as soon as I can stomach it. Five stars out of five.

Syriana
I'm wrapping up a Master's degree in international politics, writing a thesis about the psychology of religious terrorism. So when I watch Syriana and fail to grasp what links Character X to Character Y, or exactly how the requisite evil corporation manipulates the US government into installing a puppet emir in a fictional Arab oil state, I comfortably blame my confusion on sloppy storytelling rather than my own inability to follow the film. Really, did it have to be this convoluted? Though a carbon-copy of Traffic (with oil substituted for drugs), Syriana is often sharply-written, with fine performances from a vast ensemble cast, and enjoys glorious desert photography. But it suffers from the apparently irresistible need of any self-professed Important Film to warp international politics into a set of crude cliches, with brazen evil lurking in every boardroom and cabinet office. What little I know of the real world of oil, money and power suggests a stage far more intricate, greyer, and ultimately much more frightening than this disappointing film. Three stars (barely) out of five.

The Constant Gardener
This fine flick deserves many of the same naggy criticisms I hurled at Syriana, but boasts even better photography, a sharply-winding but ultimately comprehensible script, and truly extraordinary performances from both Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz. Sadder than a box full of three-legged kittens, but worth the emotional battery. Four stars out of five.

Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
I've never seen Citizen Kane, but even absent that comparison, I'm almost certain that Wallace and Gromit is the finest film ever made, anywhere, by anyone. To try to describe it would be a crime. A masterpiece on every imaginable and unimaginable level. Five stars out of five (duh).

Crash
Yet another Important Film (too many of these this year), this exploration of American racial tension starts out by hobbling itself with cliches, and almost had me reaching for the remote in teh first ten minutes. But then Crash smartened up, picked up the pace, and became a surprisingly insightful, nuanced discussion of all the things Americans think about but go to great lengths to avoid talking about. A huge and talented cast, an increasingly engrossing script, and steady-but-not-too-showy direction made this a very pleasant surprise. Four and a half stars.

Lord of War
Possibly the most cynical film I've ever seen, and a surprisingly successful guilty pleasure. Andrew Niccol's exploration of the moral promiscuity of the global arms trade is incisive, over-the-top, and tons of fun until it becomes depressing as hell. It's a nice thing to see any movie these days that's so reliant on quiet conversation, with nary a gunfight to be found. Occasionally too self-referential for its own good, and the subject matter eventually (and inevitably) drives the viewer into a moral abyss, but a great ride while it lasts.

Transporter 2
I'm not hard to please when it comes to brainless beat-em-ups. But I don't comprehend how a movie this astonishingly stupid ever got made - and with only one worthwhile fight scene in the entire miserable mix. Ugh. One and a half stars.

I think that's it for now. Still looking forward to Good Night and Good Luck, Brokeback Mountain, Night Watch, and, above all, Ice Age 2. Good times lie ahead.

The greatest injustice in all human history...

2006-02-11T15:16:00.000-06:00

I have no Canadian news access...

In the middle of the Winter Olympics...

While, this being Latin America, ESPN and Fox Sports are only covering soccer...

and even NBC only spends 20 minutes a day covering the (exclusively American) Olympic results...

For someone who usually goes without sleep for two weeks every four years, this is a difficult thing to handle.

Anybody want to volunteer to keep me posted via this blog?

In which I relate the details which no one else really wants to hear...

2006-02-08T16:02:00.000-06:00

Well, the election's all done with, I almost kinda-sorta met Nobel Prize winner Oscar Arias, the vote's too close to call, and it'll be two weeks or so before this ship of state has a captain. It's time for me to get back to my schoolwork.

Having finished my fascinating three-week course on terrorism and the mass media, I've now moved on to Conflict Management, the year's flagship course and apparently a great primer on how to conduct peace negotiations. I'm looking forward to it, particularly since my first assignment is to head a simulation, in which I play the leader of a small Southeast Asian country deciding whether or not to get all snippy with the United States. Good times.

I've also been forced, by deadline more than common sense, to get my all-important thesis under way. After two or three topic changes, I seem to have settled on "The Evolutionary Psychology of Religious Violence", a slightly amateurish exploration of the ways a few universal evolutionary quirks can be manipulated in weird ways to produce a religious terrorist. Interesting stuff, though it grows more complicated every time I look at it and it's starting to hurt my noggin'.

More notably, the fact that I've started my thesis marks the just-past-halfway point in my year in Costa Rica. I've been here almost 6 months, and I'm done in another five or so. Still not a clue what the next step is, but if history guides me, something funky will come up.

If only I spoke Spanish...

2006-02-03T19:21:00.000-06:00

Very busy today, all through Monday. I'm an official international observer for the Costa Rican elections. Yay me! Today that consisted of lounging in the auditorium at the San Jose Radisson, struggling desperately to understand the arcane tongue spoken by the candidates. Maybe it will percolate through my brainmeats by tomorrow, when I resume such stimulating activities.

Back for a minute...

2006-02-01T14:25:00.000-06:00

Some obscure tropical illness has rendered me useless for the last couple of days, but I've summoned the energy to not post about the State of the Union address.

Once upon a time, I blogged in sardonic detail about the inanity and vicious falsehood of King George's yearly blather. But this one just didn't seem worth the trouble, nor would it have had I not been fighting off this unfathomable Costa Rican dizzy-flu (don't ask). This speech was neither offensive enough nor detailed enough nor sufficiently hilarious to warrant even this brief post. Which I why I'll stop writing now.

I miss cheese...

2006-01-24T13:04:00.000-06:00

Costa Rican cheese is all the same plaintive shade of pale beige, it tastes like absurdly salty egg nog, and it squeaks when I eat it.

I miss real cheese...

A valid excuse...

2006-01-11T14:41:00.000-06:00

I've been absent from the blog world these last two weeks for a damn good reason. The day after my last post, my better half was struck with appendicitis and I've spent the time since then monitoring her recovery from an emergency appendectomy. She's almost better now, and back up and about, and soon my blog will recover as well.

Another one down...

2005-12-31T13:16:00.000-06:00

I think I'll define the past year as beginning in mid-November 2004, when I hit Botswana and my life veered substantially from its rather mundane original path. Since then, I´ve made my first visits to nine countries - a personal best! In chronological order : Botswana, South Africa, Lesotho, Zambia, Zimbabwe (surprisingly glorious), Mozambique, Swaziland, Costa Rica, Nicaragua. I´ve lived in 7 different homes and had 6 different jobs (including studenthood). I've stumbled through half of my master's degree and learned a reasonable chunk of a not-too-foreign language. I've eaten unspeakable quantities of fried chicken, beef stew, and beans and rice... and precious little ostrich, warthog, antelope, and mophane (don't ask). I swam with a whale shark, scaled a few mountains I shouldn't have underestimated, and stared mouth agape at a wild baby elephant. I visited ancient cities I saw in video games 15 years ago (and never assumed were actually real) and villages a day´s horseback ride from the nearest road, spent many consecutive days without either going indoors or putting shoes on, and flirted with death a couple of times I shouldn't have. I met hundreds of new and fascinating people and made a handful of new lifelong friends. I witnessed quite a few things I wish I hadn't and even got my first eyeball sunburn, but I neither caught malaria nor otherwise died, so things have gone as well as I could have hoped for. It's been my most eventful year, methinks.

I think it unlikely that 2006 will bring as many stories to tell, but it's worth a shot. If I'm lucky, I'll visit Panama, Peru, and maybe even China. I'll finish this degree and get back to selling my soul to corporate taskmasters and accumulating pricey electronic trinkets... or I could go back to Africa. Also, given a minute dose of luck and a generous dollop of the good sense that I occasionally lacked in the past year, I'll survive 2006 with few additional scars.

Those few who still visit this site, thanks for your tolerant and patient patronage, and in 2006 I'll return with much more detail.

My predictable resolution: blog more!

In which I have no excuse...

2005-12-27T21:05:00.000-06:00

... for not posting more.

Civilization 4 has eaten my life. That's the only reason I haven't touched the blog since Christmas, nor written about the following:

-My parents spending Christmas at my new apartment in Ciudad Colon.
-My glorious snorkeling trip in Cahuita National Park, from which there will be underwater images in a few weeks (once the ancient disposable film returns to Canada for development).
-The continuation of my glorious culinary adventures in Cahuita.
-The endless staccato detonation of firecrackers that has punctuated nearly every waking moment since the second week of December.

Actually, I will post about that last one at the moment (the rest will wait). As I intimated when chronicling my brief adventure in Nicaragua, noisemaking is a cherished practice here and interrupting the peaceful slumber of another is not generally considered rude in Central America. What I've just realized is that virtually all the pyrotechnics that pulverize my sleep have no visual effects nor complex whistles... just a simple "Pow". That is, they don't entertain their ignitor, nor provide a sparkling beacon by which to track and tenderize said miscreant. Their explicit sole purpose is to wake people up.

That's the most obnoxious minor irritation I've ever encountered.

In which I realize...

2005-12-25T19:38:00.000-06:00

that blogging about my vacation at the beach isn't nearly as exciting to who aren't me as hearing about my wanderings in elephant-infested Africa.

So I offer my warmest holiday wishes, and I rejoice in the fact that my eyeballs have healed (ow!), and I bid you adieu until tomorrow, when more detail will be forthcoming.

Remember the words of Krusty...

I don´t even know what day of the week it is...

2005-12-23T12:46:00.000-06:00

I´m visiting Puerto Viejo right now, a little tourist town on Costa Rica´s Southern Caribbean coast. It´s hot. Really hot.

But also quite pretty and full of happy people. There´s endless reggae pouring from the handful of short buildings clustered in the town centre, and the Rastas who form the heart of Costa Rica´s small Anglophone culture are scattered everywhere, lazing in the heat. They´ve got the right idea. I shouldn´t be here at an internet cafe at the moment.

My folks arrived three days ago, and after discovering that their hotel had forgotten their existence and their reservation, they found a few nights lodging in San José with an old friend. We visited the city center and the small but quite entertaining amusement park in the suburban outskirts (where, sadly, I received sunburnt eyeballs... no fun, that). Yesterday we finally rocketed from San José, in a tiny rented SUV, to the coastal hamlet of Cahuita, a few kilometres north of Puerto Viejo. This part of the coast is festooned with coconut and banana trees so densely packed that the forest is about impenetrable. Starfruit, mangos and papayas litter the ground, growing too plentifully for the locals and tourists to devour them all. The beach sand is a dark volcanic grey, nearly black, and vast piles of torn fronds of the innumerable palm trees dampen the violence of the surf.

We´ve most of the time since arriving lazing about and eating, both of which Cahuita is spectatularly well-suited to. The Jamaican-inspired local cuisine is worlds away from the rice-and-beans blandness of the Central Valley where I live, so now I´m feasting on enormous portions of seafood and smoked chicken slathered in curry and peanut and coconut. Yay!

Having come to Puerto Viejo just to visit the bank, we´re back to Cahuita tonight, where we´ll spend another couple night sleeping and eating. I´m going to try to snorkel the local reefs tomorrow without being incinerated by the big evil fireball in the sky. Then, on Christmas day, we´re headed back to Ciudad Colon, where you´ll hear more from me.

In case I don´t post before then, you have my finest, happiest, most generous non-denominational wishes for a great holiday season. Spend it well!

In which the slow and uninteresting rehabilitation continues...

2005-12-19T13:03:00.000-06:00

Yay! Tomorrow the Tempodog arrives! We´re going to (inexplicably) spend a couple of days in the dullish urban muck of San Jose, then vanish to the Caribbean beaches of Cahuita, the village home of Costa Rica´s small native anglophone community. I hear it´s nice. And my parents are coming too!

King Kong was waaaaaay overlong, and occasionally downright silly. But it was often genuinely resonant, and the astonishing T-Rex battle far outstrips my capacity to describe in actual words. But really, the whole movie could have been at least a half hour shorter. All told, a minor disappointment, but only because I was expecting an awful lot.

A post of staggeringly little consequence...

2005-12-18T16:13:00.000-06:00

Yay! King Kong has arrived! In English!!!

Boo! I´ve been swatting these all week. They´re easy to kill but distressingly numerous, and carry the unpleasantly-named Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever. Fortunately, they only operate in the daytime, leaving my sleep mostly restful.

But at least I get to see King Kong! And maybe even Munich and Syriana will someday strike theaters here...

Two rapidly consecutive posts? Will wonders never cease?

2005-12-16T14:17:00.000-06:00

I tell you, I'm serious about rehabilitating this blog.

In half an hour, the UPeace bus will wind away from campus and through the vast park and coffee plantation (long since denuded of beans by criminally-underpaid Nicaraguan migrants) that shrouds the campus, and my first semester will come to an end. Christmas is upon us, and perhaps half the students have already fled for colder climes, and most of the rest are leaving over the weekend, abandoning those of me too poor to seek out the snow. After four months, there's fairly little to do in Costa Rica when you're not swimming in wealth.

But joyously, my parents and the Tempodog will be coming to visit in the imminent days, and we'll spend a few days wandering the Caribbean beaches and trying to find spicy food. I'll introduce my biological family to my host family, marvel at the interlingual stumbling, and probably let my folks go on their merry way up to volcano country on the 26th, simply because the area is too fantastically pricey. It'll be nice to see them.

As Krusty the Klown said in his Non-denominational Holiday Fun Fest - "Everybody have a Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, a Craaaaazy Kwanzaa, a tip-top Tet, and a solemn, dignified Ramadan." Take it to heart, please, but since I plan to post again before then, I'll hold off on final best wishes.

P.S. I was remiss last time in failling to sing the praises of Hassan El-Menyawi, an Egyptian-Canadian professor whose indefatigable enthusiasm and terrifying life experiences made his class on governance and human rights the high point of a semester that was otherwise stunning in its academic mediocrity.

P.P.S. Naturally, I accept Christmas presents via Paypal.

Six weeks later...

2005-12-14T11:57:00.000-06:00

It's funny. Life here is pretty dang dull - temperate weather, agreeable daily routine, mdestly challenging schoolwork - and I'd convinced myself that I couldn't blog unless I had something interesting to say. Then I started skimming mine blogs of old this morning, and discovered that the absence of interesting opinions has never stopped me before. I guess I have no excuse, and had better start talking again.

It's been six weeks. I offer no excuses or apologies - at the end of each school day (usually 1PM) I'm sufficiently eager to flee from campus that the last thing on my mind is to sit down for twenty minutes and spew out a blog post. But somehow, I managed (more or less) to hold up my end of the internet while in Vancouver, Victoria, and Botswana, so I'm going to try to rediscipline myself and make regular (once or twice a week at least) posts.

For (uninteresting) starters, I've wrapped up my first semester of classes. I took courses in Conflict Management and Peace, Political Economy and Peace, and Sustainable Development and Peace, along with a few procedural time-killing short classes. Noticing a theme here? It's all about peace. But it sounds more constructive than it is.

Conflict Management and Peace was a quick and cursory look at the root structural factors behind civil war, things like ethnic discord and stealable resources. It sounds like a nifty area, and I guess it is, but in two weeks we couldn't do much more than scan a handful of lists and snark at each other.

Political Economy and Peace was run by a burned-out old British anarchist whose dry wit couldn't conceal his general contempt for all points of view. I don't just mean opposing points of view. I mean the man never liked capitalism, fell out of love with communism, and has even lost his infatuation with anarcho-syndicalism (don't ask). Now he just don't believe in nuthin' no more. This bitterness made the class more an exercise in sniping at The Man rather than an exploration of the way the world economy actually works.

Sustainable Development and Peace was provocative and occasionally even stimulating, but also supremely touchy-feely and profoundly devoid of specifics. By this point everybody was eager for more practical knowledge, which was sorely lacking.

I give the first semester a C-plus, which simply seems to be the way of things here. Semester 1 lays the theoretical groundwork for the much more practical Semester 2 to follow. My department head, who will be teaching us a course on terrorism and the mass media, just spent 6 weeks in Iraq chronicling the country's disintegration for the US State Department (I'm surprised she didn't get blacklisted for being French). She knows her stuff, and I'm looking forward to the class.

There's an upside to all this touchy-feeliness... I haven't spoken to anyone who's gotten less than an A in any class. I actually got an A-plus-plus-plus on one test, from an impressively enthusiastic teacher.

More interesting things to follow. Yeah, I know, you'll believe it when you see it.

P.S. I may be visiting China in March if I can raise the money.

A Fable...

2005-11-01T12:12:00.000-06:00

Upon my return from Nicaragua (in advance of the ultimately disappointing Hurricane Beta), my university not-so-politely demanded my passport for processing. Yet somewhere between my bedroom and the school, said passport evaporated yesterday. In a state of increasing frustration, I spent most of last night disassembling my room and scouring the house for that distressingly consequential bundle of pages... to no avail. Grasping at straws, I had resigned myself to looking for it on the school bus this morning. Yet on the 20-minute trek (over some of the worst road I've ever seen) to the bus stop, a wonderful Costa Rican woman, a youngish grandmother if I had to guess, asked our passing band "Which one is Paul?" She had found my passport up the street, where I had presumably dropped it while running down a hill after my daily visit with my adopted cow (more on that later). Thanking her profusely, and making a mental note of her home so to thank her with a small gift later, I took stock of the situation.

First, through no skill of my own, my passport was returned to me.

Second, while I scavenged my room for the missing trinket, I found a hundred bucks I'd thought lost forever.

The twin morals of the story: Carelessness pays, and the universe will always insulate us from the consequences of our mistakes.

Excellent. This knowledge will serve me well in future.

This will be interesting...

2005-10-27T08:11:00.000-06:00

So I'm in Nicaragua...

And there's a hurricane coming...

This will be a first for me.

Mi chiste muy malo!

2005-10-14T17:29:00.000-06:00

Cual es el animal mas perosozo del mundo?
Un pez!

Por que?

Que hace un pez todo el dia?

Nada!!!!!

Hahahahahahaha!

Photos!

2005-09-21T12:54:00.000-06:00

Lots of 'em!

I'm still alive!

2005-09-20T16:55:00.000-06:00

The last three weeks have been devoured by a horrendous exercise in sadism called the "Introduction to Peace and Conflict Studies Foundation Course", an endless monstrosity dedicated to teaching multicultural skills (primarily through card games and pencil-drawing exercises) to the two or three people at the school who don't have any multicultural experience. Sadly, everybody else had to spend eight hours a day on it too. My blogging and emailing suffered horribly as a result.

But it's done now! And the first real class of my program, "International Law, Governance and Human Rights", has begun most promisingly. Tonight's readings are a comic book about Machiavelli and a few paragraphs from Paolo Coelho's "The Alchemist". The prof is an Egyptian-Canadian named Hassan who was first specialized in Islamic Law before he was jailed and tortured for gay rights activism - something of an eclectic fellow.

And now I have free time, more or less! I also have basic internet access at homem, and am looking most forward to blogging regularly. When I have batteries for my camera, I'll upload oodles of beach photos and generically pretty shots of sunset over a volcanic lake.

Beaches, you say? As it happens, Costa Rica is sandwiched between the Pacific and the Caribbean, which creates lounging opportunities irresistible even to a committed beach-o-phobe like myself. Among the many things I've failed to write about so far: a week and a bit ago, I visited the touristy but pleasantly close (about 2 hours away) Jaco Beach and took a surfing lesson. Cost $30 I didn't really have, but dang I had fun. While acquiring a fearsome sunburn, I actually managed to stand up on my beloved surfboard and ride the white waves for five or six seconds at a time - more than I'd expected for a first time (my failed expedition in Mozambique in April doesn't count). I lack photos of this excursion, but this weekend just past my wonderful host family organized a cheap'n'sweet expedition to several northern Pacific beaches, a national park, and the glorious but too-distant Volcan Arenal. Photos and details to follow tomorrow, when I have four hours to sit around and blog between morning classes and afternoon Spanish lessons.

Please, accept this post as the first in a long and imminent line of posts about my (sedentary) adventures here. More will come tomorrow - I promise.

In which I attempt to recover from my externally-imposed blogging slump...

2005-08-30T12:24:00.000-06:00

With pictures!

This is my school! There's little point in photographing the dull classrooms themselves, so I figured I'll just revel in the fact that coconuts grow at my school.

And these are some friends (and some people I don't know)!

More visual revelations to come tomorrow, and an account of my volcano trip! (Preview: it's not all that exciting.)

My bad...

2005-08-22T14:21:00.000-06:00

I've been caught with neither time nor photos nor wise words. My camera batteries are dead, so I have no photos of the glorious UPeace campus, and the bus out of the curious park/coffee plantation the campus rests in leaves in a few short moments. I promise to be back with oodles of pictures in one, possibly two days!

Living in poverty...

2005-08-19T13:37:00.000-06:00

La Casa Fiorella is a wondrously spacious and comfortable gated cluster of four or five houses on the edges of Ciudad Colon, itself at the fringes of San Jose, Costa Rica's capital. The proprietor, Fiorella di Leone, is a delightful pre-school teacher who lives there with her extended family, including her mother, several siblings, as-yet-uncounted nieces and nephews, five students (myself among them) a cheerful middle-aged Rottweiler named Greta, and two caged parrots whose habit of shrieking "HOLA!" at my approach disguises their startling bellicosity.

Set in a high-ceilinged, 3-bedroom house with spotless tile floors, my room is small but comfortable, with a little cable TV and the squeakiest bed in the Western world. The corrugated tin roof roars with the daily monsoons. I've been quite happy there so far. The complex, as is apparently common in Costa Rica, has only cold running water, and the hot showers are provided by a terrifying electrical contraption built into the showerhead, transgressing against every maxim I've ever heard about live wires and water. I've yet to test the good-sized swimming pool just outside, but it looks quite inviting.

More to follow on many topics... including my campus, my host family, and my clumsy Spanish.

No longer airborne...

2005-08-19T13:19:00.000-06:00

Sometime in the last few years of air travel, I developed the peculiar habit of sleeping through takeoff. It happens almost every time I catch a plane: I lumber aboard, overburdened with carry-on, stow everything, buckle into my miniscule seat, and then wake up midway to my destination. I don't really remember the last time I was conscious for takeoff... it's a little weird.

LAX is a nightmare, a filthy two-dimensional parody of an airport, terminals all in a long and cruel line designed to maximize walking and frustrate all travellers. Last time I flew through there, I was 8 years old, and thoroughly entranced by the experience. Now, nearly 20 years later, I simply lumbered through badly-labelled check-in desks and security gates manned by teenage screeners, paid $9.50 US for a microscopic "Wolfgang Puck Express" pepperoni pizza, and waited out my three-hour sentence in the world's most horribly designed airport. Maybe I've just been spoiled by the cleanliness, friendliness and efficiency of wonderful YVR.

Maybe not - Costa Rica's tiny airport is also a delightfully clean and speedy place, sparkling new, and I was almost sorry to leave. I was shocked by the transition from the A/C cool of the baggage terminal to the rainforest steam of San Jose's outskirts. My cabbie was a supremely friendly local with a thirst for insane speed and a preternatural instinct for evading potholes and onrushing poultry trucks. I spend the short ride staring at the gorgeous passing mountains, squat but looming with their proximity, slightly cloud-obscured but richly green and inviting. Perhaps exploring one is a worthy way to spend my weekend.

Next up: New home!

It begins anew...

2005-08-19T13:17:00.000-06:00

Thus ends my long hiatus from the blogosphere. Thanks to Eva for the blog name. Not surprisingly, this site will recount my adventures (limited though they are likely to be) as a student in Costa Rica. Photos will abound, since the internet is far more functional here than in Botswana.

More to follow...