Into the dark
The screen’s light
Sneaks from your bedroom door
Your face is bathed,
And you don’t need your hand to wipe it clean.

Hush
Now that nothing tugs at your time
Hush
Can you believe it happened?

Just because it doesn’t always last
Doesn’t mean it isn’t real
Just because it comes and goes
Doesn’t mean he feels it too

When you lie naked in the dark by the shower
The black light brings comfort of what it can be
Not what friends say it is now

Its sound and fury
Like a cymbal in the sky
or Marmite and moonbeams
Is shared with few
And signifyies what?

It’s hard, you said.
I hope you remember, I reply.
You will find him again.
I believe in you.

– 28 July 2008 (#5) –

You are not young and I am not familiar,
Though we are both middle class
that doesn’t mean a lot to you,
I feel the cicada skin of your body next to mine,
And still hear the sound of your voice through the walls,
Could what you know count less than you think?

When we ruined too easily
I stayed standing, leaning against that wall,
But the wall leaned away,
All I ever meant to do was love you,
Though I was frightened I overdid it

And in that final hour I stood naked,
dripping wet, in gumboots
with roses and grapes.
Baby you were dumbstruck,
Oh how we laughed

Now we set forth in different directions over wretched waters,
Uncertainty claimed the last ship that sailed,
It may be some time before we sight land,
Don’t mistake me for a stranger

When we get there, we’ll build our homes of new hopes
And I know
The sweet and sour tides will come and go
Until once more we’ll look to our separate skies
and believe it can rain again

– 4 August 2008 (#4) –

words with friends
words to myself
letters sent to you

why words haven’t made the white elephant disappear
words haven’t brought you to me or put me back inside my skin
but what encouragement is there in silence?
words always on my mind

multiple story lines weave us together
like strands of Deoxyribonucleic acid

G
A
T
C

partially untold, wholly unfinished
one story lingers and hovers
bringing with it headaches, sweats
and stapled eyelids
i’ve dreamt about it so many times before

its corrosive residue infiltrating the core
motility denied
a mutagen in the helix
an oxidative lesion
amortifying with a double strand break
turning all we could become into alphabet soup

drip
drip
drop

a river starts with a drop
enough drips will smooth a rock or mend a soul
in time

the constant rain nourishes the rice paddy
bathing the subterranean soil in droplets of succulence
sweet as manuka honey
it takes 3 to 6 months for the rice plant
to reach the mature grain stage

some say talking to plants make them grow
but they’re wrong,
just as words won’t make a sculpture from a rock
or a jealous mind twist a heart

time passes,
drip by drop

the birds sing softly in the morning
and the rice plant grows

– 27 June 2008 (#2) –

I wrench and turn with the should haves, what ifs and next times
Building an iron cage of rationality
to train the tempest
for tomorrow’s time of love

But ever recalcitrant it sweeps aside
that cold steel and black metal
of my cognitive creations

Stumbling, tumbling into reality
To bend space and time with
Flash floods of feeling

My body is dragged under the water
My face smashing on the river bed
Sharp rock corners tearing red my cheek
Silt and gravel puncturing my lips
Grinding the back of my teeth

I strike out at the water
Flailing fists
Which way to go?

No light penetrates the surface
Save for the black light of that cold steel cage

I climb back inside, stymied and stifled
Because death by suffocation is slower than drowning
And I don’t wanna die,
just yet.

– 2 July 2008 (#3) –

As part of this we’ve moved to WordPress version 2 and a slightly different look. Since they are hosting it they will handle all future maintenance such as software and security upgrades. This will free up time for me to concentrate on the more important work of actually writing blog posts…… hmmm…… we’ll see.

The Up Series is a British documentary series that for the last 49 years has tracked the lives of a group of children every seven years as they have aged. It is placed 26th in a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes compiled by the British Film Institute. The first show in 1964 showed the fourteen children at the age of seven. They had intentionally been selected from both rich and poor backgrounds, with the underlying sociological assumption that class structure was so strong that a person’s life path would be set at birth. Over the last 49 years this has largely been borne out.

I watched the latest instalment of the series, broadcast last Saturday morning, with my 92 year old grandmother who has advanced pancreatic cancer. Do you think she was interested in the show? Personally I found it hard to watch the participants tell their life story over the last seven years and not start thinking of mine own. As creatures who inhabit symbolic worlds, we have the uniquely human capacity to organise our experiences around the concept of an enduring self, and the ability to weave a story about that self that extends through time and helps us make sense of who were are and how to act in the world, if at the very least to spite post-modern claims of it being otherwise.
Most commonly, this is a story with work or family as a central theme, invited by that perennial cocktail party question “And what do you do?” It’s not often however, that we stop to consider our life story in its entirety. And that is probably a good thing, for it can be an anxious self-absorbing thing to do. The purpose of this year’s Xmas email to you is not to prompt the same search in yourself, but to reveal how I came to do exactly that and what I discovered, and in doing so hopefully share some of what I have been up to this year, particularly for those of you whilst not in my immediate life, are in my thoughts nevertheless. I hope also, that instead of devolving into just meaningless self-indulgent blabbering, there will be something salient you can relate to. With that in mind I have tried to include something for everyone no matter their stage of life, be it single/studying/travelling, enjoying the last few years of unmarried freedom, depressed or down and out, working on the art of giving to another whilst still maintaining a lively sense of self, departing or breaking up (may Janus, the Greek God of beginnings and endings, look favourably on you and may you be comforted in the knowledge that they are one and the same thing), moving into a more committed way of life with someone you love, or with children for the first time. What follows is a serious attempt to understand life from a developmental perspective, so be warned! To help you stay awake whilst you attempt to read this personal missive, ask someone to stand beside and poke you to a regulated rhythm with a sharp stick or slap you with a wet noodle. Coffee also works. For those hoping for something with a little more sordidness, perhaps some tales of love, lust and adventure on the high seas of life, I’m sorry but a better bet would be the David Attenborough epic The Private Life of Plants. Or just wait until next year’s Xmas email, which on second thoughts (knowing me) will probably be more of the same (all the while having to compete for your attention with Sir David’s new reptile and amphibian series – Life in Cold Blood).

I came back to NZ in early Feb 2007 feeling like a new person in an old familiar land. The first week back was great – seeing friends and family whom I hadn’t seen for over a year. And then the reverse cultural shock hit. I was already very burnt out to the point of not being able to make simple decisions before I left the Philippines, and so that plus the shock of migration lead to full scale physical incapacity for several weeks followed by 5 months of painful recovery.

Given this process occupied half of my year, I will talk a little about it. Its cognitive effect was a complete shock re-evaluation of what I had planned to do when I got back to NZ, and everything I had been doing until then. The disjuncture between life as I had lived it till then in the Philippines and Indonesia, and the old world of New Zealand, was a wide chasm of polar opposite values, priorities, perspectives, opportunities, and lifestyles. How do you reconcile that? The migration experience is an old and not uncommon one, and as the many of those who have lived through it will testify, not easy. The feeling is of being a split person, with different lives in different places with different people, and of a punctuated disjoint life story, which is not conducive to psychological wholeness and wellbeing. The rupture between travel and humanitarian work in Asia, and material culture and commercial work back in New Zealand threw into sharp relief my core values of intellectual curiosity coupled with humanitarian ideals. There are always particular values one strives for – be it creative independence, intellectual achievement, self-reliance, wealth, or whatever. But inflexibly high ideals come at a price; the devastating results of which I began to reap last year but only began to understand this year after returning from abroad. It was only when I was back in New Zealand earlier this year that I was able to label the sleepless nights, nausea, panic attacks, changes in appetite, and headaches I had been experience for the last 6 months in the Philippines as burnout.

Part of the challenge of readjusting to New Zealand life was that my perception of time changed from having plenty of it to realising that I am not going to live forever and that there are limits. That as educated middle class people, we have the greatest number of options and the least number of obstacles to choosing our lives, but that age is still the ultimate limiting factor. In the past I’d not taken many decisions seriously because I would think there was always time later to change. But the time to do things I might want to do is decreasing and some of the choices I made earlier, whilst perfect at the time, now seem careless given my current set of values. With that there come tinges of regret, of not living up to the childhood dreams laid out for me by those in my early and current peer groups, connived into that feeling by the guilt and insufficiency felt before the projected image of what I feel driven to achieve. These dreams are not my own, but nevertheless feel they have the weight of society behind them. But beware, for those who turn off the familiar course are not well supported by society – and that can be lonely. These are the hazy feelings that compose the background tone of my current living and influence decisions on which I take action.

When trying to work out what to do it is easy to fall into the strong normative assumption that there is one true course in career and love. Older age probably reveals the fallacy of this, but the belief may be essential to keep the search going long enough to find “the one” or to motivate us to experiment and try other things until we realise their falsity. My intention before leaving the Philippines was to study and finish my BA in Sociology. But burnout left me unable to trust my own judgement and incapable of making decisions so for 4 months I attended university and went to job interviews at the same time, completely unsure what I wanted to do. Everyday I would wake up thinking I should study, I’d go to class and that would confirm it. I would walk out of a class talking about the over-rationalized iron cage of modern organizational life and into a job interview where I would proclaim my capability, fit and desire as a well adjusted, results oriented, execution focused team-player who drives solutions and delivers value beyond expectations. By the end of the interview I would have convinced myself just as much as I’d convinced the hirer that I really wanted a job. Repeat the next day for the next couple of months. As it turned out I finished one semester of university, with only one left to go, before getting a new IT job in Auckland which is working well and teaching me that you can have a work-life balance. Issues of what to do in life are probably never conclusively solved, but over time lose their primacy. Other priorities take over, and whilst I am nowhere near that milestone, the huge investment in time and energy that child raising requires see these and other issues fade away, along with social life outside the family, as the focus shifts inward toward bringing up the children. These are issues however, that may resurface twenty years later when the children leave home. Will it only be then that I get around to fulfilling a dream to get an advanced degree in third world economic development and become a researcher?

Even for those who don’t have such a hard time making decisions, two major contrary impulses seem to be at work for iGen (the Internet Generation, or the generation formerly know as Generation Y) 20-somethings. One is the urge to explore and experiment, keeping everything tentative and easily reversible. This is something I have been good at till now, with periods abroad in several different countries, none lasting more than 1.5 years at a time. But with the change in perception of time, and the loneliness brought about whilst living in the Philippines, I am becoming aware of that other impulse – to build a firm, safe structure for the future – and that requires commitments. Some people are good at this and don’t feel the fear of being locked in. I see the necessity of this to achieve certain things but am still cautious. To travel abroad again would still be great, but perhaps next time it won’t be alone and I will have some financial foundations laid down first.

Being away 1.5 years before returning home was enough time away from New Zealand for my senses to become adjusted to the different daily rhythms of life in Asia. So on returning certain things stood out during that initial period when everything is seen in harsh contrast. It was the little things in everyday New Zealand life that stood out first. Like empty roads devoid of street stalls and people, greater variety of products on sale and more complex buying decisions, rolling grassy hills instead of flat rice paddies, the familiarity of your homeland versus the feeling of heading out on a motorbike into unknown territory, the familiarity of the roles you play in the usual circles versus the freedom of feeling like a different person in a different place.

It’s the small joys of New Zealand life that are not to be underestimated. Things such as access to a steady diet of media consumption including independent film theatres, plays, local and university libraries, drive time radio, NZ produced TV shows, and other popular and not so popular culture. But most importantly for a non-religious single person – friends and family, the new and old of both. It was a fine writer of female erotica (Anais Nin) who once said “Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” and this year several new amazing worlds have been born for me. I’ve also found, as the proverbial wise old man once said, that “Friends aren’t jumper cables. You don’t throw them into the trunk and pull them out for emergencies”. This has been true for all the old friends who continue to remain friends even after long periods of physical absence. And family this year have become more like friends.

2007 has been peppered with a few other random projects to fill out the 67 hours left in a week after subtracting for sleep and travel time. Highlight and lowlights include a marathon relay race, breaking my toe, and other delights being part of the NZ Japan Society, losing large amounts of money on the stock market, winning a free trip to Rarotonga courtesy of 91ZM and the listeners who liked my sob story of why I should go on “Rehab in Raro”, applying to become a marriage celebrant but being rejected by the powers-that-be, passing cars on my scooter as I ride to work everyday (the bigger, more expensive, less fuel-efficient the car the greater the pleasure), gaining 10kgs and acquiring the belly of an expectant mother-to-be, donating my brain to science and becoming a medical research guinea pig (two trials, one looking at the effect of depression & stress on memory and learning, and the other on the effects of exercise on depression & stress), hanging out at the Mangére refugee resettlement centre, being offered a scholarship to do social statistical research at the University of Auckland, and mowing lawns.

So I’ve said enough, if not too much, to answer the cocktail party classic “What do you do?” for another year. So we can skip that question next we meet, although if I haven’t heard from you lately I’ll probably be asking you exactly that

As it turned out, my Grandmother wasn’t interested in the Up Series we watched together last Saturday. She’s too busy finishing the last few months of her life to worry about that. When you are that old, the perspective is very different. For her it is one of fulfilment and gratitude. A life worth living – may we all have that this Xmas and beyond.

Love,
Oliver

25 December 2007
Auckland, New Zealand

Diarrhoea (or diarrhoea & vomiting)

This is usually caused by a Bacteria, Bacterial toxin or Virus.
It will usually settle without Medicine over 3-7 days.
If symptoms progressively worsen,blood in bowel movements appears,or you feel faint on standing,or stop passing urine,you should consult a doctor again.

Loperamide may help relieve symptoms.

1) The mainstay of management however is rest, food and fluid management

2) Day one, no solids; water should be sipped throughout the day, small volumes frequently; an adult can aim for 2-3 litres over 24H; for children cooling the water may help and adding the flavour of their favourite drink, diluted down, mostly water;

3) As tummy pain settles and bowel movements firm a little (day 2-3) solids may be reintroduced…..Boring,white,carbohydrates such as white toast, white rice, boiled spuds, avoid veges,fruits,wholemeal or high roughage foods

4) Eat little snacks frequently rather than big meals. Keep up water intake.

5) Gradually return to old diet.

Good luck!!…….Phone back for telephone advice from nurse or doctor if worried.

Medicines to use for tropical diseases

Bactroban (for cuts and abrasions) – apply 1X daily to infected skin

Imodium (for diarrhoea symptoms, useful if on the road or in a bus. Will prevent the need to constantly go to the toilet.) – take 2 capsules immediately for diarrhoea, then take 1 capsule for every loose bowel motion. Max 8/day.

Amoxycillin (for severe throat, chest, & skin infections) – take 1 capsule 3 times daily

Buccastem (anti nausea/vomit pills) – take 1 tabled place tablet high along top gum for nausea and vomiting.

Random tips

Seek medical advice for fevers
Dental checkup
Vaccines
Travel insurance including medical evacuation
Medical kit
Avoid mozzies and biting insects – use repellants with DEET and treated mozzie net over bed
Sunscreen
Wash hands before eating and after toilet
Safe sex, always use condoms
Accidents greatest killer (think helmets, seatbelt, local rules)
Beware of biting animals – get rabies vaccine.

For more info see http://travelclinic.com.au/

The landscapes I’ve passed through this year are Indonesian Aceh (3 months) and the Provincial Philippines (9 months) working as an IT software implementor for Microfinance organisations. Indonesia is a place I have written about on my blog, and so a quick rehash will suffice. It is exotic and foreign, and the skills I had developed to relate to the Cambodians where very much applicable and successful in the Indonesian environment. The trick was to learn as much of the local language as possible, through books, daily interactions with the maid/cook, the corner store owner, colleagues in the workplace, flirting, and the watching of music videos. Religion, specifically Islam, was infused in this strange simultaneously present but absent way. The presence of religion was like those picture illusions, the drawing doesn’t change, but depending on how you look at it, something is present, and in the next glance that something is not. I was able to successfully complete my work assignment in my own time, and in part because of my interest in developing my Indonesian was able to indulge in fulfilling social life that consisted of all locals (including an Indonesian Muslim girlfriend) bar two expats.

Provincial Philippines, specifically Bacolod, has been a completely different environment, and what worked for me in one place/time does not always work in another. I lack a sense of self-preservation and assertiveness that would otherwise had forced the more sane to have left early had they been experiencing the senses of isolation, disconnection, and stress that I have felt during this time here. I still can’t pinpoint exactly why is has been this way, maybe I’m not suited to small town life (rural life is fine!), maybe not having a language to learn hasn’t provided the same socialising impetus (Filipinos speak fantastic English), maybe the physical environment (mainly concrete-very few landscaped garden public spaces) and the food has been uninspiring. It was through this lens I experienced Bacolod, and despite being aware of other lenses I was never able to “break on through to the other side”.

Vision has been one of the big ideas consuming my thought this year. Despite being from within, a vision is built from the building blocks of what is around you. Every human endeavour starts with some sort of vision, from writing a movie script, to designing a Information Technology project. And it is the Philippines that has shown me that, for whatever the Philippines may lack in reality, it makes up for it in vision, aspiration and dreams. For example, I took MBA classes at the local university and here and in causal conversations, I would often hear Filipinos complain of their politicians as being hard-headed, self-interested, dogmatic and corrupt. But whereas the average Cambodian would merely accept the status quo and leave it unchallenged, young Filipino’s can envisage and articulate a different system they think would work for the better of their country. These aspirations to be something greater, or more than what is there, are manifest in such Filipino artworks as the trompe l’oeil frescoes of San Agustin Church. Organisations everywhere have and publicly display vision and mission statements on the outer walls of their buildings. Unfortunately for me I wasn’t able to absorb enough of this vision to dispel the loneliness of not having found friends and like minds in the organisational and social groups I frequented.

Filipino’s have the gift of expression and communication, and expressing oneself has been the second big idea I’ve spent many waking moments pondering. This not uncommon Filipino trait is manifest in the numerous live bands (exported to other parts of Asia), the display of prices on products in small corner stores, ubiquitous text messaging (I process something like 30-40 text messages/day), the numerous postings and paintings on walls for all to see on topics ranging from organisational visions, Bible psalms, religious praises (“God is Love”), desired character traits (“Choose Enthusiasm not Apathy!”), and government staff expectations in their dealings with the public (“We are not doing the public a favour by serving them, they are doing us a favour by giving us the opportunity to do so”). It has been impressed on me by those Filipino’s who have been extremely forthright and candid, people for whom there is direct channel between what they think and what they say (not a typical nor traditional Asian trait).

Vision and expression! Two powerful character traits I hope to develop more of. But the devil is in the details, and it’s in the implementation that many well intended Filipino grand plans fail (I hope the same fate does not befall this letter). For in part, implementing vision requires the almost selfish imposition of a particular viewpoint on the diversity of the whole wide world. And the Philippines is a diverse place with mixed influences and individual backgrounds ranging from the members of the landed elite during the Spanish colonial, to the those with dirt poor backgrounds that have “made it” through wise parenting, study and hard work (a testimony that the Filipino education system can work), to the mobile and educated middle class with relatives, sources of income and connections abroad (especially the US), to minority ethnic groups and the traditional rural class, more isolated and less penetrated by influences and ideas from the outside (more similar to the type of people I was working with in Cambodia and Indonesia). The Philippines being a democracy in theory tolerates this diversity, but it is a young democracy which lacks consensus, even on the rules of the political game, as seen in this year’s alleged coup d’état attempts and the temporary imposition of emergency powers for one week.

In mid January I will leave the Philippines, pass through Indonesia, Japan, and Australia and be back in New Zealand in February. This life as I have know it will crumble and fade leaving only memories, experiences, and the inner perspective and view of the world I have arrived at. That view is the combined product of the choices I made this year and the environment I was in. That environment will be gone, and the thoughts that accompanied it. I’ll be faced with starting a new life ­ again! When I return to New Zealand I hope old patterns will not resurface, but that I will have realised the ultimate goal of an overseas experience – to be taken not only out of my country but myself, and to return to see my country as a foreign land.

For me, this Xmas will be my first Xmas in 4 years I can spend with the people of the land (2002 ­ Laos, 2003 Cambodia, 2004 ­ Cambodia, 2005 ­ Indonesia ­ all predominately non-Christian countries). I’m already enjoying Xmas lights everywhere – on houses, buildings, and in the trees! May your Xmas be a reflective time of reconnection with your friends and family, your traditions that keep you grounded and your hopes that keep you moving forward.

Merry Christmas!

Oliver

Yunus with wife to the left, and daughter to the right too busy texting to look at the cameras. Nice phone.

Yunus received the prize for his outstanding vision, action, models, and ideas which have contributed to the reduction of poverty in Bangladesh, and through the work of the many organisations he has inspired, throughout the world . He believes that poverty is an artificial creation and his vision is to “put poverty in a museum”.

I remember Bangladesh being that country in secondary school social studies had something like only 5 TV per 1000 households. Now it has 10 TVs per 1000 households and 1 Nobel Peace Prize winner – that’s 965 TVs per 1000 households less than New Zealand and 1 Nobel Peace Prize winner more.

Yunus’s tool for poverty obliteration is microcredit – the provision of financial services, primarly loans without collateral, to the poor. He has demonstrated that with access to credit, the poor can and do repay their loans and grow their small businesses, be it raising chickens, making handicrafts, trading rice, baking cakes, or selling gasoline.

My connection to all this is that via Grameen Foundation I am working for a microfinance organisation that does what the Grameen Bank does in the Philippines. I am helping them improve their organisation effectiveness through the implementation of a computerised information system. The type of work I’m doing could equally apply to any organisation in the world, but for some reason I find working here more “meaningful”. Somehow the idea of making the poorer less poor, and being a small cog in the enterprise of correcting world inequality is motivating.

But if you want to be more than just a cog in the wheel, here is my guide for wining the Nobel Peace Prize:

1. Start small, early. Go for the Citizenship prize at school.

2. Have a huge vision – like eradicating worldwide poverty

3. Be able to build and grow an organization – no easy task. Yunus grew his business from an informal loan of $27 for a couple of people loan in 1974 to over $5 billion in loans disbursed to over 6 million members.

4.Don’t be discouraged by the mediocre masses. In Banda Aceh I worked with Mr. S.M Ahsan Habib, a man who has worked with Grameen Bank for 22 years. Grameen Bank won the other half of the Nobel Peace Prize. As a Branch Manager, among other things, he had to put up with physical assault as part of the job. Often when starting in a new village, the husband’s of the borrowers would violently object to their wives taking loans. Habib had been beaten and thrown into a river on more than 1 occassion. Resistance to Yunus’s vision was huge, not only from traditional cultural elements on the ground but also conservatives in the Bangladeshi government.

5. If all else fails, wine and dine the retired Norweign ministers and other esteemed white guys who make up the Norweign Nobel Committee. Slip them a fiddy.

It was a Sunday night and I went to the nearest Jollibee. The guard opened the door using the standard door opening operating procedure:

1. Open the door for the customer
2. With a smile that exudes a fun, friendly, family atmosphere, say to the customer “Welcome to Jollibee Sir/Madam”.
3. Close the door after the customer enters
4. Repeat until your shift ends

On this night, there was a deviation from the standard procedure. I like to acknowledge the guard’s friendly welcome, however programmed. I don’t just rush into the store without hearing the doorman out and replying with a “Thankyou” that exudes gratitude. But this guy, this dude in sandals and ultra thin eyeglasses, slipped in front of me before the guard finished the stock line and I was able to enter.

That ruined my night. It meant Sandal Man got to the counter before me. He ordered the last remaining Double Yum burger. That was it, there was no more Double Yums. I had to settle for the single Yum which left me hungry and unsatisfied.

This scenario wouldn’t have phased your typical managerial type. They would have contingency plans, they would have done their forward risk analysis, they would have reassigned resources and rescheduled activities. But not me. I don’t have an MBA, what good is a Computer Science degree in such a situation? How poorly equipped I am for the world and its complexities. I would remain hungry that night, my blood sugar level would drop, a headache would develop, my judgement would become clouded, and all hope of satiation would be lost. The sun would set, like for so many people in the world, on another empty stomach.