Randomings

Just some thoughts - Scan, skim, comment at will.



I tried to break up a fight the other day between two school kids. As I pushed them apart, I growled "Go to God." I meant to say "Go home." They were standing in front of an Islamic school.

@ is looking for a good catch phrase. He's recently tried "Sleep, sleep, sleep" in the local langage, usually as he runs circles through the house. He also likes, "Start your engines," "When I'm a daddy...," "Ka chow," and today "Oh, Jeezle Pete." But my favorites are: "Mommy's alright, daddy's alright, they just seem a little bit wierd" and one that he somehow picked up from Grandmaster Flash - "Don't push me 'cause I'm close to the edge" complete with the stutter in the appropriate spot.

My wife bought me a crate of soda in glass bottles the other day in the hopes that I'll limit myself to one a day. In the two days since then, I've stuck to the diet.

I'm now back in language class since my thesis is done. There's me, a Dutch couple and three Koreans. It's odd but today I got more overhearing the Dutch explanation of a verb than I did when the teacher explained it in English.

Now that we've been here three months, we are not the most clueless foreigners in the city.

Bought one of my favorite animated movies while we were on vacation (Disney's Robinhood -the one with the with the foxes), only to find that it's restricted to a region that won't play on either our computer or DVD player. We'll watch it once we get a universal player...when we get a TV...when we move to the big city...in nine months.

We really like our local church but I realized this past Sunday that sometimes it sounds like their synthesizer-heavy band is playing selections The Cars Worship Album.

Three weeks after I had it approved and I almost understand what my thesis was actually about. And I may have been all wrong.

We now have access to the International School's library so I'm rereading the A Wrinkle in Time books. They are not, no matter what people may say, Christian books. They're not bad, just not Christian.

There's something sad about being in any high school library that doesn't have any Vonnegut or John Irving (World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany). How many kids could learn to love reading if they just had something horrible but great to read?

While on vacation, I scoured the local bookstores and shopping malls for anything in English I could find. I brought home all three: The Devil's Dictionary by Abrose Bierce, The Best of Sherlock Holmes, and the current Asia Edition of Reader's Digest. The first title I'd rather not have our houseworker see; the last title I'd rather hide from anyone with taste.

Asian television gets around the "no porn on television" laws by calling it "Fashion TV."

When you get used to consistant 88 degree weather, 91 degrees is really hot.

I haven't had a reason to go into a hardware store in at least three weeks.

I can now "juggle" a small playground ball for a dozen or so kicks/headers without letting it touch my hands/arms or the ground.

Amanda's smarter than most people realize. Not just determined or a good worker, as she might admit, but really smart. I taught her Othello the other day and she'll kick my can if I let her play me again. I'm also glad she's a unit ahead of me in language school so I'll see what I'm in for and so she can order food over the phone for us.

Because Poppi doesn't see @ enough

Just some fun from our recent vacation to our nearby big city. Hotel room, cable TV, swimming pool, shopping and Italian food - just like Africa!

A bit gruesome???

If you're a lizard at our house, life is usually pretty sweet. Unless you happen to stop on one of the hinges to my workroom, that is...

My apologies

If any of you chose to either rent or go to the theaters to see this movie I apologize. I bought it for Amanda the other day and we watched it. It was like "Hotel Rowanda" meets "Boogie Nights" (which I have not seen).

Too much sex and the gore that you might expect in a movie about a homocidal dictator wasn't quite "right." (If you saw it, you might understand what I mean.)

This is one of those movies that if edited for television or on a plane wouldn't be too bad - an interesting character study and an amazing performance by Forest Whitaker.

So if you saw it because of my recommendation just stop by, in person, for a full refund of your ticket or rental. This is a limited offer so act quickly.

But read the book instead. Or better yet, pick up a copy of "King Leopold's Ghost."

Growing Young

I've written before about how I believe that people get old in spurts. We age because of events - falling out of a tree, getting thrown out of a country, watching someone we love die...

But I also believe that there are certain events that add to your life. For years I watched my father toil away in a job that was sucking the life out of him. When he quit to join a firm of three, he seemed to get younger. He got even younger with the birth of his first grandchild. Fly fishing helped as did another move out of the city.

In the past week I have had two events that may prolong my life (as long as I stay out of trees): I finally finished my thesis, ten years after starting graduate school and we finally sold our car in Africa.

My thesis advisor made a comment during the final stretch that the thesis owned me and, until I completed it, it would continue to have a hold over my life. He was right. It was such a burden knowning that I was just short of having that paper. For years I'd ridden on that "all but done," fearing that some employer would hold me to the completion of the degree or fire me. I knew that it would be tough, if not impossible, to cintinue teaching on the college level without finishing but the panic of writing was almost as strong as the panic of not finishing. But now that it is finished, I can breathe easier.

Another burden that has been lifted, although rather hollow when compared to the first, is the sale of our Galloper in Africa. When we left unexpectedly in December of 2005, we had hoped our friends would be able to find a buyer rather easily. But with the mass exodus of foreigners and a lack of dollars, it took over a year. Even then, we had to slash the selling price and rely on local currency. Gradually that money will get converted into spendable dollars.

What made this such a burden was that it felt like one more thing that our friends had to help with. We couldn't do anything about it from the US or Asia but we also didn't want it to be of concern to people with much more important things to worry about. It also tied us to a country where we weren't welcome. But now, we are free!

I feel younger this week than I have in a long time, despite recovering from a cold. There is so much less weighing me down. I've been enjoying my family much more. I look forward to spening time in the evenings with the kite flyers across the street and practicing my language. I look at the next year, transitioning from language school to a job at a university in the big city, and can't wait for what is coming.

Great things, great God.

Huzzah!!!

This is not the post I was planning for. I had a draft all but ready to go talking about the Willy Loman, Ed Carpolotti sin of failure. About how for men there is a sin that is worse than any other...grieve, grieve, grieve etc.

But I passed! The professors did talk about how the paper could have been better and that there were certainly weaker areas in it than there should have been but that I defended well and showed "a mastery of the subject" so they agreed. Talking through it, the paper made a lot more sense and was a lot better than what was actually on the page. If I could have only done an NPR thesis, I would have rocked!

Part of Amanda's peptalk this evening was that this is what Amanda and I have been doing since getting married. We answer questions from left-field that have a vague connection to what we do or where we've been. Our job is to sound intelligent and answer, even if it isn't really the answer to that question. Add to that the genetic trait of being able to talk about virtually anything to anyone...

By now Barry is finishing up the legwork of getting the right versions of the the right forms to the right people. Amanda is asleep. I am a bit buzzed.

Thanks so much for your prayers and encouragement. I know that I've had several enteries that showed how much of a funk I'd been living in recently but from now on, nothing but sarcasm and poor attempts at humor.

And now that it's official, I'm going to include a lot more grammatical mistakes...just because I can and I can say it is an educated choice.

Blessings.

Of Concern

Friends,

I could really use some prayer over the next few hours, and quite possibly days. At approximately 11am Charleston time I will place an international phone call, the results of which will have a huge impact on my life. At that time I will defend my thesis.

"What? I thought you'd finished that a long time ago." Well, err, not quite. If you know me at all, you've heard of my extreme stage fright. I joke about it but it also transfers over to writing. When there is something important to write, I sit nearly catatonically staring at the computer screen. Or my hands shake. Or I am unable to sit at all, and pace circles around the room. I reorganize research. I get a drink or use the bathroom or find some other way to stall. My chest tightens and my knees bounce. I find it impossible to write more than a phrase or two without hitting the delete key.

In the past few months, that panic has been overridden by another: panic of not finishing at all. The absolute deadline is here. No extensions, no excuses, no do-overs. If the degree is to be finished, everything must be approved and turned in no later than 4pm on Monday.

So over the last few weeks I made changes to my material, altering the initial focus of the paper drastically and not with terribly effective results. Paniced thinking. Fear of taking too many tangents resulted in not enough background or support. Fear of making absolute statements has lead to vague, qualified claims. I have overthought minor details and ignored larger, necessary elements. I misspelled the name of one of my readers on the acknowledgement page. I have likely mispelled my subject's name in at least one or more places in my paper (Spell check can only do so much with "Ngugi wa Thiong'o.") In short, it is hardly the work I would have liked to produced.

Realize that this is not false modesty, this is an honest, realistic evaluation from a person who has seen plenty of the above written by students. Some of them passed but some of them didn't. Those latter students became anecdotes to share with colleagues as we sat and talked about dwindling expectations and lack of determination by students to produce quality work. Even if this does pass, it is one of those works, however unintentionally, that is not up to what teachers and professors like to see from their students.

The paper is in the hands of the readers and the initial rumblings are not sounding too reassuring. There is the possibility of a last minute rewrite to correct some of the still evident surface errors. But the readers might not have a chance to even look at the changes before the defense.

So pray not just for the approval of this paper, but also for my reaction. And for Amanda's. In many ways she has had the harder road here. She has had to sit by, often unaware of what was happening as I put on a brave face and made promises I had no business making about the ineveitable success of this paper. And yet she will be effected as much as I am.

After the defense, I will wait ten minutes before calling back to find out the results from my readers about whether they will accept this paper or not as fulfilling the requirements. If the answer is yes, I will be relying on a terribly generous friend to collect signatures, take the final copies to the bindery and make sure that the last details have been completed. Amanda and I will celebrate and send out emails and try and sleep (it will be Tuesday here by the time the meeting is over).

If the paper is rejected, I'm not sure what my reaction will be. Thankfully, it will be finished with how to get another extension or appeal. I will send out emails. Amanda will try and sleep. I will likely, ironically, sit at a computer screen and write with shakey hands and knotted stomach. I will pace and "organize" my research into the garbage. I will write a phrase or two and delete it before trying a completely different line of thought. And eventually I will sleep.

Keep us in your prayers.