Low tech

Have this on-going romance with old things and outmoded gadgets. Colleagues here at the office have long ago switched to memory sticks in storing and transferring their computer files. And they've recently listed a 40 gb external hard drive among future office purchases. Been dreaming for about a month now of buying one for my own use. Problem is, some other expense always seems to crop up whenever there's extra money available for it. So, have to content myself at the moment with this 250 mb zip disk and the older 1.4 mb floppies.

The zip disk comes with a drive that has this small window on top and a thin flexiglass cover. One day the cover fell loose from all that carrying and reconnecting. A few strips of packaging tape now hold it in place, which make my zip drive look like the frankenstein of all zip drives. Have to carry the whole contraption, with all the connecting wires and power cables, in my backpack when there's work to be done at home or when my home pc's antivirus system needs updating. Been running this scene in my head where unsophisticated mall guards mistake my monster-like zip drive for a home-made bomb.

Still have this boxful of floppies at home. Can't imagine now how my masteral thesis got through to its final form with documents and drafts saved in these storage devices. Have a personal project of converting all my personal files (now running around 40 gb) into pdf and saving them in separate floppies. A major problem of course is the regular wear and tear of these diskettes over time. Have to take care of these museum pieces (floppies were first created by IBM in 1967) like a carton of eggs. Always have at least one floppy with me when going to the office. And that would already be like Batman carrying with him the entire Batcave computer's memory. With data contained in that floppy, my office pc can update my personal budget and parenting schedule, print out my monthly calendar, record entries in my journal, and display posts in-progress for this blog.

Kids who now play basketball with oldies like us call such things bulok (Filipino for "rotten") or panis ("spoiled", especially food). The more modern term would be lotech or low tech. The same terms would perhaps apply to my VCD collection which has been recently made obsolete by my brother's more interactive and advanced DVD discs. There's this certain satisfaction, however, in using such artifacts. And not just because one makes do with what one can afford at any given time. People now use and experience things more transiently. So low techs or technological laggards like me are left to benefit from more romantic interactions with old gadgets.

With every visit to a former partner's house these past few weeks, been taking two or three of these audio cassette tapes with me. There must be fifty or more such tapes in my old collection. These tapes had been an integral part of my daughters' musical experience until about two years ago when all my things had to be moved back to my parents' home. Was thinking then that my oldest daughter would continue playing the tapes if these were left at her mother's place, remembering our early morning preparations for school or our weekends at home playing pc games while the stereo blurted out scratchy music from these old records.

But, found out some days back that the tapes have only provided a good resting place for dust and ants. My daughter has her own CD collection now. So, plugged my stereophonic home PC speakers to this old cassette walkman from the office. And, been spending some solitary nights in Tartarus lately listening to my old cassette tapes: REM, U2, The Smiths, Tears for Fears, Smashing Pumpkins, The Teeth, Natalie Merchant, The Cranberries, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, Eraserheads, Moonpools and Caterpillars, Lemonheads, Sandwich, Rizal Underground, Paul Simon, Garbage, Sheryl Crow. There are more to come. Many of these records are already out of circulation. Bet one couldn't even get CD copies of these in major stores here in Manila.

Am thinking of writing this popular tv host whose weekend program features poor schmucks like me and grants their wishes. Sure would like to have a stereo with tape decks and a CD player.

This is the song I've been singing my whole life
I've been waiting like a knife
To cut open your heart
And bleed my soul to you
I did it all for you
You and you and you and you
The Crying Tree of Mercury
Machina/The Machines of God
Smashing Pumpkins

The Demimonde

Said something about the demimonde in a previous post. Wikipedia provides the common dictionary definition pointing to a class of women in the 19th century who maintained wealthy lovers and whose conduct fall beyond the ambit of socially acceptable standards. Kim Stanley Robinson used The Demimonde in his Mars trilogy to refer to this loose group of settlements that existed outside the network of colonies administered by the Terran authorities. His fans have set up an e-forum (also called The Demimonde) where they discuss topics ranging from the Mars novels, SF, politics, ecology, spirituality, science, and just about anything under Sol.

Recently formed my own demimonde, creating links to these friendly blogs, sites and other online resources that take up much of my regular net surfing time. Have always wanted to keep these links out of redplanet, make this blog a cyber dead end, a virtual "black hole" that sucks in consciousness and leaves it counting breaths in limbo. Changed my mind. Realized that true fringes out there are neither well-defined nor self-contained. Edges rarely extend infinitely and often overlap. So, the redplanet will have its own demimonde. And topping the list is the Lectiograph which is actually a spin-off of previous posts about reading and books. Encountered this fantastic application from Jon Aquino's blog that captured the whole lectiograph idea.

Have always wanted to share my growing library at home with other people. Been exploring with some friends this idea of forming an online book discussion group where they could share their books and exchange reading experiences. Found out that the Ning application could now make this possible. Still need to try out its other features. But here are some things it could do:
 

• My editorial review. This is of course the regular thing: teasers, initial impressions, reflections, interesting quotes, etc. There's some limitation when it comes to the fonts and the presentation (no paragraph breaks, text colors, block quotes). My temporary solution: include dates within the text. Apart from indicating how recent the information is, these serve as good text breaks.

• Reading status. Now here's the really fun part. Each entry in Ning provides information on the books' status. Individual readers can log in, create bookshelves, include titles from their own physical collection, get to compose their own reviews, include titles from other bookshelves, and indicate which books they want to read, are currently reading and have finished reading.

• Emailing tool. Each entry has an email link that allows readers to invite others to read a book, share comments and reviews, track down a title, or simply keep in touch. Haven't really tried this feature. Not sure if it provides its own emailing page or simply opens up the browsers' own emailing application. But it's really a convenient way to pass on information on one's lectiograph.

Have posted only one title so far in my bookshelf. Would be glad to lend it to a friend who is living somewhere in Manila and promises to return it in good condition.

When it rains

got the unbelievable news last friday. after several revisions, our new project proposal has been disapproved. this new project would have let us introduce community-based coastal resources management as a strategy for post-tsunami rehabilitation work in this south asian country. i think it would have been a pioneering work for a Philippine-based NGO to say the least. our prospective donor's comment: the proposal can not be approved in its present form. after all their previous comments on a number of things, including project management, the budget items and training activities, this was a real bummer. losing his voice to a long-drawn bout with flu, my boss strained every neck muscle in registering his comments during our discussions on the proposal. and we even posted last week a job ad for two project managers, confident that we'll have the new project by the end of the month.

what's worse, that project would have assured us of badly needed funds to keep us going for a few more months while our other proposal was being processed. now we're left with practically zero options. this morning, our network coordinator (my team mate), tendered his resignation. i had been expecting it for about a month now. but i was still a bit surprised when our boss announced it. i realized i was surprised at the news more for what it could mean to me rather than what it implied for my colleague or for the office. after almost four years of sweating it out in front of this pc (i didn't even have the chance to work in the airconditioned room upstairs), i may now need to move on again. oh well, as an old friend in college used to say, that's life.

Not enough madness

Attended this small forum on the WTO and local fisheries last Wednesday. Representatives of other nongovernmental organizations were also there, including member organizations of this local coalition working on fisheries reform. A colleague shared some of the discussion points in a civil society meeting held earlier in Bangkok. It was a fairly simple and straightforward presentation. WTO, trade and other macroeconomic issues could really give an ordinary citizen in a not so poor country like the Philippines (just found out that the UNDP has recently placed the country in the medium development bracket along with Malaysia, Thailand, China, Vietnam and Indonesia) a terrible case of migraine. Actually had some qualms about attending as I was not so knowledgeable on trade and fishery issues.

The ensuing discussion among these local "experts" on the WTO and trade issues was however enlightening. Not only for the new information it provided, but also for the insights it yielded on what some development workers in the country are thinking. For one, I learned that some of these local NGOs were advocating to maintain the country's policy flexibility ("water level" in the experts' lingo) in terms of setting tariffs on so-called "non-agricultural commodities" like fish and marine products. I thought such call made a lot of sense considering that the WTO negotiations were trying to force countries to peg permanent tariff levels as a prelude to a completely unrestricted global market.

At this point, a representative from the country office of an international donor agency asked the group for ideas on how the country could better maximize whatever policy space it could gain from the WTO negotiations. This question, according to her, should be tied up with the group's vision for the fisheries sector: is the future going to be a "network" of small, sustainable, community-managed marine protected areas?; should the country take up again the expansion of its own aquaculture sector that promises quick cash but entails clearing of its remaining mangrove areas?; and what of those big commercial fishers?; how could such trade flexibility be used to support local efforts at sustainable management of marine resources?

For a few seconds, only the humming of the air conditioner could be heard in the room. Brains that were previously reciting technical arguments on why WTO and trade liberalization are the bane of the livelihood and self-reliant existence of small producers and poor people all over the world were suddenly left wondering whether they should get that extra cup of caffeine or just let drowsiness take over. A few finally found comfort in the old reliable lines of thought and continued their critical or sarcastic tirades against global bullies and their local stooges. My own gray matter was busy processing a new information: some local activists have an overdeveloped faculty for seeing what's wrong with their world, and display an almost total lack of capacity for imagining what they want to create in its place.

Time to pause

Finally had a chance to watch Jet Li's Fearless a few days ago. Actually, only a part of it as the movie was almost halfway through by the time I arrived at the place. I remember being a big fan of Chinese-style martial arts as a kid. My father, who has always been an advocate of physical fitness in the family, would include Ed Spielman's Kung Fu in our regular prime time TV viewing schedule (along with The Wild Wild West, Bionic Man and Wonder Woman). My brothers and I got our first lessons on Asian martial arts philosophy from David Carradine's character Kwai Chang Caine. As my father used to remind us after each Kung Fu episode: never use violence except as a last resort and for defensive purposes only.

Don't know how my brothers eventually took that teaching to heart. For a while, we were enchanted with the thought of learning a few martial arts tricks and actually spent some time poring over this karate book that my father bought for us. But throughout most of our teenage lives, I suppose all of us adopted a more pacifist attitude, thinking that running was still a better option than slugging it out with an aggressor. In fact, I still recall the night when my two younger brothers went out for a drink with friends and got into a shouting and stone-throwing match with the local tambays (Filipino for bums). With guitar in hand and the barangay tanods (local volunteer peacekeepers) on their heels, my brothers negotiated dark detours and arrived at our house half-drunk and drenched in sweat.

I have since recognized how violence is intricately woven into our modern, market-homogenized, ecologically-alienated lives. (Perhaps I should insert "male" before the "lives".) In most cases, it shapes our whole personality, it defines who we are, without us even knowing it. It's like each of us has been unconsciously nurturing a Mr. Hyde within and the monster rears its ugly head once in a while. Make that "most of the time", especially for those who have surrendered their lives to this fearful shadow. My father was wrong. The problem was not about deciding when to be violent or when it is justifiable to be so. For many people, particularly men, the problem is how to prevent their violent natures from inflicting harm on others and taking over their own lives.

Master Yoda, that old little green Jedi warrior in the Star Wars movies, had interesting insights on what animates this dark side:

Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering. (Master Yoda to Anakin Skywalker in The Phantom Menace)

In Fearless, Jet Li's character failed to appreciate such wisdom early on and became entwined in a series of events that led to the death of his mother and daughter. Wandering aimlessly, Jet Li soon found himself in a village where he would be getting some lessons on coming to terms with his violent nature and achieving peace with himself. In one scene, he was helping farmers transplant rice seedlings into their terraced land. He was slow at first, but found an opportunity to make up for it and get ahead of the pack by taking advantage of these periods when the farmers would stop planting, stand up and close their eyes to feel the cool mountain breeze. But, the farmers later had to go over Jet Li's work again as the planted seedlings didn't have the proper spaces between them. Learning from this, Jet Li would soon be doing the ritualistic pauses and taking in those head-clearing breaths.