lens crafter

Do you think your Wu_Tang sword can defeat me?

Ghost face, that's what I have. Allways showing up and diseappering. My latest act was at CNELA teaching English again. It was lots of fun. I think I need to stick closer to the curriculum next time, because though my students had about average test scores, I can do a lot better. One of my students did get one of the highest scores so I am proud of him and also of the rest of my students, even those who didn't pass. Because each of them made an effort to learn something, and it was my fault if what they learned from me didn't help with the exam. I hope it helps in a different way.

We had a party on Wednesday. It was a great party. They served duck. Each person in the hall stood up to introduce themselves. I copied the format everyone used so I could say I my name and my job in Malagasy. There is a sort of begining dance at the begining of a celebration. I participated. There was a gift exchange. I got a ceramic pink elephant. I just gave the elepant to two girls who play outside near my apartment. After the party I went to a bar with a teacher and his friend. I was pretty inspired by the faith of the teacher in the US. He said that he is glad the US polices the world. The US put liberty first and is therefore supported by God. That is why, he says, I shouldn't fear our decline.

We met some Peace Corps Volunteers. They seemed pretty nice but they left to meet someone, inviting us to tag along. I talked to a British guy for a while. He just finished some kind of management gig down near Toliar. He left for the UK yesterday, on Thursday the 19th of Dec. So after talking to him, we did catch the PCVs, who were pretty nice. Some were new, some old, most younger than me. I talked to the brother of my colleague's friend in French. We talked about girls here. Like, I have to learn Malagasy before finding a girlfriend. He didn't really agree, because a girl to whom I am close could teach me Malagasy. I still feel like prudence is the best policy at this juncture. After, the teacher went home to his wife, and I went to another bar with the PCVs. There were a lot of foreingers and beautiful Malagasy girls. I guess it was pretty obvious what was going on. I tried my best to speak Malagasy, but eventually my headache took my outside to catch a cab.

Anyway, Merry Christmas, gj to New Mexico on same sex marriage legalization, and be calm come the new year to Washington and Colorado. I'll be 60 clicks north of Tana trying to learn Malagasy soon! Is it weird that the only songs to which I know the lyrics are from Disney movies? I guess the party was on Wednesday and today is Friday the 20th. It is a holiday because of voting. So give your best wishes for the future of Madagascar.

I can't believe I still intend to watch Naruto after the Chikara arc, which completely clashes with both Bee's training of Naruto and the war prepartions in which Konoha failed to mention Kabuto to its Allies.

Other random tidbits. I am using a distro of linux whose default default audio player is a video player and even when you open a file with no video it opens a window and plays the song. But i am like having enough of songs before there over and closing the window, but i obviously dont stop the song first because that should just sort of come along with closing the window, otherwise i would be minimizing it wouldnt i? the song keeps playing... on the flipside, i learned that if i just hold the cursor over the icon of an audio file, it starts playing after a few seconds, and stops when i move the cursor off of the icon.

I finally finished Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics by John Lyons. The beginning was super interesting, since it came packed with fun language quirks and had plenty of examples. As the book goes on, the clarity decreases as the number of examples goes down. It is pretty useless after the stuff of Chomsky. I started it in May and read the first four hundred pages by like July when I took it to SEC and talked with Jonathan and Renee's wife's older brother. Like, flying planes are dangerous and flying planes is dangerous. Or eating apples is healthy and eating apples are healthy, but not the ones that are like the one given to Snow White. The whole idea of deep structure vs surface structure seems like there is stuff we don't understand and stuff we do understand.

I watched 8 Diagrams Pole Fighter, Five Deadly Venoms, and The 36 Chambers of Shaolin. The last is by far the best. It tells the story of someone who learns kung fu to fight injustice. Of course, despite his late start, he turns out to be a prodigy and is held in high regard by the other monks.

Base

So guys, I am not sure what the reason is, but I am really starting to enjoy life here. Part of it is taking internet courses on computer science. Of course, I could do that anywhere. But here, the internet connection is dicey on the best days. Like, I am writing this offline, dicey. So it is a bit challenging just to have the chance to complete the lessons.

Another thing that is OK is that my roommate and I have come to a bit of an agreement. I buy a lot of the food and keep the kitchen clean, and he lets me by with less than half the rent. Thanks to mom's packages, we have exchanged movies. He is a good listener but doesn't like to speak about his work.

Some areas here, especially the alleys, are like, is there a war going on, bad. Lots of people her know my name. And I mean like some people whom I don't recognize shout my name as I walk. I am a bit afraid to talk about a book while I am reading it, but a sort of guru character in the book Infinite Jest says to be careful not to attract more than your own weight.

In other news, some students thanked me for teaching them at the end of the last class. It made me feel good like it sort of dissolved some anger I accumulated trying to be interesting for three months. Teaching was mostly fun, but I did sort of fall into habits that weren't so productive. So I am really happy that some students forgave me for this.

The teachers are pretty supportive. But Zoely stands out: she gives me lots of suggestions and she even lets me use her photocopies. It is great because it helps me deliver some things that the students expect.

I plan to go to Tsarasoatra later this month, to the home of one of Zoely's cousins. It is 60km north of Tana and there is a taxi bus stop within walking distance of the town. The rice harvest is coming up, but in Tsarasoatra rice is only planeted once a year so it wont be planted again until later in 2014 than I am able to stay due to my contract with the school. I plan on staying there for a part of the break in teaching from Dec 19 to mid April.

There is also wushu, which is fun in a big way. I get to listen to instructions in Malagasy. The master doesn't give us much time, but there are a few students who are leagues better than me. There is a good crowd there every weekend. We practice Saturday all day and Sunday morning. I am petitioning for a Wednesday afternoon session because a five day lapse leaves me wrecked when the training starts.

Solar Power

When someone installs solar panels, they use less power from the grid, meaning they spend less money on electricity. power companies are saying that when someone leaves the grid, it increases the price of electricity for those who stay on the grid. Well, doesn't that assume a fixed revenue?

This article takes the price hike to be a given:

http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/region_phoenix_metro/central_phoenix/solar-power-in-arizona-aps-in-fight-with-rooftop-solar-firms-over-rates




From page 2:
"She said utilities are worried about a vicious cycle -- more rooftop solar panels means they have to raise other users' prices, which drives even more people to solar. She also said the installations are more common in affluent areas, shifting costs to poorer customers."

For the first point, I have to say that there is nothing vicious about the cycle. But,if the price hike occurs, the second point is a genuine problem , since some people don't have the cash to install solar panels. So, what is necessary for everyone to benefit from the use of solar panels is free installation.

Alright, maybe not EVERYONE is going to benefit from that, or, at least, there will be some people, for example, power company employees, who will complain, even if the environmental impacts are good for them. But what if the rich people who can afford solar panels today do not reap the benefits of net metering. What if instead, they just get to save on the lower consumption of power company provided electricity due to their personal collection. Well, who would get the cash from selling the extra solar energy  to the power companies? Well, I propose that the money goes to installation of solar panels on the homes of people who cannot afford them. So power companies will be buying the products that are going to render their current product useless. But they would also, as a part of the deal, earn stock in the solar companies with which they ally. That way, power companies will willingly shut down their polluting power stations in favour of a predominantly localized and environmentally friendly energy solution, in which they have financial interest.

This vicious cycle of increased solar panel usage making solar panel usage increasingly popular sounds to me as good as cold fusion or any other perpetual energy solution.

Anyway, I think that the situation is a bit more complicated than I have portrayed it. Solar panel users do not generally leave the grid. Actually, in some situations they don't even use the energy from the solar panels on their roofs. They sell it all to the power company. Further, solar panels panels feed the grid at night. But in Arizona, AC must use more energy during the day.

One week from visa decision

Apparently, there are eligible voters, and voters that are on the voting list. Each election, people are sent to every home where there is an eligible voter. If there is someone at home, the eligible voter makes the voting list. So some of my friends, for example Gaelle and Fany, were unable to vote in this election, because they were not at home to receive the election employee. For them though, there is good news. Their dad had a stroke about 3.5 weeks ago. He came home from the hospital on Tuesday. I saw him yesterday. His movement was limited, but he seemed as lucid as anyone does when they are speaking a language I cannot understand.

No, my understanding is improving. I was able to catch a few conversational points Rado's mom made at lunch and another in the teacher's lounge yesterday. But each time, I was involved in an english conversation, which  was continued in Malagasy to another person. In that way, even getting only one word of an utterance was enoguh for me to guess the meaning. On the flipside, I am definitely learning something about English as I tried to teach. The thing that impresses me most though is how much people want to learn English. But I am a bit worried that I am compromising my English to make it easier to understand. People comment that I swallow the letter /t/ in certain words, especially when it occurs at the end. I don't think i completely swallow the sound, but I don't at an /s/ sound to the end of my /t/ sound so 'lot of' sounds more like 'lodov' than 'lots of'. And somewhere in the middle, I can now watch films subbed in french and films dubbed in French pretty comfortably. I am going to try an actual French movie one of these days.

I finished reading One Hundred Years of Solitude yesterday, on Thursday November 7th. It is by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. A married couple flee their town. The woman is afraid of inbreeding, but they were haunted by someone the man killed. They founded a new town. Gypsies visit. They have kids. A war breaks out. The kids have kids. The man and a gypsy study. The woman grows old, keeping order. The kids kids have kids. A train comes to the town. A banana company is founded in the town. The working conditions are not good. Their is at least one more generation. What is crazy is that the guys are all of two names. One wife is from a neighboring town. She has the habit of not calling things by their names. One of the original kids crafts some golden, jeweled fish, boils them, and restarts. The book is only annoying because it never calms down. The writer will tell a story in the past tense, and ends it by telling the end of another story. He proceeds to tell the story, but always from a seemingly unrelated starting point. It is only as he is about to end the next story that I remember what he is explaining. There is a lot of magic in the village, and people are unimpressed by technology. There is also a lot of talk of the circularity of time.

Election Weekend

Gae, Miora, Tony

 

View from the house of the man below

 

 

Happy on voting day

 The man: Tovo

 Toaka gasy warms the belly

Learning to flow

Below is the hostess, whose wedding we went to in Ambositra

 

AFter party

quirks

On thing that everyone must know is that there is some tea that smells and tastes like a fruity pebbles with milk: verimanitra/

Another thing: this is such a poor country. There is trash everywhere, the streets are use as toilets, most of the buildings are severely damaged, and the cars were made before catalytic converters. What gets me is how ridiculous people look when they get rich. They spend their money on a new car, flashy clothes, and a nice place. But when everyone is wearing dirty clothes, you just look like a chump getting out of your Range in a suit.

Another thing that is important: the different between loaka and a vegetable dish in the US or Europe is not in the ingredients. Rather, since loaka is made to be eaten with rice, it should be that a small morsel flavors a spoonful of rice, so it needs a lot more flavor than a side dish.

Google loses searchers to Facebook, because when people watch a video that is posted on fb, they do not search on Google for the video. What may have been outweighing this fact is that Google gains searchers via the gain in number of people using the internet caused by Facebook.

I was asked by three guys who smoke and drink at the market near my place my opinion is on how to improve Madagascar. I was surprised, but I talked, even though I am sure they have ideas of their own that they wanted to tell me. But you know, the French abused the Malagasy, and the Malagasy still want to be like foreigners. In fact, the only foreigners the Malagasy people know well were abusive. The people that are in power are those who are willing to be as abusive as the French, so it is pretty amazing the is no civil war; I mean, it shows how the Malagasy understand without imitating, all except for those in power. What matters is that the Malagasy thought the French were abusive. I don't know whether the French were actually abusive; I don't know whether they tried to be abusive. They might have thought they were doing a lot of good by bringing cars here. Cars are a lot less useful when you cannot use them to travel to other countries. Plus, they brought dirty, old cars here. Anyway, I told them they should not rely on another country.

Another weird thing about this country is that potholes are not always covered. So, once in while there is a hole on the curb. Most of the time its only a few feet deep and full of trash. But sometimes the drop is about fifteen feet down a narrow passage. So, pedestrians and drivers have to look out for these. This is another danger of traveling at night.

There are some streets that have bumper to bumper traffic all day long. One such street is home to the school where I teach. Despite the fumes from all these cars, there is a huge tree across the street from the school that has managed to produce blue flowers.

I recently finished reading The Pillars of the Earth by Keith Follet. It was fun to read, but it was a bit shallow. The best part was how the book covered such a long time period without dwelling on boring events. That is to say, the pace was good and the distance was also good. But the book was written by a good observer, not a great inventor. It is a long book, and sometimes he used the same words to describe one of the villains. That was one way I picked up on his weaknesses. But the lack of depth was mostly in the commentary on the relationship between secular magic and Christian magic.

Two people have told me that one reason there are so many forest fires here is that people like to see them. As a volunteer, we were told that the practice, tavy, is to fertilize the soil, but that its effect was short lived.

Shoulders

OK well its ten pm on Sept 26. This is Thursday. Tomorrow is the last day of the second week of my first trimester teaching English at CNELA. It has been fun. I tell a lot of jokes and I get the students to talk at lot.

I am living with Fred. He is 27 and he has a high paying job in the surveying industry. He is a boss. He works late. My second class ends at seven thirty pm and my first class starts at four pm.

I teach from a packet and original materials. So far, I have had some success with having a few plans from which I can chose. The first class is going a bit better than the second. But the second class is a bit bigger than the first, so it is a bit harder to keep everyone interested.

I am cooking a lot. There are bugs in the house, but I am starting to get used to them. I was only slightly bothered when I found a dead cockroach in my bed two mornings ago. I guess they are here because my roommate was living alone for a while before I moved in and he doesn't really clean the kitchen all that much. 

I plug some weird type of thing into the wall in the evening to repel mosquitoes. I would prefer to use a net since I have no idea what I am breathing, but I am just using a mattress with no bed frame, so there really isn't a good way to put up a mosquito net.

I started drinking beer again. The few cigarettes I smoke leave me paying the price of a sore throat the next day.

I meet with the mother and family of my roommate on Wednesdays. We speak in English mostly, but they aren't quite as good as my roommate, so I usually learn some Malagasy. The second son of the family is my age. This weekend he has his finals for a correspondence course in computer science. The last child is a teenage girl who seems pretty mature.

Last weekend I started learning Wushu from some sort of official school. The master didn't really appear, but there is probably a lot of conditioning work for me to do before it is really worth his time.

I am watching Naruto. It is OK, but I had to start with the second season, in which Naruto wears orange and black. There was an arch in which four people attacked Konoha that seemed pretty worthless. It is becoming more serious now: Team 10 and Team Kakashi have just defeated two Akatsuki.

Lastly, the internet needs to be free and stay free. The biggest problem with democracy is that voters are uninformed. The internet gives people a chance to be informed. Therefore people need access to the internet. Further, the information on the internet can neither be censored nor costly. That is way I mean when I say that the internet needs to be free and stay free.