I'm sitting the Puppies Guild office right now, doing finishing procedures. In 28 hours I'm getting on a plane and leaving Shquippery.

Habib gave me a call yesterday to wish me well and tell me that he and Turi were sitting at Turi's lokal and talking about their memories of me. I'm glad I got to properly say goodbye to everybody. Habibi, Turi, and Dylan (the volunteer who came in to replace me) saw me off on Wednesday morning as I got on the furgon to leave. I had a group hug with Habib and Turi and we did the cheek thing and they wished me well and I thanked them for their friendship and kindness. I'm going to miss those guys.

In 2nd-year class today, one of the boys tells me, with all the English he can muster: "I have a question." He shows me his book, on which he has gotten his friend to write "Why you don't go to hairdresser?"

Ouch.

There's a whole family clustered around a computer next to me, talking by webcam to a relative in a foreign country. Gjyshja (the grandmother) in a head scarf, everybody loudly talking and laughing at the same time. O modern times!

Wikipedia on country name etymologies. One of the most interesting Wikipedia articles I've read!

Last night Becca and I went to see a series of comedy skits called Mos u laj lakuriq (Don't Bathe Naked). Most of them were either not that funny or just over our heads, but the last one was about an American refugee seeking asylum in Shippery. The guy who played the American did a great job speaking Shqip with an American accent. I don't know where he learned to do it. We agreed that it was worth the price of admission just for that last skit.

Here is one of my standby foods, a simple concoction I like to call:

Curry slurry and kos

1 cup rice

2 cups water

1 chunk butter

Salt

4 tbs curry powder

1 1/2 cup milk

400g kos (plain sour yogurt)

Put rice, water, butter and salt in a pot, bring to a boil. Stir well. Turn down to lowest heat. Cover and let simmer. When the rice has absorbed the water, add milk and curry powder. Stir well. Simmer for a few minutes, then mix with kos and eat.

For best results, add some vegetables. Steamed or boiled cauliflower is a good choice.

All ingredients were obtained locally except the curry powder, which I bought on my trip to Istanbul.

I played Counter-Strike 1v1 with Ergi, the young man who invited me. We played on assault and italy. He killed me about 3 times before I hit my stride and started giving him a real fight. By the end I think our total kills were 10 me, 11 him. He was tough to deal with up close, but in distance fights I had a clear advantage.

I had an audience of chunes watching the whole thing and making sarcastic and vulgar comments. I think by the end I proved that I know my way around Counter-Strike and secured my honor.

At coffee I asked, "In your opinion, who is the most honest politician in this country?"

Bashkimi answered, "The one who is not involved in politics." (Ai që nuk merret me politikat.)

I have a man-date on Friday to play Counter-Strike with young Shipperese men. Wish me luck. My honor is at stake.

After my group's Completion of Service (COS) conference, I was walking fast to catch my furgon out of Durrës when I passed a couple of maybe foreign-looking dudes. One of them said "Mirë?" (a greeting). I replied "Mirë, ç'kemi?" and keep walking. A second later I heard one of them saying in English "I don't think he's [Shipperese]..."

Today one of my students asked me to read a sentence of English "in dialect". I asked her to clarify and she said "Like you are from a village."

In Shippery, every region, and even every village, has its own distinct way of speaking, including differences of both phonology and vocabulary as compared to the standard Shqip or gjuhë letrare. (A well-known example in my region is the shift from the vowel i to the diphthong oj, so that mirë is pronounced mojr.) The differences between one part of the country and another can sometimes be so great as to impede understanding if everybody sticks to their local dialect. On the other hand, in cities and larger towns, people tend to speak more in standard language, and even in villages most people are capable of switching to gjuhë letrare if they choose.

I explained to my student that dialectical differences in American English are relatively slight, and that the differences lie between large regions rather than cities vs. villages. I'm hoping that my friend and fellow volunteer Matt W, who is from South Carolina, will come up and visit sometime soon so I can get him to demonstrate Southern speech to my kids. Like a Shipperese villager with Shqip, he usually speaks in pretty standard American English, but when he gets on the phone to people back home, the Southern starts coming out!

Lee said, "So do I, so does everyone. We gather our arms full of guilt as though it were precious stuff. It must be that we want it that way."

Adam broke in, "It makes me feel better, not worse."

"How do you mean?" Samuel asked.

"Well, every little boy thinks he invented sin. Virtue we think we learn, because we are told about it. But sin is our own designing."

- East of Eden by John Steinbeck

I was reading an Eastern European phrasebook that Amy F, another volunteer, lent me, and I saw that the Romanian for "where" is unde. This is unchanged from the Latin unde which means not "where" but "whence" or "from where". The same semantic change occurred in Spanish, where you get dónde, which comes from Latin de unde, which in turn was a shift, and in a sense a redundancy because in earlier Latin it would have meant "from from where". Then again in Spanish you have de dónde "from where", which etymologically speaking is 3 levels of redundancy. If you convert it into its Latin etymons, you get de de unde, which in a certain stage of Latin would have meant "from from from where".

This morning the ground was covered with hard slippery ice. I fell twice on my way to school. Now it's evening and everything is turning into slush. It's even warm enough that I can go without gloves without my hands burning with cold! If this keeps up I may have running water again soon...

It's snowing pretty hard right now! School was out today again and will be tomorrow too, because the roads to Drinkfish from the villages are blocked and the village kids can't get here.

In a restaurant just now, I heard three verbs in the optative mood in about five seconds.

"Ju bëftë mirë" (May it do you good - customarily said to people who are eating) said the man across the table from me as he got up to leave.

"Të lumshin duart" (Bless your hands) said a man at another table as his food was brought to him.

"Të çifsha motrën" (Fuck your sister) said a third man, by way of casual interjection.

Language is fun.

Photos from my trip to Istanbul! I'm still in Istanbul and will be passing through Bulgaria and Macedonia on my way home to Shippery, so more to come.

Matt W, fellow volunteer: "Can you imagine the first guy who started doing agriculture? Everyone must've been like 'YEAH! You got a LOTTA tomatoes!'"

Seen written across the back of an SUV in Tirana today: "VULGARY DISPLAY OF POWER"

I'm already somewhat busy (especially compared to the summer), but I'm set up to soon become hella busy. I visited the 2nd-year English class today. These are the kids I worked with last year when they were freshmen, and their English really really needs help. Plus they keep asking me why I've abandoned them and am only going to the 3rd and 4th year English classes. So I decided I'd better work with their class too. Right now that puts me at 3 class periods a day M-F, but once they put chairs and tables in the kabinet (language classroom), we'll be splitting the language classes in half and doubling the number of class periods, which will put me at 6 periods a day, 30 a week. In addition to that, my weekend teachers and I have resumed our meetings, which makes 2 hours a day on Saturdays and Sundays, and I have Model UN with Becca, which is 2 hours a week, and I'm giving English lessons to Habibi's daughters, and separate lessons for the son of this one math teacher, and I want to schedule more folk history interviews with more students once I finish transcribing the recordings I have...

Fortunately, all this busy-ness makes me feel virtuous, which after all is the whole point of Puppies Guild isn't it?

The other day I was at the internet place. (The dialup in my house, and everybody's dialup in this town, has become so slow that it's nearly useless.)

20-something dude who works at the internet place: Where have you been? I haven't seen you in forever. (kemi humbur krejt, lit. "We have lost [each other] completely")

Me: What? I was here just yesterday.

Him: No you weren't!

Me: Yes I was!

Him: You were?

Me: Uh, yeah!

Him: Oh, really? Maybe I forgot because I was drunk.

I finally figured out how to make pilaf in the comfort of my own home. You just add butter, salt and pepper to the rice. I've been eating pilaf and kos (plain sour yogurt) for the last four days. I love that stuff.

Becca and I are working with a teacher at my school to get a Model UN chapter going. Today was our second real club meeting. Becca was out of town for work, so I ran things. I taught a session on evaluating arguments for validity and soundness. I think they got it! At one point I had to clarify in shqip, but in general they were able to follow along in English. The kids are all 2nd and 3rd year girls from the English program.

Also, I've been doing this folk history project where I go with a student to visit an old person/people that they know, and they conduct an interview (in shqip) about the person's life with a few questions that I wrote, but with freedom to change the questions and add their own. We've recorded each interview with my mp3 player and now I'm working on transcribing and translating them. I think there will also be more students doing more interviews soon. We got permission from each interviewee to include their interview recording, photo, transcription and translation on a CD that I'll distribute to participating students once I finish all the editing. They also gave permission for that stuff to be put on the internet, although I'm not convinced that all of them understood exactly what the internet was. I think I may just post the English translations.

I can see my breath in my apartment again. Winter must be here!

"The abolition spirit is undeniably atheistic... a disguise must be worn; but it is the same old threadbare disguise of the advocacy of human rights." Full text here.

Last of all, in this great struggle, we defend the cause of God and religion. The abolition spirit is undeniably atheistic. The demon which erected its throne upon the guillotine in the days of Robespierre and Marat, which abolished the Sabbath and worshipped reason in the person of a harlot, yet survives to work other horrors, of which those of the French Revolution are but the type. Among a people so generally religious as the American, a disguise must be worn; but it is the same old threadbare disguise of the advocacy of human rights. From a thousand Jacobin clubs here, as in France, the decree has gone forth which strikes at God by striking at all subordination and law. Availing itself of the morbid and misdirected sympathies of men, it has entrapped weak consciences in the meshes of its treachery; and now, at last, has seated its high priest upon the throne, clad in the black garments of discord and schism, so symbolic of its ends. Under this suspicious cry of reform, it demands that every evil shall be corrected, or society become a wreck—the sun must be stricken from the heavens, if a spot is found upon his disk. The Most High, knowing his own power, which is infinite, and his own wisdom, which is unfathomable, can afford to be patient. But these self-constituted reformers must quicken the activity of Jehovah or compel his abdication. In their furious haste, they trample upon obligations sacred as any which can bind the conscience. It is time to reproduce the obsolete idea that Providence must govern man, and not that man shall control Providence. In the imperfect state of human society, it pleases God to allow evils which check others that are greater. As in the physical world, objects are moved forward, not by a single force, but by the composition of forces; so in his moral administration, there are checks and balances whose intimate relations are comprehended only by himself. But what reck they of this—these fierce zealots who undertake to drive the chariot of the sun? Working out the single and false idea which rides them like a nightmare, they dash athwart the spheres, utterly disregarding the delicate mechanism of Providence, which moves on, wheels within wheels, with pivots and balances and springs, which the great Designer alone can control. This spirit of atheism, which knows no God who tolerates evil, no Bible which sanctions law, and no conscience that can be bound by oaths and covenants, has selected us for its victims, and slavery for its issue. Its banner-cry rings out already upon the air—"liberty, equality, fraternity," which simply interpreted mean bondage, confiscation and massacre. With its tricolor waving in the breeze,—it waits to inaugurate its reign of terror. To the South the high position is assigned of defending, before all nations, the cause of all religion and of all truth. In this trust, we are resisting the power which wars against constitutions and laws and compacts, against Sabbaths and sanctuaries, against the family, the State, and the Church; which blasphemously invades the prerogatives of God, and rebukes the Most High for the errors of his administration; which, if it cannot snatch the reign of empire from his grasp, will lay the universe in ruins at his feet. Is it possible that we shall decline the onset?

This argument, then, which sweeps over the entire circle of our relations, touches the four cardinal points of duty to ourselves, to our slaves, to the world, and to Almighty God. It establishes the nature and solemnity of our present trust, to preserve and transmit our existing system of domestic servitude, with the right, unchallenged by man, to go and root itself wherever Providence and nature may carry it. This trust we will discharge in the face of the worst possible peril. Though war be the aggregation of all evils, yet should the madness of the hour appeal to the arbitration of the sword, we will not shrink even from the baptism of fire. If modern crusaders stand in serried ranks upon some plain of Esdraelon, there shall we be in defence of our trust. Not till the last man has fallen behind the last rampart, shall it drop from our hands; and then only in surrender to the God who gave it.

Did you know that there was a long history of contact between the ancient Greeks and Buddhism?

This is pretty funny, especially if you've seen "No Country for Old Men".

On a more sobering note, here are articles with statements from old Japanese guys who participated in vivisection and other horrible things during WWII. [1] [2]

I think I'm gonna try and take more photos around town and put them on flickr. I've lost the inclination because everything seems commonplace and unremarkable to me now (obviously), but I'll probably regret not having a more complete photographic record of Drinkfish later on when I'm gone.

Everyone who has a post showing on my friends page right now is female. I counted and that's 11 different people.

Here's an idea for a web site. You know how there are sites where you can get a quick price comparison on electronics from different vendors? What about a site where you can get a quick report on the labor conditions of workers who produce the goods of any given vendor? Free-market advocates could only be in favor of this. It's just about providing the consumer with more information, and transmitting information efficiently is supposed to be the main good thing about a free market. If this kind of information could be made easy to access and understand for any consumer with internet access, one of the biggest barriers to ethical consumption could be removed. This isn't about government coercion or regulation, it's about consumers making more informed choices.

It would be a lot harder than listing price quotes though. Somebody would have to go and do investigations of labor conditions for potentially thousands of companies. That would be extremely expensive. It would probably have to be subsidized by some kind of state entity, at least at first. Maybe there are private donors that would be interested. Also a lot of employers would be extremely reluctant to be investigated. Maybe if this site became well known, having a listing that said "Employer refuses to permit an investigation" would become embarrassing enough so employers would feel more like cooperating.

Wouldn't it be cool though? Say you're shopping for hard drives. You go to this site and search for "Western Digital" and you get a page that tells you where Western Digital legally does business from, who their suppliers are, how much their suppliers' workers are paid in local currency, what average living costs are local currency (maybe all this kind of info could be crunched down into some more quickly understandable number), what health risks there are in their facilities, what their actual policies are on pregnant workers, injured workers, etc. It would all hinge on some pretty sharp detective work so as to get accurate information. Maybe if it became reputable enough, it could be printed on the side of packaging just like we get nutrition facts on food.

So the people who would be needed include:

- Web developers.

- People experienced in investigating labor conditions.

- Local translators for talking to workers.

- People with a lot of money.

Do you see any other potential issues? Comments?

Kousaku sent me a calligraphy brush and I've been writing kanji over and over and they all look like shit. This is an exceedingly subtle instrument!

I just downloaded World Clock Pro, a yahoo widget. It's great! I can now easily see the time in San Francisco (most family and friends), Phoenix (my sister), Osaka (Japanese family and Kousaku, since Fukuoka is in the same time zone as Osaka), and Drinkfish at a glance. My favorite feature is that you can define a custom location using latitude and longitude and offset from UTC/GMT.

I like this article by Neko Case: My Flaming Hamster Wheel of Panic About Publicly Discussing Poetry in This Respected Forum.

factation n. Something that you know intellectually but don't understand on a gut level or in terms of your own experience.

"Times have changed, and I suppose you could call it progress that a Chinaman, too, may now aspire to whiteness." Yet it is worth asking when we will live in a society where Americans will feel central without feeling white.

[...] we can gauge the depth of our commitments by how much absurdity we will risk in defending them.

- "Covering" by Kenji Yoshino

This is a perceptive, fair book. I definitely recommend it and not just because it's by a guy who has the same first name as me (in its English transcription anyway). He does a great job anticipating objections and engaging them really substantially.