[21:20] FifthTigerofAsia: so tell me about the trip details

[21:20] davechkjr: this thurs night (hopefully) i get back to NYC from Chicago. Friday / Saturday are packing / moving into storage / going away party.

[21:21] davechkjr: Monday morning I leave for my last week in Chicago, then I fly home to Cali.

[21:21] davechkjr: Spend a week or so there, then on 8/19 i get on a plane for Johannesburg

[21:21] davechkjr: where I will be til April

[21:21] davechkjr: maybe a trip back for Christmas / New Years

[21:21] davechkjr: i just need to copy/paste that to my blog so people know what's up

A question to ponder...

Are you a prostitute or are you a consultant?

1. You work very odd hours.

2. You are paid a lot of money to keep your client happy.

3. You are paid well but your pimp gets most of the money.

4. You spend a majority of your time in a hotel room.

5. You charge by the hour but your time can be extended.

6. You are not proud of what you do.

7. Creating fantasies for your clients is rewarded.

8. It's difficult to have a family.

9. You have no job satisfaction.

10. If a client beats you up, the pimp just sends you to another client.

11. You are embarrassed to tell people what you do for a living.

12. People ask you, "What do you do?" and you can't explain it.

13. Your client pays for your hotel room plus your hourly rate.

14. Your client always wants to know how much you charge and what they get for the money.

15. Your pimp drives nice cars like Mercedes or Jaguars.

16. Your pimp encourages drinking and you become addicted to drugs to ease the pain of it all.

17. You know the pimp is charging more than you are worth but if the client is foolish enough to pay it's not your problem.

18. When you leave to go see a client, you look great, but return looking like hell (compare your appearance on Monday AM to Friday PM).

19. You are rated on your "performance" in an excruciating ordeal.

20. Even though you get paid the big bucks, it's the client who walks away smiling.

21. The client always thinks your "cut" of your billing rate is higher than it actually is, and in turn, expects miracles from you.

22. When you deduct your "take" from your billing rate, you constantly wonder if you could get a better deal with another pimp.

23. Your pimp seams to often abuse you, forgetting that without you, he would not have a business.

24. You do all the real work, but the pimp has a higher stigma and more money, and really just has to "coordinate" the work for you. Sometimes, you wonder if you could just make more money pimping out yourself.

25. You get so brainwashed into the lifestyle, that you don't realize that life can be better, until it is too late.

26. Personal time, or a work/life balance, is meaningless to your pimp, all he cares about is satisfying the clients, despite how many times he tells you he loves you.

27. After a few years, you find that all your non-prostitute friends are no longer your friends, because you lost touch and your schedule and lifestyle was difficult to manage, and you find that you associate primarily with other prostitutes.

28. The turnover rate is ridiculously high. Everyone thinks they can do it for a few years, no problem, but after just a few clients railing you, many break under the pressure, or quit for a better life.

29. Most of the time, your job could be performed by a well-trained monkey.

30. You thought college was a waste of time.

(From a work email - I couldn't keep it together at my desk, reading this. If you haven't worked in the industry, I suppose most of the humor here will be lost on you. And I wish I was you.)

Links, yo. Links.

This Google goodness is a little older, but still interesting.

I can't wait to be one of the last living humans with nobody left to say "I told you so" to. (No, seriously.)

Still a few good summer mini courses left to check out via my church. Nice job, Justin.

South Africa time: lotsa safaris to plan, not to mention the shark diving. Also, South African culture (thanks Ang). Also I've been spending time researching my vaccinations and visas. Also, not SA specific, but I'm hoping I might be able to see Zimbabwe while I'm over there. So far its a strong chance I'll see at least Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, and Zambia. Also, Africa's potentially largest game park.

Saw Geni a number of months back but now it looks a little better.

Ocean's 13 writers doing Entourage for Wall Street (this should be like 10 times as good as the LA version).

My birthday is coming. I'm just saying. Please note that was 4 links, not 1.

How not to suck at socializing. Speaking of which, there's a couple places I'd like to check out before leaving the city.

Last, 33 things you didn't know had names, and some weird coincidences.

Had dinner with Christie last night and she semi-inspired the all but dead blogging flame in me to get back into the swing of things in preparation for the upcoming project in Africa. Which is a good thing, but one more thing on the stack of a million and two things to do between now and leaving for the opposite side of the planet. But I am going to give it a shot all the same.

One thing that I've been kicking around in my head is exactly how I'm going to blog when I am in fact there. I want to keep this blog going, but I'm seriously considering a different, trip-specific blog that can be its own entity, of sorts. Then I suppose I can just figure out how to RSS all my posts there onto this one, and add personal posts here that I don't want to share on my more at-large trip blog (which I'll be making known to colleagues, etc.). So I need to figure out how to jones that.

Also, I'm going to try to do a more feature style for that blog. Some of the features will certainly be places I go and things I see, but I also want to run features on the prominent characters I meet during my travels and what's unique about their lives / world-views / etc.. I'd also like to do regular features about how the trip is changing my pre-conceived notions and perhaps even my world-views. And lastly I'd like to of course feature my insight into the statistics and demographics and whatnot that make up the dark continent and the western (mis?)conceptions that we hold of it. I'd like to write about how I think change would be best pursued there and use it in a sense to work towards planning out my next steps after returning home.

The ADP program asks its participants to return to their home country and spend the year following the ADP project back in the paid practice, so that ADP won't be charged with your attrition should you decide to leave the company. I hope to find a local project in NYC for that year and use it to figure out whether I want to return to school or find another path into more long time international development work. Dave's got me thinking about the GRE's and a masters in International Economics. He's also got me thinking about constantly growing my stack of play chips in Full Tilt. I've pushed 500K recently. Once I hit my first mil, I'm going to throw a hundred bucks in there and see what I can do with it.

Project was down last week so I got to stay home and procrastinate training and packing that I really should have gotten done. I did get to some of the packing later in the week, and tied down a storage unit. Packing up boxes really helps the reality of things start to sink in. I am going to Africa. I am going in little over a month. It is going to happen. Wow.

Also, watched fireworks on RI with Dave and Jon and AM and Ang and Amber and Ben and other various friends. Saw Tim's fiancee's show Cigarettes and Chocolate on Tuesday and caught drinks with the kids after that. Hung out with Suin for the first time in like 4 years. Started Band of Brothers again. Read a lot. Played a lot of FT. Good week.

Blogging, as it was intended from before the concept of time even existed, from my rooftop deck, beneath the illumination and noise of the GLBT parade. I will leave it to your internet search techniques to discover the origin of said acronymn, but to my memory the acronym is correct and these fireworks are rainbowically correct as well.

I like this day of the year simply because they feature (usually) the best fireworks display from our particular city view. I suppose, should I move at some point to the West Village, I should have a similarly wonderful point of view, however subjected it may be to the exuberant festivities I in no way doubt are taking place in said neighborhood at this moment.

The fireworks show was exceedingly short this year. This is surprising. There was nothing even nearing a grand finale. Interesting.

...how about some links?

I want.

I am.(Sometimes.)

I agree with...

I need a career in...

I want. (do that a lot lately, eh?)

I want to go to... (and I might mention all my so-called-friends have alreay gone without me...)

I enjoyed.

Juuuuuuust cruising in under the deadline that would have been a month sans writing anything at all.

Wooooow.

Anyway, gotta new approach. Gotta have one. Its like this: something's better than nothing. So here's a preview of the new format:

- ADP wants me for a World Vision project, based on South Africa, starting in August. Its very surreal at the moment. Have to get the current project to let me go, first, but that's like the last thing before packing up all my stuff on the week of 4th of July, and then I'm gone, til some time next year. So...yeah.

- Had another really great day just enjoying the West Village. Beautiful weather for it, went to Nicole's church and then brunched after. I really, really want to move to that nabe when (if?) I come back from South Africa (if means if I go, not if I'll come back or not. I'm coming back. At least for a while.).

- I haven't even tried to write anything of mildly theological substance lately, but I'm ok with that. I've been learning a LOT this past year or so and I feel like an athlete coming back from a season off for injury or something. Not to say I'll get back on that soon, but I at least hope to.

- Camera broke on the last trip to Young Life camp. Gotta get a new one quick. Need to throw some pix up, too.

- Youth group is winding down for the summer break again. 5 years - in a beautiful heartbeat. Wow. Speaking of which, we're headed to New Orleans this summer for another rebuilding trip. Appreciate your support...more to come on that.

- Still stuck in Chicago every week in the meantime (that pretty much covers the rest).

I love Thursday nights, when the plane finally touches down at EWR. There's work to be done on Friday, but Thursday nights, no matter the Air Traffic Control delays, I am home. I love standing outside the terminal and breathing the warm port air, I love the local car service in Hoboken that knows my voice on the phone and is always waiting to get me home.

And I love the city lights coming into view as we speed down the 1&9 towards the Holland Tunnel. That is the best part of my week.

I'm not ashamed to say I love getting into Hoboken and cruising the streets towards home, especially on those nights when we're not getting there too late. I love it for the same reason I've loved this crazy little town ever since I first moved here - you can not get home without seeing pretty girls who are also trying to get home, or to the next bar, or what have you. Its just nice living here with them.

But damn, do I hate Friday nights.

Most of them, at least lately, I've had to work late, and then I order in and fatigue takes over and all of a sudden its mid-Saturday morning. Before that, when I was slightly less crazy, I'd wrap up late in the afternoon and head into the city to plan Sunday's lesson with Cregan at the church offices. Then maybe I'd hit the movies with Dave or meet a friend out for dinner.

But every once in a while I get roped into something in Hoboken on a Friday night. Tonight it was Matt's wedding rehearsal and the ensuing dinner. Rehearsal went smooth, then we were down to the waterfront for a nice dinner, and then it happened. Snuck up on me without a forethought, it did - my first walk home through the streets of the Bo on a Friday night in months untold.

And every one of those pretty girls is out with her boy. No one is single in this town on Friday nights. Cute couples on the river walk. Drunk ones on the main strip. Trendy ones having dinner at the nice restaurants. Cancerous ones having smokes on their stoops. Walking out, walking home, going shopping, coming home from work, out for a run, hopping in the car, they are just freaking everywhere.

A million reminders of how. alone. you. really. are.

I don't doubt the existence of infinite love and grace. Its just sometimes I think God maybe is capable of hating me in some cosmically simultaneous way.

Wow. Last published on April 22nd? Seriously???

I used to write. Now I just check back in on this thing like some forgotten friend that you keep saying "man we really need to grab a beer sometime" when you run into him from time to time.

And I hate how I have to start every post like this these days, so next time I'm just not going to, regardless of how long it takes me to get to next time.

Church was interesting today - TK preaches a morning service on the west side and there was a bike race that shut down all of 5th Ave. thus preventing him from getting to the east side service in time for the sermon. So the scripture gets read, and Bisgrove gets up, adjusts the mic, and says "I got nothing." 3000 people laugh, somewhat awkwardly. He actually did a great job of ad-libbing it, got us all to sing Amazing Grace acapella (sans the actual words/music in front of us), and then decided to proceed with the communion that usually comes after the sermon on the first Sunday of the month. Communion complete, still no preacher. Bisgrove leads us in a prayers-of-the-people of sorts and then we start the final communion hymn one more time, planning to dismiss after that. TK shows up on the last line of the last verse and gives a great sermon from Esther, a book that does not make mention of God.

Last night was the membership dinner / meeting that I think is one of the best ideas the church ever had. They rent out the Metropolitan Plaza and combine our annual meeting to elect officers and such with a delightful hors d'oeuvers hour followed by a dinner, complete with an hysterical emcee (who happens to be the guy who's behind the mask in those creepy Burger King commercials). And that's followed by lots of presbyterians and wine and dancing all mixed up, if you can buy that one.

What else? Oh yeah, Robbie was in Chicago. We went to hear Michael Medved speak. The guy is good intentioned but he'll never really be ineffective because his big moral platform doesn't really have any bastions supporting it. I kind of thought that was the case so when Q&A came I gave him a pointed question to prove it. Which he did, in turn. Too bad.

We went out to Morton's and blew my whole week's per diem on one dinner, since I never get to see her, and that was just a blast. Hopefully put some meat on her tiny bones before sending her back off to Mexico. And then after dropping her off I got that ticket that I so deserved from the day before, 10 states away. I don't think I deserved this one so much though, so I'm gonna fight it. Go me.

The last few weeks have been a LOT of work, little sleep, and trying not to work much on the weekends. I got a pretty darn good performance appraisal, which was nice and I think perhaps somewhat deserving - I've worked hard with half the team I was supposed to have, and I'm still fairly close to delivering on schedule (ok, the last part is iffy). I don't like flying to Chicago every week but I'm still hoping that a role with ADP will crop up by mid summer and remedy that situation. If not, who knows?

I know I don't.

Two weeks just like that.

Slipping, I am just plain slipping.

Let's see if we can remember some of it real quick...

Today was church and youth group and then some reading on the deck in the sun (picked up a big thick Cosa Nostra history called "Five Families"). But, I woke up in Fairfax, VA this morning - early, and then set a land speed record from Jack and Rebecca and Gretta's place to mine, caught a shower, and then couldn't find parking so I missed most of the service when I finally got into the city - argh.

Had a brand new red Mustang with a big ol engine and how I'm not in jail after this morning is proof of the grace of God. Speaking of Grace, I drove down yesterday afternoon to surprise her at her birthday party, so that was good times with old faces.

Friday night I went to a Wheaton Alumni event at the Harvard Club where Dr. Jerry Root - one of the leading scholars on C.S. Lewis - spoke. I was in attendance at the behest of my grandparents who a) both went to Wheaton and b) are good friends of Root as they used to attend his church in Santa Barbara. He was a really nice guy and very eager to talk with me when he heard who I was. Headed out to Karma with the Daves and Chrissy and Jen and some of her friends, and I will never step foot in that bar again ever (hint: fumes).

Before that was another insane week at work.

Before that was last weekend, when I was...sick for the 4th time this year. Freakin travel and airplanes and whatnot. So that was a bust.

Before that was another insane week at work.

And before that was Easter, when I last wrote.

This next week should be another insane week at work. Funny how they keep happening like that. Gives me precious little time to sleep or read or work out or enjoy being alive.

But Robbie is in Chi-town for a wedding so I'll have dinner with her tomorrow, that will be fun.

Rise heart; thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise

Without delays,

Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise

With him mayst rise:

That, as his death calcined thee to dust,

His life may make thee gold, and much more. Just.

- George Herbert

Shameful, how far I've strayed from my former levels of regular writing. And for the life of me, I can't really explain, much less justify the situation. Granted, I'm working a lot and travelling all the freaking time, but I've written at least semi-regularly in the past with the same constraints. I'm rather at a loss...

I may be in Africa by the end of next month. Its hard to say. I'm due to end my current project by mid-May, and there are roles with ADP, one in particular with World Vision, that are starting around that time. Its going to be an interesting couple of weeks - I have to really slam on my deliverables at work to start getting them in front of the client, and in the mean time I have to actually land the project with WV, manage all the expectations of the Senior Execs that have input on my move decision, and close the deal. That's the problem with the fact that I've worked hard on this project and (I think) done a fairly good job with what I was given - they don't want me to go. But it is what it is, and I think at the end of the day they'll support me on this, hopefully.

Then I just have to pack up my life and throw it in storage (so to speak). And then I'll be gone for a while.

I am, for the first time in quite a while, really truly excited about a new life direction of sorts.

Today was Easter, in case you didn't know. I hit church in the morning, then headed over to the Lenox Hill hospital to visit one of our youth group kids who got an appendectomy this weekend. Then RI for a big meal with a big group of people at one of Dave's family's friend's place - awesome lady named Dee. Dave's family and AM were there but Jon wasn't because he was at the Yankee game. I wished I was at the Yankee game. Headed back to the 'boken and helped Cregan and Clint hide the eggs for their kids - watching kids find eggs is one of those warm experiences that you know won't be a lot different in the new heavens and new earth - because you can't really improve on something that great. Or maybe you can, which is like extra awesome on your awesomeness.

Tiger didn't win the Master's, but I did get my laundry done before Soprano's starts, in 15 minutes. But not my status template for work, gotta do that after Entourage I guess. Tonight is a good night - hard to have a bad one when you're filled to the brim with swine.

Some links, just to clear out the FF tabs...

Speaking of swine, I want to go here.

Google's doing a free 411 service now. Its Google, so there's no adds (which makes sense, if you know what their motto is).

I didn't make it to the Theory sale this weekend but its still on tomorrow if you're one of the lucky people who doesn't have to leave NY every week for work.

I haven't played Mao in a while but it came to mind recently, and I need to play it again soon.

Oh, and the picture in my profile? It was taken on the deck of this ship, which is now at the bottom of the ocean. Freaky.

Not writing here but I have been elsewhere.

Links on a Tuesday? Is nothing sacred?

I finally broke down and bought a membership to Conquer Club. Behold, the internet has broken down the barriers of distance that limited the in-fighting that used to only exist at the holidays, between the younger three Knowles brothers and I.

Children of Hurin is coming.

Adding randomness to your photos.

None too often you see an anonymously authored article run in the WaPo...

I need this.

NYC Inside.

Why the semantic web will fail.

If the world was made of rubber...

Great eclipse photo.

I'm completely against letting people know about the power outlets I'm familiar with in the airports around the lower 48.

The Amen break: world's most important 6-second drum loop.

From Vail...

This is no less than the 4th time in the past couple of weeks that I've opened up the delightful MS OneNote to blog while north of earth by 30,000-some feet. I never actually got around to pasting any of the former attempts into an actual post, as the continuing lack of posting whatsoever testifies to. These 4 recent attempts all sit shamefully just below the page of some that I wrote back when I was in Miami. A year ago. So if those never got posted, that gives you some idea…

Nothing I write anymore is anything close to the quality I was putting out when I was actually making time to read/write on a regular basis, anyway, so nobody's missing out on anything. I'm trying to make a resurgence on the reading but I've been trying to do that since college. Goodreads appears to be perhaps a decent method for keeping track of what I've been reading and perhaps letting my friends hold me somewhat sublimely accountable by their voracious amounts of read books that will consistently dwarf mine. What I don't like about it is the fact that at least 50% of my reading is online these days. I just finished Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde online recently - I guess I could throw it on Goodreads but I never cracked the actual book. Read a lot of Asimov this way too. Not that I'm reading a lot, by any means.

If you don't know about MS OneNote, allow me to enlighten you - its an awesome, little-known note-taking app rolled in with the full set of MS Office products - sans FrontPage, that is - if you happen to work for the kind of company that requires you to have such things. Or if you happened to drop the kind of cash I'd never think of giving to a company like MS, personally. Now you know. Half the battle. 10 points for the kids who can name that pop-culture reference.

This weekend will be the first "normal" one (by my standards of recent years) pretty much this whole year, save maybe one in January that I'm not recalling at the moment. If you've read my blog for any amount of time you're familiar with that format, I like turning into a creature of habit on the weekend, I find it quite comfortable:

Friday I work too much. Then late in the evening I get my take-out Chinese and retire with the latest from Netflix (still working through Season 1 of Arrested Development at the moment).

Saturday mornings I meet with the closest thing I've been able to find to an older man / mentor to talk through life stuff. On weekends when Kuz is in town and we're both free, we meet for lunch/accountability somewhere in Hell's Kitchen. I like the dining options around there, always have. The rest of Saturday is usually a mixed bag, the exception to the creature of habit bit…although it usually involves a mix of putting the finishing touches on the lesson for Sunday, watching some form of sport on the tube (bring on baseball season), and when the weather's good and I've been regular with my running - a nice long one.

Saturday nights continue the mix theme - poker, hitting the West Village haunts with Dave, dates, maybe catch a movie, whatever. Nothing too late what with Sunday mornings.

Church starts with youth leaders meeting to pray at 9:30 before the UES service. Then I head to the service with the high schoolers. After, we head to the church offices and have senior high group. That goes til 3ish depending on how good the conversation in group time pans out. There are 16 or so Sundays in the year that involve football for the next few hours. The rest involve getting home and catching up on life stuff that needs to be done before packing and crashing early because Monday morning's flight is gonna be an early one.

Kind of takes all the fun out of stalking me, doesn't it?

Anyway, that's what I'm looking forward to this weekend. I've been traveling for various reasons for a LOT of the weekends in the last 6 months, which is a LOT more difficult when you already travel for the week. I'm looking forward to NOT doing that for the next few weekends, spending a good deal more time in the city, and enjoying it while I'm still there.

After all, potential ADP projects are looming.

I still need to blog about that, don't I?

...later...

So what ended up happening? I worked too much on Friday, then headed into the church offices where I talked to Katherine about some interesting positions there, but at this point I'm not really sure that's the right move for me. Cregan and I worked on our lessons and then went to see 300 with Dave. Movies were still getting a decent turnout despite the blizzard. Flick was OK, about what I expected of it. Cool to see a movie set in a historical place I got to visit recently.

Saturday we had a youth leaders brunch in the city to discuss this year's mission's trip. Except, when I showed up to Cregan and Mindi's to catch a ride, I found them beginning the process of cleaning snow drifts out of the car after the sun roof vent had been left slightly open during the storm. So that took us about an hour. Brunch went nice, then the rest of the day was chilling and working on the lesson. Today was typical - church, youth group, home now. Picking up the roommate and his fiancee on their way back from Paris at the airport in about an hour, so I have to take off for that now...

So my sister is like totally a nurse now. Woot.

Well, about a year ago I was battling illness, busy with youth group events like the 30 Hour Famine, in love with NY and making promises to write more about it, and, on the other hand, warning about working too much to blog regularly.

Not much has changed.

Sick for the second time in 3 weeks, so that's very not cool. I wasn't sick for the Famine (2 weekends ago) for a change, but I didn't do the sleepover as work has been, well...work. The hours these days are similar to what they were a year ago - far too many, but now it just seems to come with the new title, hence - less complaining on the blog and more straight up work. Traveling to Chicago doesn't help.

From a Volkswagen ad in a ski mag I was reading in the doc's office at lunch today:

You have "a thing." And no. It's not your "issues." Or your "stuff." It's the one thing you love doing. And maybe even being. Maybe you feel it when you're plugging in a guitar. Maybe you feel it when you're sitting in the middle of the ocean, alone. Waiting. Maybe you feel it when you're taking a load of Little Leaguers to Districts, two states away. Whatever it is, its your thing. And it's always been your thing. Okay, sure. People may share the same thing. But deep, deep, deep down, you know your thing is a little different. (Okay...a lot different.)

Oh, and I got accepted into Accenture's Developing Partnerships practice, which is flippin sweet. Next post will elaborate on that.

(maybe)

(oh, and the picture...long story short, one of my good college buddies named Dave [what else?] did an internship for the German company Sick one summer, and our whole senior year we couldn't get over joking about how sick everything was, like how sick the forklifts in their warehouses were, and how sick it was to be in Germany, and how sick...you get the point. Anyway, good times. Dave's married to a cool girl now and I think they have a kid. Last time I saw them was my 5 year reunion, right at good old Benji's, where I left him.)

Thirsty hearts are those whose longings have been wakened by the touch of God within them. - A.W. Tozer

I recently finished reading The Sacred Romance (although the sidebar won't reflect that, or anything else I've read / watched / listened to in the last couple years). I have to say that this is the first book I've read in quite a while that either a) caused me to begin making some life changes from the rut I was in prior to reading it, or b) been quality enough that I plan to re-read it shortly.

One of the things I liked best about the book was the humility that was evident in the writers' style. This is a humility I see in what I consider to be the best of writers and orators: they are not afraid to rely heavily on the previous wisdom of others. They offer a unique and relevant point of view, however it is clear that their thoughts are heavily seasoned with what they have learned from those who went before them - and are quick to quote and cite these sources. C.S. Lewis is an excellent example of this, relying heavily on the ancient church fathers. I also like my pastor's style for this reason - of course it helps when the person employing this tactic is as well read as men like these.

Some examples, with related thoughts from the authors:

Power can do everything but the most important thing: it cannot control love.... In a concentration camp, the guards possess almost unlimited power. By applying force, they can make you renounce your God, curse your family, work without pay, eat human excrement, kill and then bury your closest friend or even your mother. All this is within their power. Only one thing is not: they cannot force you to love them. This fact may help explain why God sometimes seems shy to use his power. He created us to love him, but his most impressive displays of miracle - the kind we may secretly long for - do nothing to foster that love. As Douglas John Hall has put it, "God's problem is not that God is not able to do certain things. God's problem is that God loves. Love complicates the life of God as it complicates every life. - Phillip Yancey

Satan gets us to side with him by sowing the seed of doubt in our first parents' minds: "God's heart really isn't good. He's holding out on you. You've got to take things into your own hands." And Paradise was lost.

---

We come into the world with a longing to be known and a deep-seated fear that we aren't what we should be. We are set up for a crisis of identity. And then, says Frederick Buechner, the world goes to work:

Starting with the rather too pretty young woman and the charming but rather unstable young man, who together know no more about being parents than they do the far side of the moon, the world sets in to making us what the world would like us to be, and because we have to survive after all, we try to make ourselves into something that we hope the world will like better than it apparently did the selves we originally were. That is the story of all our lives, needless to say, and in the process of living out that story, the original, shimmering self gets buried so deep that most of us hardly end up living out of it at all. Instead, we live out all the other selves which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world's weather. (Telling Secrets)

---

We have all read in scientific books, and indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is.... We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. (Orthodoxy) - G.K. Chesterton

Every woman is in some way searching for or running from her beauty and every man is looking for or avoiding his strength.

---

It is impossible to live the spiritual life in the ontological lightness of doing because our hearts and minds have become enemies rather than allies. Neither are we free to love or serve.

All in all, the book had a powerful message which resonated thoroughly with me at the time that I read it. That, however, is a caveat in and of itself - I don't believe it is a book that's been aimed at people who aren't in that point in their life that they are ready to hear its message. And I think that I just barely got to that point before I finally cracked this book, in God's good timing. For the first time in a long time, I'm not quite so skeptical on hope.

Well, its nothing deep, but its a post that has nothing to do with me (and everything to do with stuff I think is cool). Its been a long time coming, but here they are: links 'a plenty.

The Talent Myth. 2 guesses why I like this one.

You can either worry about it, or get used to the new world, like the kids are doing. This is the kind of stuff I want to book about at some point.

Smart urban design.

Go TSA, go.

This was interesting, as was this. Not sure if anything will come of either.

Google link of the week: Why Ajax Failed (Then Succeeded)

Whisk and Ladle sounds about as cool a dinner as one could have in the city, or anywhere else for that matter.

Finally, some excellent Asimov reading.

Oh, and some music to read by, straight from the Paris metro.

Wrote this a couple years back. Followed up with this.

So...yeah. Almost 7 years now. And that's neither here nor there.

Still sick, stuck in Chicago til tomorrow night, tired and behind schedule on the project. Also, neither here nor there.

Been a lot of that, lately.

Happy Wednesday, or whatever you decide to call it.

Oh and kudos to you if you caught the subtlety in Google's mispelling of their logo today. I take the fact that I noticed it and figured it out as proof positive that I do know what its like to love someone on a daily basis enough to notice when they change something small. My someone just happens to be Google.

Well it hasn't quite been a week yet, so I'm making good on my last post's promise.

Roughly... end of November, that's when I last wrote a decent piece. A short bit in support of returning to conscription.

It was a good post because it didn't have anything to do with me.

What was different between me now and me 3 and half months ago? I had just spent some time in Greece, for one thing. That helps. I hadn't been exposed to the full brunt of this project yet, for another. I hadn't been travelling so regularly - that definitely has something to do with it. Not much else comes to mind.

So there it is.

I'm debating getting on the plane tomorrow, but not for profound reasons - I'm feeling rather flu-ish. Hit me last night after a big day of nothing. Met Dave for lunch and worked on the lesson I never ended up giving since I started feeling rough around dinner time and knew I'd wake up worse.

The week was about normal, although a pleasant exception was meeting up with Dawn on Wednesday to sample some of Chicago's finest French cuisine. Le Bouchon had a nice, crowded feel that a lot of NYC places do, however the crowd was definitely dying down by 9:30, when we left. I had the hanger steak, it was decent, as far as hanger steak goes.

Its freakin cold in Chicago. Everyone complains but I kind of like it.

And this week my goal is to write a decent post that has nothing to do with me. Baby steps.