tomorrow

So another adventure partly ends and a new one begins. Packing up my room, putting things away in boxes (I started my packing a day early unlike usual seven hours of packing through the night-J would be so proud of me!), thinking, how did another year of my life pass by with me barely noticing. Its already summer and somehow we went from autumn to deepest winter to the beginning of spring and now high summer and its 35 degrees and Boston is unrecognizable from the days when we trudged to school knee-deep in snow. And yesterday was perfect as I took a nap in between packing. The windows to my room were open, and the sunlight streamed in and it was a perfect 25 deg and the wind carried the scent of newly blooming lilac and for once I wasn't rushed as I have been all year and all I had to do was to live through the moment and it was beautiful.

And now I am listening to the soundtrack for the summer of 2000 which was the first time I came to Boston and spent my summer here and how much has changed in seven years. And in some ways the things I thought would be different are not and the things I thought would be the same are. Here's to not spending six years of your life fixated on the wrong things, to taking life as it is and not more than that, to adventure at every new corner, to the wind in my hair and a spring in my step. Here's to tomorrow, whatever it may bring.

the shadow lines

I am reading again. Two and a half books in two days surely qualifies as a literary resurgence. Divisadero as I have mentioned. Can Anna ever go back again? Are we ever able to sew scars together again? But also The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh about four individuals torn apart by the Calcutta riots. I was told by someone that this was better than the English Patient. Shocked at such heresy I immediately bought and read this. Reader, it is not. Heretic to be included even in the same sentence. Ghosh's writing is ill-ordered, characters caricatured with no heroic appeal, and no weight of tragedy to carry the writing, to imbue meaning through the slightest of gestures. Though he does wield some talent, it is not nearly as much as it is hyped out to be. But perhaps I am simply not the right person to write a comparison piece on the two. One idea he mentioned was quite stunning in its simplicity, that love was directly opposed to the idea of justice, that he had thrown everything he had into the scales and it had not moved by a tremor. As it is quoted in Divisadero, whether we are the heroes of our own lives or someone else is, these pages will show.

read

"Anywhere else, those events would only have occupied two square inches of a Brueghel, but they brought fire to my life"- Divisadero

I've read it now. And now the re-reading begins, to find out the many truths that are too buried for us adults. But it was anguishing and I tried not to linger to let it parallel but it did. The racing can only hide so much, and it should pause so that other things, ordering and stabilizing can be layered over it, but perhaps it is not to be.

And a dear friend sent ultrasounds of the baby growing in her womb, and it is a miracle of human life, that despite everything, as Coetzee says, the urge for life to perpetuate and constantly renew itself will overpower all evil.

madam, i'm adam

it's certainly scary how I can veer from exhilarated to maudlin in a couple of days. Nothing to quite explain the shift. A long lunch with a professor debating the derisive SLFP proposals before Sri Lanka today and how the situation is absolutely critical. It hasn't been as bad as this in 25 years. We will look back in history and realize that this is the turning point, when something could have been averted, as Burke said, all that is required for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. And what do you do when someone tells you they are dying, to be gone within the year and there is nothing left to say. That has been the hallmark of today, I simply have nothing left to say. And no one to say it to.

person to watch: Priyanka Gandhi. Will she turn out like her grandmother, the personification of evil, or someone else entirely, more compassionate, less paranoid about holding onto power,

one of the greats

I'm back again to the state where life is beautiful. Meeting cartoonists on random street corners, a friend becoming a future congressman in Nebraska while being a Sri Lankan activist, another person working on the Richardson campaign as a matter of honour, out of her apartment with no money. Trekking to Colombia to work with a Nobel peace prize nominated activist is another friend, while another works with UNICEF in Bihar. Met an urban planner/architect from Sri Lanka who is going to help us map out our settlement. Meeting a renowned anthropological professor tomorrow who is a dear mentor, and who wrote Buddhism Betrayed. Always carving out a path in the midst of a madness, trying to find love in the obscurest of places and being unexpectedly surprised by the promises that one finds instead. Always drifting, always at a point of "divisar" by which we look back from the distance of time. Finding another who understands Brueghel, again. We find what we search for, when we do not look for it. Years later. Being with a brilliant economist, understanding behaviour. Always pushing the limits of my own understanding. Oh, that this could last forever. And listening to potent music, (the cheap, as Noel Coward said), and watching lots of television, browning under the sun and the promise of midsummer with days of nothing ahead (except exams which we've written off). The taper and counterpoint to a year that has gone by as fast as it has been unexpected. One of the greats as each year has been since I set myself firmly, fearfully, on this path.

beat up

Currently beat up, chewed up and spat out

Listening to on repeat

a. Road Trippin' by Red Hot Chili Peppers
b. The Story by Brandi Carlisle
c. Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley
d. New Day by Kate Havnevik of Melankton
e. Bach-Air on a G String by Royal Philharmonic

cricket.

watching the cricket finals with a bunch of sri lankans, is the only way it is meant to be watched. Riotous swearing and superstitious behaviour (we all stood on one leg in honour of Nelson's superstition at 111-1) and a lot of hair-rending and a lot of particularly Sri Lankan jokes, including one about the President who had flown in for the match.

It was a heroic effort and they played the game well. They lost to the juggernaut that was Australia, who've transformed the way the game is played, and for whom this is their third World Cup title, amidst much ill-planning, confusion and bad luck for the Sri Lankan side (read two rainouts- 38 overs reduced to 36 under the Duckworth-Lewis scoring, and playing in pitch-darkness in Barbados in a stadium without lighting) but they did their side proud and one can ask for no more.

And in a typically Sri Lankan twist, around about midway through the game, all our phones started going off and it was friends and relatives, letting us know that there was an air raid over Colombo and more bombs in the capital. Of course in typical Sri Lankan fashion it went like this: machang there was a bomb just now and we heard the blast. The power is out! What is the score?"

copyrighted for posterity if nothing else

"As a child she had keenly examined movement and life, expended by ants, bats, dragonflies, plants and trees. She had inherited the English love of the earth. The soil and its teeming life was a source of constant wonder to her and she had spent hours sitting silently in the April dampened earth, still as a lake. The frozen insects, earwigs startled, had dismissed her interruption and continued busily around her, climbing on the roots and branches of her calves and thighs. Armies building castles and establishments, enthroning and dethroning, followed by funereal processions of ants, black and red against the sludge green of the earth. Fortresses on promontories painstakingly constructed, futile efforts only to be ravaged by the helicopter drone of a bee, and blitzes by kamikaze dragonflies. Tiger moths, emblazoned with stripes of gold and camouflaged brown, hurling themselves with concentrated fury against the slender flickering candle flame of her night light. Those had been the first victims of her magnesium arrests. Her nose to the ground, eye to eye with snails. She imagined she could see their expressions, caught in the headlights. Herself as a goddess, haughty, only watching until the whim of destruction led her to exhale and blow. "

divisa?

I decided not to do an MBA which caused great waves of distress in my family, though i think my father is finally resigned to the fact that neither am I going to do an MBA or get married in the near future, thus bringing censure down on his head from the worldwide community of exiled sri lankan tamils who're busy financing terrorism or sympathising with it. I'm confused about freedom fighters/terrorists/goverment-sponsored violence. Should I rule the country, I would put the men to graze and hunt and let the women rule. Except Condoleeza Rice, who would lead the pack of men-sheep. The sun has finally come out and I browned further more while everyone else turned red. I also ordered Michael Ondaatje's book from Canada, since it only comes out in the rest of the world a whole month and a half later and I couldn't wait. After DHLing it from Canada to the East Coast however, I couldn't bring myself to read it because it would take another seven years before he published another book and it couldn't be over too soon. Am in class right now, trying to take down the pharmaceutical industry in America. All rich-country problems, who will save my beloved country?

divisadero

ooooh I feel sick, nauseous almost, but deeply excited and thrilled. I just ordered Divisadero, the new novel by Michael Ondaatje, which comes out in Canada tomorrow (yes I had to courier it from Canada because it only arrives in the States next month and I simply cannot wait that long). I feel ill at the thought of reading a NEW oeuvre by him, instead of the same four books that I have reread for the past ten years. His last book was written in 2001 and he averages six years for a book,so its going to be a long time before another one is here and ooh. I'd better make the most of this one as I can. There goes my life.

vonnegut 1922-2007

On pages 9 and 10 of his book Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction, Vonnegut listed eight rules for writing a short story:

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

And an excerpt. I remember reading Slaughterhouse 5 for the A levels, along with Catch 22 and Dispatches. I didn't know what war looked like then, or death, or the sheer arbitrariness of it all. I only thought I knew what love was and it turned out I didn't know that either.

"Finnerty shook his head. ''He'd pull me back into the center, and I want to stay as close on the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.'' He nodded, ''Big, undreamed-of things -- the people on the edge see them first.''

studio 60

More tragedy and in Virginia too, genteel south.

Did I tell you I met Nandita Das? She’s someone I’ve always dreamt of directing, and she’s only acted in independent Indian films, controversial ones too. Her performance in Earth, along with Aamir Khan was so haunting, the subverting of love into rage and hopelessness. Anyway she was at school the other day and I met her consecutively and I talked to her briefly, awestruck.

Meeting with a potential investor. Still unable to come to a decision on the other school, though admit weekend is this weekend and perhaps it’ll be easier to make a decision. As for other things, they continue. Right now, I’m on a massive binge of Studio 60, the new Aaron Sorkin (creator of West Wing) television series starring the ex-Josh Lyman and Matthew Perry and here is a lovely line, from this valentine to television.

Bradley Whitford (as Danny Tripp) : “I've been married twice before and I'm a recovering cocaine addict. And I know that's no woman's dream of a man, or of a father. Nonetheless, I believe I'm falling in love with you. If you want to run, I understand. But you better get a good head start, because I'm coming for you, Jordan."

the world we live in

This world we live in. What are we doing here?

Above is a picture snatched from the BBC, one of my favourite sites of all time. A girl hands a female soldier some flowers and is embarassed. As usual it reminds me, the people who say we must go to war are rarely the ones who die.

back and blue

so. We made it into the semifis of the competition and it seems as though things are going well on the nonprofit creation front, as well as can be expected.

Back from a lovely time in Oxford and London, too well in fact for coming back is being extremely difficult. A day in bed solved those problems though. Yesterday after a crazy week (where I attended one class and had like nine hours total of sleep or something ridiculous) I got up at 8am, downloaded Ugly Betty and stayed in bed until 5pm until I finally roused myself to go to the gym and I came back, cooked honey and ginger chicken with tortillas and went back to bed at 9pm. It felt as though my body welcomed it, the intermittent napping associated with a day in bed and today I feel like a million dollars. Two !!

Still deciding on life trajectories. Gosh, if only things at the end could make themselves clear. I don't enjoy orientation activities, it must be said. Sigh.
Spent part of the week translating a documentary from Tamil into English. It was very emotional what my friend/kid had gone into the wilds of Vaharai Sri Lanka to film and then to come back with these tales of heartbreak and loss.

Anyway here's a lovely quote : "Beware the last temptation, To do the right thing for the wrong reasons".

and maybe

more advice from Cary Tennis, Salon's resident advice columnist

"So go for it. Please go for it. Go for it because elite academia needs people who've dodged a flying plate or two. Go for it for all the world's dreamers who question whether their dreams are worth it. Go for it for all the world's minority parties and outsider voices and small strange people with big dreams and curiously insistent inclinations and seemingly trivial preferences and nearly unheard voices telling them that it just might work, it just might be the thing, it just might make a difference. Go for it for all the people wondering if their little notions even matter. Go for it because it's not just about you, it's about setting an example for your kids and your family and your neighbors and friends. Go for it because somebody once told you not to. Go for it because someone told you that you weren't worth it. Go for it so you'll have a story to tell about courage and trusting your instincts.
Go for it for everyone who grew up in abusive households. Do it for everyone carrying self-doubt around like a bag of stones.
Go for it because you don't want to end up wondering 20 years later why you didn't.


Go for it to strike a blow against the tyranny of reasonable ideas.
Go for it because it's spring and spring is extravagant and fearless.
Go for it. "

malinga!

Lasith Malinga! Hero of the day for taking 4 wickets in 4 balls, a never-done-before feat in a 100 years or so of cricket history, neither in the one days or in the test matches. As the South African next to me said, "damned difficult to face him".

If Sri Lanka lose one more match, then they will have to win everything else to make it to the semi finals. Bugger. wish i was home right now, watching the match and yelling my head off in delirium. Instead am in medieval oxford, on hard backed chairs in an overwrought ballroom. And while it is lovely, and the sky is blue, the grass is green, the daffodils are blooming, everything is so silent and reserved and I want to whoop and yell! There would have been dancing on the streets back home. I love the Guardian which has an over by over commentary, and the funniest commentators who get so bored during the slow stretches and still have to write something. Here's a classic from the 13th over of this match:

"13th over: South Africa: 67-1 (Smith 41 Kallis 24) So in this B movie autobigraphy of my life as an OBO writer, who'll be playing me? Adopt your best trailer voice and try this for size: "He was a proud man, who compromised his personal tastes for his professional ideals". I'm going for Sean Penn, with Vin Diesel as Jacques Kallis and Bob Hoskins as Smyth. Smith meanwhile, steps away to leg and squats as he swats Vaas way away for six over long-off. The first six at this ground, and a really bolshy shot to a man bowling as well as Vaas has been. "

Lastly, as Bill Clinton said "we are defined as much by the opportunities we have lost, as those we have gained".

how I feel.

broke

my phone bill for last month was USD 536.

I am officially broke-r than a churchmouse

one old one new

And two quotes that made me think, one old and one new

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire"- William Butler Yeats

"Do what you can, when you can, where you are, with all you have"- a 12 year old black Zimbabwean boy who died shortly thereafter of AIDS.

babri masjid

If you are late for work in Bombay, and reach the station just as the train is leaving the platform, you can run up to the packed compartments and you will find many hands stretching out to grab you on board, unfolding outward from the train like petals. As you run alongside you will be picked up, and some tiny space will be made for your feet on the edge of the open doorway. The rest is up to you; you will probably have to hang on to the door frame with your fingertips, being careful not to lean out too far lest you get decapitated by a pole placed close to the tracks. But consider what has happened, your fellow passengers, already packed tighter than cattle are legally allowed to be, their shirts drenched with sweat in the badly ventilated compartment, having stood like this for hours, retain an empathy for you, know that your boss might yell at you or cut your pay if you miss the train and will make space where none exists to take one more person with them. And at the moment of contact, they do not know if the hand that is reaching for theirs belongs to a Hindu or Muslim or Christian or Brahmin or untouchable or whether you were born in this city or arrived only this morning or whether you live in Malabar Hill or Jogeshwari; whether you’re from Bombay or Mumbai or New York. All they know is that you’re trying to get to the city of gold and that’s enough. Come on board, they say. We’ll adjust

From “Mumbai”, Granta 57 by Sukutu Mehta and Sebastian Salgado- on the Babri Masjid riots in Bombay.

what we lost

What we lost

The interior love poem
the deeper levels of the self

dates when the abandonment
of certain principles occurred

The role of courtesy-how to enter
a forest, how to touch
a master's feet before lesson or performance

The art of the drum. The art of eye-painting
How to cut an arrow. Gestures between lovers.
The pattern of teeth marks on skin
drawn by a monk from memory

The limits of betrayal. The five ways
a lover could mock an ex-lover

The skill in tentative messages
which included yes and no
but never the direct maybe

Nine finger and eye gestures
to signal key emotions

The small boats of solitude

Lyrics that rose
from love
back into air

naked with guile
and praise

Our works and days

We knew how monsoons
(south-west, north-east)
would govern behaviour

and when to discover
the knowledge of the dead

hidden in clouds
in rivers, in unbroken rock

All this was burnt

or traded for power and wealth
from the eight compass points of vengeance

from the two levels of envy

by michael ondaatje

snow

Apparently my head nods, with simple harmonic motion. It's a Sri Lankan thing I'm told.

More snow, about 20 inches over the last two days and the world is gleaming white. What I do like is skidding about in the powder, packing it into hard crunchy balls and dumping it down someone's front.

So much snow that the skylight above the library is permanently clouded.

doofus

Men are such doofuses. I honestly can't think of a single man I know whom I haven't at one point gone, you're honestly the dumbest thing since peanut butter. This week especially, has been one resounding clarion call. If the species did not have to propagate itself, why then all men would be doorposts.

nb. this is not saying that men are bastards, which is also true but not relevant here. This post just refers to the 'doofus' quotient that all men are born with.

back then

There was an unseasonably warm front in today, and in a freak occurrence it is 20 deg Celsius, versus -20 just exactly one week ago. My body doesn't know what's happening to it, but it unaccountably lifted my spirits up. I feel like a better person. I am a better person when it is 20 deg Celsius. Am in my favourite faux-Moroccan coffeehouse right now typing away and it feels like I am in Paris, with persian carpets underneath me, and a wrought-iron balcony beside which my table sits, aflow with cigarette butts (not mine) and a large steaming cappucino. Just spent the last 3 hours with a dear friend, who I had thought I had lost, but it seems that no words are needed to apologize, and there is instant acceptance and a long-lost recognition that we were quite simply, friends before this birth, and probably after it. There are moments of recognition that leap across all preconceived notions and conceptions and it makes life worthwhile to realize that unexpected progressions can be made. We talked about mountainous communities and the challenges they face, those living on the steppes of Central Asia, romantic in writing but brutal in reality. Talked also about intelligence and how institutions in our life made us always feel that to be mediocre would be worse than death, but in fact growing up, one realized that mediocrity was in fact just fine. Talked also about the influence of parents, and that it was quite okay to make decisions to make them happy, even at the cost of some uncomfortability for one at the present. As for intelligence, I would rather be mediocre and happy than un-mediocre (what is that anyway) and unhappy. And then there were promises of classical music, the symphony orchestra, long ice-cream filled walks through the Common, promises of napping in the sun with half-read Russian authors, hair always smelling like spring. Filled again with an irrational exuberance for life, which even though it might dissipate tomorrow, is here today and I am reminded as always of that obvious but always poignant quote "Back then, I thought there would be other days. I didn't realize that it was the only day". Oh, life, London and this moment of June.

summer

The hilarious thing about being here is the summer is approaching fast and there is the usual overachiever nervousness pervading the school about summer opportunities and how to make the best of it. There is an extraordinary diversity of recruiting here. Unlike England, American universities do their best to remove any student effort from recruiting, all you pretty much have to do is to turn up. But the best thing is as campaign season hots up, all the Democratic candidate 'exploratory committees for President" are recruiting and first years have to make that difficult choice between working for Obama and Clinton! (and of course everyone knows that campaign jobs translate into White House jobs given a large dose of uncertainty of course) but nevertheless it is exciting to be around this atmosphere. Initially I wanted to come to policy school to become Josh Lyman, but the fantasy has taken a backseat to the reality of development which I am far more interested in (and also I'm not convinced of the electability of Obama, the only candidate I would work with and I'm also a tad risk averse) and so I will be spending the summer in the rural wilds of Tamil Nadu, India and I can't wait!

mandela

Our deepest fear
is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear
is that we are
powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness,
that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn't serve this world.

There's nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God
that is within us;
It is not just in some of us - it's in everyone
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others

Nelson Mandela, Inaugural Speech

the life of a graduate student

The Life of a Graduate Student

Alarm goes off at 7:30am. Flail wildly to hit the damn thing off. Fall out of bed, stagger into the bathroom. Spend long time examining toes on the toilet seat. Stare into mirror. Note bags under eyes expanding slowly. Hair unkempt. Shove toothbrush into my mouth while pondering the latest dilemma on Grey’s Anatomy. Is Addison to be pitied or hated? Secretly acknowledge that want to be Addison. Shower briefly. As housemate said, the only thing I achieve with any regularity every day is keeping my ass clean.

Emerge from bathroom clean if not exactly shiny. Walk from bathroom to room seems like an arctic corridor. Its -15 deg Celsius outside. Wash one bowl in the overflowing sink harrumphing at slovenliness of housemates (including me). Pour whatever cereal there is from multiple boxes. Milk is slightly off but decide not to think about it. Chow down in 4 minutes flat. Open door to room. Now that I can see properly (without haze of sleep blinding me), my room has been the victim of a nuclear holocaust. Luckily I wasn’t there while it happened, or else I might be dead.

Head out door 8am. Head down to avoid the gigantic sheet of ice that has formed outside house and leads all the way to the train station. Descend 20 storeys into train station. As usual on my train, there’s Alfie, the drunk guy who catches the same train every day and has the same things to say: Clinton is a pervert! Thank God we have Bush in da House!. I look at the ads in the train. Someone will pay 200 dollars to me if they can study my sleep habits for a month.

8:37am Arrive at school. Race to get a coffee jostling the 100 other sleepy-eyed students trying to get a coffee before first class. Hah! They don’t call me Singaporean for nothing! Get coffee, inhale deeply and race into class. As usual professor is on time, looking as though he has been up for hours, which in fact, he has. Bust out the laptop and check email. Nothing from my friends! Losers! How do they deserve friend status if they can’t even email me! Check the popular news and blog sites. Ponder what I am going to do over the summer. Check briefly what lecturer is talking about. Oh right the F test which tests for joint significance of variables in a multivariate regression ruling out heteroskedasticity. I have no idea what this means. I also fail to understand why a word such as heteroskedasticity exists in the English language. Professor mentions that we have a test next week. I sit up! A test! How come no one told me about this before? Deeply resent the lack of notice until friend tells me everyone knew about it 2 months ago. If I had attended class I might have known.

Finally the class, which seems interminable is over. It’s my first and last class for the day. Its 10am. And my day has just started, once the pesky classes are over.

Oh the life of a graduate student.

temp.

We had a high of -10 celsius and a low of -25 celsius. I could not stay outside for more than 20 minutes and it felt as though my legs were branches of ice and all I could feel was pain. They really weren't kidding about the weather.

conference

The conference went off seamlessly and I am so very proud of all the panels and panelists that ended up. Topics discussed (which ranged over 20 panels) : food aid vs. cash aid in complex emergencies, corporate social responsibility and climate change (headed by an evangelical reverend that unexpectedly stole the show), making people care (not whether they do but how to translate that into hard action), global health (enabling cheaper drugs to Africa and Merck was represented), microfinance practitioners (how to have an equity injection in an microfinance asset-building model) to name a few. Although I was literally running around all day (including a gasp-inducing moment when we thought our moderator was unavailable and d and I were frantically googling microfinance thinking we had to moderate the damn thing ourselves) and shuttling people to and fro, and packing a 1000 gift bags (the conference is entirely student run- and we fundraised approx 70,000 dollars in hard cash and inkind contributions- an amount that a standard nonprofit would have been proud of!) and we were sold out, and handling dan doctoroff (deputy mayor of New York who was our keynote), and falling in love with the social enterprise movement and making a difference in our world, all over again.

walking away.

Sometimes moments align themselves perfectly, irrevocably, and an excellent time is had by all. Had dinner last night with an emergency response crew of 3, hard-living, die-hard, hard-drinking, hard-cussing men and women who have seen the worst of this world, the arbitrariness, the brutality, the poverty, the deaths that hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, conflict, genocides, wars, and still have enormous compassion and passion for the people and the work they had to do. One of them was telling me about how he was on a mission in Rwandas, when the Tutsis were murdering Hutus, and 600 children had been taken to a refugee camp, and a Reuters reporter was there. The children were mute, distressed, unable to speak, eyes hollow in their faces, and this reporter was poking this child with a stick, trying to make her cry so that he could have a photo and the friend was telling me how he literally punched him and stamped on his camera and walked away and then got bollocked later on. Through much whiskey, tobacco and wine, stories of suffering and more importantly of hope were exchanged, and I came away with renewed respect for these men and women who fight everyday, unknown battles to the most of us, sacrificing every chance they have for a normal life and a normal relationship, simply because they cannot walk away.

tired.

So apparently it has all seemed to come together at the last moment and now I am truly exhausted with exams on Friday and me not having opened a single book yet or having only attended 50% of classes. The conference, www.socialenterpriseclub.com/conference/ is sold out and we have a 1000 people coming, with over 70 speakers and 20 professors moderating all the panels. It is quite possibly the largest event I have ever been involved with. At the same time, other things are percolating. I was very rude to someone that I should have been rude to, but did not quite need to be rude to, i can't help it- he inspires rudeness in me, just as I inspire philosophy in him. Also, I am about to spend the summer in the rural wilds of India, possibly fieldworking with women to investigate poverty and microfinance issues. I will be doing research with this guy- a hotshot economic star, and one of the most brilliant minds of his generation (http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2005/1017/071_print.html) this isn't me talking, google him and you'll see). Our housing plan in Sri Lanka is slowly coming to fruition with some exciting leads/board members/investors coming together. the film project is also coalescing with WITNESS http://www.witness.org finally getting on board and definitely more exciting stuff. Finally a microfinance professor agreed to collaborate on writing a case, so if it all comes together I'll be writing a case on ICICI, fieldworking in rural India, and shooting in Sri Lanka in 15 weeks. That is, if I survive the rest of the semester. London in 3 weeks! Hallelujah. I am exhausted.

ghosts

"She pushed the sheet down to the foot of the bed and lay there in the darkened room, facing the waves of air. The island no longer held her by the past. She'd spent the fifteen years since ignoring that early celebrity. Anil had read documents and news reports, full of tragedy, and she had now lived abroad long enough to interpret Sri Lanka with a long-distance gaze. But here it was a more complicated world morally. The streets were still streets, the citizens remained citizens. They shopped, changed jobs, laughed. Yet the darkest Greek tragedies were innocent compared with what was happening here. Heads on stakes. Skeletons dug out of a cocoa pit in Matale. At university Anil had translated lines from Archilochus — In the hospitality of war we left them their dead to remember us by. But here there was no such gesture to the families of the dead, not even the information of who the enemy was. " excerpt from anil's ghost

it's true. it's all so heartbreakingly true.

breakfast with the FT

Breakfast with the FT: John Wood
By Shawn Donnan
Published: February 23 2007 15:16 Last updated: February 23 2007 15:16
The concerned volunteer handling John Wood's Hong Kong public relations says that my suggestion of breakfast at the newly refurbished Mandarin Oriental might seem distasteful to the head of a charity.
So on a Saturday morning – at an hour too early to be called brunch – I walk into the cloud of stale beer and cigarette fug that is the main bar of the Foreign Correspondents' Club in central Hong Kong. A few nights earlier, a proud member described this place as a club for "drunks, cheapskates and losers". Is this a more appropriate venue to meet a man who likes to think of himself as the Andrew Carnegie of the developing world?
I settle on a banquette in the glass-enclosed "no smoking" bunker and order a coffee. When a smiling Wood strolls in, he looks unperturbed by our surroundings.
Wood, a former Microsoft executive turned social entrepreneur, has plenty of reasons to be cheerful. This is a good time for a global tour in support of a book called Leaving Microsoft to Change the World. New hedge-fund fortunes are being made; Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are deploying billions to address the world's ills; and celebrities - from Brad and Angelina and Bono downwards – are working away at good causes. Philanthropy is hot.
Wood's work has acquired an earnest fashionability of late, but it wasn't always that way. He left his Beijing-based Microsoft job in 1998 to found a charity called Room to Read, conceived as a way to get used books to the developing world.
The move prompted raised eyebrows among his colleagues, while his luxury-hotel-loving girlfriend soon became his ex-girlfriend. "I can still remember the days when I would check my e-mail and hit the refresh button four times and be like 'Damn it! My mail's not working. No one's e-mailing me.' There was just nothing going on," he says.
\nWood now gets 300 e-mails a day from strangers eager to get involved in Room to Read. The charity has expanded and builds schools and libraries, gives scholarships for girls' education, and publishes local-language children's books in countries such as Cambodia, India and Nepal. Not satisfied with styling himself as the Carnegie of the developing world, Wood says he also wants to be its Dr Seuss.\n\nHe works longer hours and travels more than he did when he was at Microsoft. He also applies plenty of what he refers to in his book as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's "get shit done" ethos to a charity world "immune from market pressures".\n\n"I think the charity world has been kind of given a free pass - 'Oh, they're trying hard' [or] 'oh they mean well.' But they're not well-run," he says. "In business there is always a market mechanism. If you [the FT] lose readers you guys go out of business. If Microsoft annoys people they are going to switch to Apple. And in the charity world that doesn't really necessarily happen."\n\nOver breakfast of scrambled eggs and pancakes, the word emerging most frequently from Wood's mouth seems to be "scaleable". There is plenty of talk of "metrics" and "return on investment", of branding and "market gaps". He wants Room to Read to be "the single trusted global brand for education in the developing world". And he plans to do that by creating an organisation melding "the compassion of Mother Teresa" with "the focus and tenacity of a blue-chip company like a GE or a Cisco".\n\nWood is obsessed with putting to work the business practices he learnt at Microsoft. He requires all Room to Read staff to include the latest quarterly measures of progress in their e-mail signature files, largely because "at Microsoft, Ballmer used to always say 'what gets measured gets done'".\n\nHe has an entrepreneur's obsession with costs, and relies on the kindness of powerful donors and old-fashioned penny-pinching to keep expenditure down. He travels around the world on frequent-flier miles amassed by "a senior figure at Goldman Sachs". To arrange fundraising events he draws on volunteer chapters in San Francisco (where the charity is based), and other cities such as London, New York and Hong Kong. As a policy, he refuses to recruit expensive expatriates to run local field offices.\n",1]
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Wood now gets 300 e-mails a day from strangers eager to get involved in Room to Read. The charity has expanded and builds schools and libraries, gives scholarships for girls' education, and publishes local-language children's books in countries such as Cambodia, India and Nepal. Not satisfied with styling himself as the Carnegie of the developing world, Wood says he also wants to be its Dr Seuss.
He works longer hours and travels more than he did when he was at Microsoft. He also applies plenty of what he refers to in his book as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's "get shit done" ethos to a charity world "immune from market pressures".
"I think the charity world has been kind of given a free pass - 'Oh, they're trying hard' [or] 'oh they mean well.' But they're not well-run," he says. "In business there is always a market mechanism. If you [the FT] lose readers you guys go out of business. If Microsoft annoys people they are going to switch to Apple. And in the charity world that doesn't really necessarily happen."
Over breakfast of scrambled eggs and pancakes, the word emerging most frequently from Wood's mouth seems to be "scaleable". There is plenty of talk of "metrics" and "return on investment", of branding and "market gaps". He wants Room to Read to be "the single trusted global brand for education in the developing world". And he plans to do that by creating an organisation melding "the compassion of Mother Teresa" with "the focus and tenacity of a blue-chip company like a GE or a Cisco".
Wood is obsessed with putting to work the business practices he learnt at Microsoft. He requires all Room to Read staff to include the latest quarterly measures of progress in their e-mail signature files, largely because "at Microsoft, Ballmer used to always say 'what gets measured gets done'".
He has an entrepreneur's obsession with costs, and relies on the kindness of powerful donors and old-fashioned penny-pinching to keep expenditure down. He travels around the world on frequent-flier miles amassed by "a senior figure at Goldman Sachs". To arrange fundraising events he draws on volunteer chapters in San Francisco (where the charity is based), and other cities such as London, New York and Hong Kong. As a policy, he refuses to recruit expensive expatriates to run local field offices.
\nWood has a marketer's knack for laying out his achievements in a way that appeals to the global-oriented business class he and Room to Read target in their fundraising. The charity's pace of growth, Wood boasts, is faster than Starbucks'. In the sixth year after its initial public offering of shares, Wood says, Starbucks opened 500 new outlets, while Room to Read in its sixth year opened more than 1,000 school libraries.\n\n"I don't meant to be flippant about the Carnegie analogy," he adds later, "but we've now done more libraries in the developing world than Carnegie did in the US."\nAndrew Carnegie, the Scottish-born magnate turned philanthropist, built 2,500 libraries around the US. By the end of 2006, Room to Read had opened 3,300 libraries, and expects to have 5,000 by the end of this year. That number is expected to grow by a further 40 per cent, to 7,000 by the end of 2008. In coming years Room to Read expects to open an average of "30 libraries a week across the developing world".\n\nWood turned to philanthropy after a 1998 trekking holiday in Nepal. He visited a remote school with just a few books and, without much forethought, promised to return with reading materials for the children. An e-mail he sent to friends yielded hundreds of used books and when, months later, he returned to the school with his father and a donkey train loaded with books he was so moved by the reaction that he decided to change careers. This has since grown into his ambition to "democratise philanthropy".\n\n"What do you mean by that?" I ask, between bites of undercooked pancake.\n"I mean basically saying to the world [that] you don't have to be Gates or Buffett, [and] you don't have to be as good-looking as Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt to go help Africa. What we are trying to say is, it does not cost much to go make this change. It's $250 to underwrite a girl's scholarship. It's $2,000 in total to do a library. It's somewhere in the $10,000-15,000 range to endow a school. And I think if we really want to reach our long-term goal - which is to reach at least 10 million kids [by 2020] - we can't really necessarily depend on the fact that someone rich, someone really super-rich or really super-famous will do it for us."\n",1]
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Wood has a marketer's knack for laying out his achievements in a way that appeals to the global-oriented business class he and Room to Read target in their fundraising. The charity's pace of growth, Wood boasts, is faster than Starbucks'. In the sixth year after its initial public offering of shares, Wood says, Starbucks opened 500 new outlets, while Room to Read in its sixth year opened more than 1,000 school libraries.
"I don't meant to be flippant about the Carnegie analogy," he adds later, "but we've now done more libraries in the developing world than Carnegie did in the US."
Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish-born magnate turned philanthropist, built 2,500 libraries around the US. By the end of 2006, Room to Read had opened 3,300 libraries, and expects to have 5,000 by the end of this year. That number is expected to grow by a further 40 per cent, to 7,000 by the end of 2008. In coming years Room to Read expects to open an average of "30 libraries a week across the developing world".
Wood turned to philanthropy after a 1998 trekking holiday in Nepal. He visited a remote school with just a few books and, without much forethought, promised to return with reading materials for the children. An e-mail he sent to friends yielded hundreds of used books and when, months later, he returned to the school with his father and a donkey train loaded with books he was so moved by the reaction that he decided to change careers. This has since grown into his ambition to "democratise philanthropy".
"What do you mean by that?" I ask, between bites of undercooked pancake.
"I mean basically saying to the world [that] you don't have to be Gates or Buffett, [and] you don't have to be as good-looking as Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt to go help Africa. What we are trying to say is, it does not cost much to go make this change. It's $250 to underwrite a girl's scholarship. It's $2,000 in total to do a library. It's somewhere in the $10,000-15,000 range to endow a school. And I think if we really want to reach our long-term goal - which is to reach at least 10 million kids [by 2020] - we can't really necessarily depend on the fact that someone rich, someone really super-rich or really super-famous will do it for us."
\nA flaky charity world isn't the only target for Wood's criticism. He is unimpressed, too, by some corporate social-responsibility programmes. He has had "very deep, very thoughtful" conversations with some companies, but is scathing of others that use CSR as little more than an addendum to their marketing budget. "I've definitely seen the companies that take out half-page ads in the FT, The Economist or Time, bragging about what good corporate citizens they are. And I'm like, 'Huh, that's interesting, I've never actually seen anything that you've done in the developing world and I've filled five passports with travel.'"\n\nWood argues that, by under-investing in the developing world, many first-world companies are guilty of short-sightedness. Greater corporate investment in education in impoverished countries would not be an entirely selfless act, he says. Better education would yield more affluent societies and, eventually, faster global economic growth and bigger corporate profits.\n\nHe also argues that, as the Bush administration's actions in Iraq and elsewhere are making the US progressively more unpopular in the world, businesses and charities like his are being forced into "freelance diplomacy" or "freelance foreign relations".\n\nBut his biggest concern is over what he calls the "Gates conundrum". With their moves into philanthropy, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have set a new standard for the world's super-rich, and Wood predicts that billions more will be thrown at non-governmental organisations in the coming decades.\n\nYet the charity world, he says, has a poor record of being able to absorb donations and grow quickly. "If you look across Africa there's just such a dearth of scaleable models for social change. I think in the next couple of decades that's one of the main challenges for the philanthropic world - can you teach these NGOs to build capacity and to scale?" Many groups erect one or two orphanages at a time, but in Africa "the HIV/Aids problem is such that you basically need a scaleable model for orphanages. You literally need someone to be the Starbucks of orphanages."\n",1]
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A flaky charity world isn't the only target for Wood's criticism. He is unimpressed, too, by some corporate social-responsibility programmes. He has had "very deep, very thoughtful" conversations with some companies, but is scathing of others that use CSR as little more than an addendum to their marketing budget. "I've definitely seen the companies that take out half-page ads in the FT, The Economist or Time, bragging about what good corporate citizens they are. And I'm like, 'Huh, that's interesting, I've never actually seen anything that you've done in the developing world and I've filled five passports with travel.'"
Wood argues that, by under-investing in the developing world, many first-world companies are guilty of short-sightedness. Greater corporate investment in education in impoverished countries would not be an entirely selfless act, he says. Better education would yield more affluent societies and, eventually, faster global economic growth and bigger corporate profits.
He also argues that, as the Bush administration's actions in Iraq and elsewhere are making the US progressively more unpopular in the world, businesses and charities like his are being forced into "freelance diplomacy" or "freelance foreign relations".
But his biggest concern is over what he calls the "Gates conundrum". With their moves into philanthropy, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have set a new standard for the world's super-rich, and Wood predicts that billions more will be thrown at non-governmental organisations in the coming decades.
Yet the charity world, he says, has a poor record of being able to absorb donations and grow quickly. "If you look across Africa there's just such a dearth of scaleable models for social change. I think in the next couple of decades that's one of the main challenges for the philanthropic world - can you teach these NGOs to build capacity and to scale?" Many groups erect one or two orphanages at a time, but in Africa "the HIV/Aids problem is such that you basically need a scaleable model for orphanages. You literally need someone to be the Starbucks of orphanages."
\nIf the current giants of the philanthropic world succeed in preventing vast numbers of infant deaths in the developing world, they will also create a potentially overwhelming long-term challenge for already struggling governments and NGOs. "If those kids get to be the age of five, let's say, then how are they going to thrive?" Wood asks. "To thrive they need access to clean water and they need access to education... We've got five years to get ahead of Gates and Buffett on this issue and to me the clock is ticking."\n\nAs our allotted time is also about to run out, the conversation turns to lighter things, meandering around Wood's lack of executive stock options (he says he now gets "karmic options"); his Microsoft shares ("still my single largest holding") and the philanthropic habits of the new hedge-fund titans ("right now they are still in the wealth-creation mode [but] at some point, hopefully they will get to the wealth-deployment mode").\n\nAnd then Wood is off, heading back to his hotel - I decide not to ask if it is the Mandarin - for a work-out before a book signing. A few days later he is off to Cambodia and then on to London for the UK launch of his book. I, meanwhile, wander back out into the bar to secure a receipt I will eventually lose, leaving me unable to claim our breakfast on FT expenses - a little bit of unintentional philanthropy.\n\nShawn Donnan is the FT's Asia companies editor.\n............................................................................\nThe Foreign Correspondents' Club, Hong Kong\n\n1 x filter coffee\n\n1 x latte\n\n1 x double espresso\n\n2 x San Pellegrino\n\n1 x scrambled eggs with bacon\n\n1 x hotcakes with strawberries\n\nTotal: HK$160\n\n",1]
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If the current giants of the philanthropic world succeed in preventing vast numbers of infant deaths in the developing world, they will also create a potentially overwhelming long-term challenge for already struggling governments and NGOs. "If those kids get to be the age of five, let's say, then how are they going to thrive?" Wood asks. "To thrive they need access to clean water and they need access to education... We've got five years to get ahead of Gates and Buffett on this issue and to me the clock is ticking."
As our allotted time is also about to run out, the conversation turns to lighter things, meandering around Wood's lack of executive stock options (he says he now gets "karmic options"); his Microsoft shares ("still my single largest holding") and the philanthropic habits of the new hedge-fund titans ("right now they are still in the wealth-creation mode [but] at some point, hopefully they will get to the wealth-deployment mode").
And then Wood is off, heading back to his hotel - I decide not to ask if it is the Mandarin - for a work-out before a book signing. A few days later he is off to Cambodia and then on to London for the UK launch of his book. I, meanwhile, wander back out into the bar to secure a receipt I will eventually lose, leaving me unable to claim our breakfast on FT expenses - a little bit of unintentional philanthropy.
Shawn Donnan is the FT's Asia companies editor.
............................................................................
The Foreign Correspondents' Club, Hong Kong
1 x filter coffee
1 x latte
1 x double espresso
2 x San Pellegrino
1 x scrambled eggs with bacon
1 x hotcakes with strawberries
Total: HK$160

leadership guff

If I have to go to one more of these leadership sessions I am going to gag and bind myself and throw myself off the waterfront. Yesterday's was particularly excruciating. Full disclosure: whilst many courses like "Leadership on the Line", "Negotiation: Dealing with Emotions", "Moral Leadership" are oversubscribed, I myself have stayed far away as possible from them. Public Group therapy is, simply not my fashion. Yesterday I couldn't avoid a sesh, which was titled The importance of storytelling in leadership. I was made to fly like a bird (more like a turkey) around the room. Then one participant burst into tears while recalling a moment from her childhood in the group session and I had this insane tendency to burst into horrified laughter. She just started sobbing and it wasn't a particularly poignant moment from her childhood (okay maybe I'm just insensitive) and I was just like: Are you kidding me? I always prided myself on being emotionally balanced unlike my parents, but I realized last night that I was nowhere close to these guys. It was very disturbing! Yikes!

cheese!

My sister sent me a pack of gourmet cheeses from Europe apparently, blue cheese, stiltons, goudas, sharp maple-aged cheddar, chevre, manchega and more. We fell upon the package like hungry jackals my room mate and I. the occasion warranted the opening of a good syrah, and together with scavenged almonds, organic honey and sliced ripe pears, we had ourselves a feast and completed our accounting homework with much hand-wringing and discussion of boys (unrelated perhaps to the revenue recognition concept but tangentially related to the matching concept) and got drunk and it was the lovely end to a long weekend spent doing absolutely nothing (except sighing at the situations that transpire), My room mate's nickname for me is buffoon and today I was a rampaging buffoon, which sounds exactly like something my sister would say so we toasted her and merrily ate, drank and lived to tell the tale.

hairdressing

I was in my usual hairdresser's the other day. In between lopping off an unimaginable amount of hair, and slathering all sorts of ointments on it, I also get relationship advice and spiritual advice. One point she mentioned stayed home, and that was this. " All women need to leave the men they found better off than they found him, as a service to the next women". It should apply to men too.

divisadero

May 29 2007: Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje hits bookstores.

London

I'm going to London, I'm going to London, I'm going to London, I AM GOING TO LONDON! Yippeekayeah!!!! Just bought my ticket! I'm going to London for spring break!!!!!!YAYYYYY!!!!!



(I can't believe that I. Am. Going. To. London).

a moment

I wrote some time ago that someone had said that the biggest heroes to me were the unsung aid relief workers, working away from family and home, trying to build bridges, provide aid, be there for community after community. Doctors, logisticians, people who just know that the need is too large, and try to plug the gap any which way they can, without ideology or partisanship. I have the utmost of respect for that. Public service is a calling. Not everybody can sacrifice their own self-interest to do it, but blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall inherit the earth.

people who change people

Just back from New York and it would be too much to say how amazing the whole trip was in every particular details but it was a field trip with the fellows and we saw so many organizations fighting to change the world that it was truly amazing. In quick succession, we met with Acumen Fund which funds start-up capital to entrepreneurs in the developing world, with an emphasis on a double bottom line (i.e. mandating the entrepreneurs to for example pay 10 times the minimum wage to their factory workers), the Nonprofit Finance Fund that acts as an investment bank to nonprofits and has developed unique financial products (e.g. a conversion of a depreciation) product that improves liquidity on the balance sheet, KIPP academy, the highest performing middle school in NY located in the South Bronx, all students of colour, high poverty areas. The school has a unique pedagogical method that is yielding results in test scores and all that. Then the Harlem Children's Zone, headed by a charismatic black leader that has really cleaned up Harlem. Then dinner with documentary film producers that are submitting their pieces for the Academy Awards and changing the world in their own way and with other wonderful people (e.g. this guy from morgan stanley who's created a microfinance fund! morgan stanley! and it's headed up people from Europe that I KNOW!). Then the next day to see WITNESS, a human rights film advocacy group that was headed by Gillian Caldwell who worked undercover to expose Russian sex trafficking groups and now trains local NGOs to film human rights abuse. Then to see Chancellor Joel Klein (Head of the New York Board of Education) who was in the Economist the other day for his controversial education reform package who said that in life, like in politics, "you gotta give a little, take a little and let your poor heart break a little".

apples

Do you know what -10 Celsius feels like? It's when you're perpetually cold, no matter how much you wear. It's when you see frozen vomit on railings and white, still, rivers of ice. It's when the air always has a startling clarity. It's when you slip and slide everywhere because the ground is a sheet of ice. It's when you can't spend more than 10 minutes outside without losing feeling in various parts of your body. It's when even after coming inside, it takes an hour to warm up. But its best to be inside and be warm (unlike London where the plumbing never worked- I've never felt cold indoors here EVER) and drinking apple cider which is my new discovery!

military

oooh had another (completely unaffordable) facial yesterday here which was so-so at best. Then went to the gym and sat in the steam room for a while (and felt so healthy) that I had to compensate by eating a quesadilla and then went for various meetings. This conference is taking over my LIFE! Making progress on the business plans, off to New York tomorrow which should be lurvely if I can survive the four hour bus ride? maybe I can catch up on phone calls and emails then. Have already started skipping classes (especially accounting for which I am deadset against going). Had a conversation with a totally annoying Singaporean student from another program (in a class). We had to come up with policy strategies for a Peruvian privatization of telecommunications and she said that we had to co-opt the military first so that if social unrest was provoked- then the military could keep them in line!!! I WAS LIKE!! HELLO! In most democratic countries, military intervention in social tension situations only ends up provoking the situation and the military is NEVER to be used as an internal peacekeeping force (at the beck and call of any political party in power- it is supposed to be independent of party politics!). JEEZUS. Was so bloody annoyed.

day 1

So today I woke up early despite a hangover from the night before, went to the gym, went grocery shopping, cooked a meal (grilled asparagus spears and broccoli, carrots glazed with dill and mango chicken curry with brown bread and tahini), watched 5 episodes of Grey's Anatomy Season 2, read EVERYTHING for my classes tomorrow (except for one case, only because I don't have it and I would freak myself out if I did everything), cleaned my room, did my laundry (oops just forgot it was in the dryer!), and SWEPT my room, talked to friends from back in London and in Spore, and organized conference (bane of my existence), declined invitation to watch Superbowl with beer and friends, and did my homework and its only 10:30 pm, and now I don't know what to do with myself.

dayz

Gosh. What a week. And its only mid-week and I'm exhausted already. The hits just keep on coming. Its also getting a bit warmer (from - 12 deg Celsius to -2 degrees- you gotta take the wins when you can). We fixed up our living room finally yesterday (living with two boys can dampen the living-squalor-reforming-zeal somewhat) but now we have beautiful bright red slipcovers for our no-doubt feline-disease-ridden sofas and a warm striped red and orange carpet and a television (good heavens). Met with A yesterday and our plan's horizon has been lengthened by a year which has left me with mixed feelings. Still so many people to catch up with. Best line of the day said to A who was trying to get me drunk: "Alcohol is not the answer!". "No, but its a pleasant vacation". Feeling unaccountably sad and can't understand why everyone is exclaiming at my 'glow'. Yet, its also good to be back, to tackle new challenges, to understand the world better, to feel like it is both worth saving and possible to be saved. If only I could keep up the optimism. What's always the strangest thing is that this can go on, while that goes on. But nobody ever said life had to make sense.

news

the big news: Radovan is PREGNANT! (and engaged, although not necessarily in that order)

Only fly Northwest if you absolutely have to, i.e. on pain of death. Especially when you have a 12 hour flight from Tokyo to Detroit with NO personal screen for in-flight entertainment. How about that eh?! Anyway spent most of the time sleeping like a hound dog, with jaw open and no-doubt drool on my left shoulder.

Am reading Identity and Violence by Amartya Sen which so far talks about the plurality of identities that we all possess, but that violence is normally bred on mono-definitions of identity. He quotes Matthew Arnold in “Dover Beach”, saying that

And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Back at school where it seems like the past six weeks were six minutes. Am debating between taking a class on US foreign policy or Development Politics and am already exhausted. Plus I was banned from registration because I still haven't gotten my third and final Hepatitis B immunization. Sigh.

sydney sun

Am in sun-kissed Sydney right now. I bet that if you did a survey of sun rays per cubic foot per year of all OECD countries Sydney would win. (That’s a lifestyle choice ladies and gentlemen). I’m visiting my very professional kick-ass sister who lives in some apartment throwback to 1930s Spain with terracotta tiles, wrought iron and whitewashed walls glistening in the sun, sleeping for 14 hours (I know! But the marathon of papers- I was doing them on the plane, during the 9 hour stopover in Perth at my aunt’s house, then on the plane again, and then in the morning when I arrived at Sydney. In total I wrote 55 pages in like 4.5 days. Jeezus. I am never waiting until the goddamn last moment again. In addition, PEOPLE! YOU LET ME DOWN! I asked if someone could verify my time calculations and they were WRONG! I had to hand in a paper on midnight on jan 15, except I thought it was Jan 16 and then when I handed it in on Jan 16, I realized my mistake and howled and groveled at my teacher’s feet and was generally prostrate because I cannot afford to be penalized but then he emailed me back today and said it was okay and not a problem and so the sun shone again) eating holiday-amounts, bought Shalimar the Clown from Mr. Martin Smith’s Bookstore in Bondi which had quite an excellent collection unexpectedly, and am about to read it, working on a business plan for the Fletcher competition due on the 22nd and so was conference-calling this morning with A and N and then just generally feeling rather shattered and excited at the same time). I’ve realized I can’t be on holiday without doing something. I always get impatient. ANYWAY. Oooh the holiday is going to end in 9 days and it can’t, it really can’t because when I get back I’m going to have loads of work to do and I just can’t. I really can’t. Everybody better clear their schedules when I get back to Singapore coz you won’t be seeing me for some time peeps.
Also, did you know that this is my second visit to the country of my nationality in 14 years? Something’s gotta give. I am seriously thinking about taking up Sri Lankan citizenship people, if I can get over the ideological objections. I was born Sri Lankan, and very likely, I’ll die Sri Lankan too.

research

Google Scholar is a shockingly useful research tool and throws up all manner of tangential, obscure interesting issues and I spend half my time following these links, in the true manner of a researcher, a Victorian explorer whose journey is the destination, who emerges out of the brush quite incidentally with skulls and totem poles and complete amnesia about his final (research) destination), and while quite fascinating, I feel then somehow compelled to include it in my paper, strange surmisings about old villages, even though it has little to no relevance to my actual paper. cf. this: written in 1908 about Sri Lanka.

As on the summit of Adam’s Peak, where all religions meet without rancour, so at Madhu in the Wanni do men and women of many creeds find some common denominator which reduces their divergent faiths to hopes possessed by all: and in the wilderness of this old border land of many wars, they find a place of truce

intro.

Imagining a just peace in Sri Lanka requires one to think outside of traditional approaches that remain in their silos e.g. those of health, education, advocacy, military, and peace activism. I argue that for too long we have relied on the dominant political actors, the Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam (LTTE) and the Government of Sri Lanka (GosL) to determine the future of the island. While their participation is necessary in any outcome, I argue that a new vision must look at ways of mobilizing other stakeholders and promoting grassroots led change that will pressure these actors to act in the best interests of their people. But increasing population activism appropriately (without a descent into further demagoguery and populism) requires meaningful changes in their structural conditions as well as the articulation of a clear vision of a shared future. No one can escape the importance of income, health and wealth and the positive moral consequences of economic growth. Combining such a targeted, bipartisan economic program with conflict transformation initiatives and the beginnings of a truth and reconciliation process, with or without war on the ground, is the most realistic way forward

the last minute.

I. Will. Never. Wait. Until. The. Last. Moment. Again.

Ever.

Am twitching at the computer like a corpse, typing out 20 pages of drivel on a paper that is due tomorrow, but I am flying tomorrow you see, and besides, I have ANOTHER paper due tomorrow as well, and oh, none of it is looking very well. Sigh.

time diffs

The World Time Clock has been quite useful in discovering the difference between time zones. Paper 1 is due at 3pm Boston time on the 16 Jan. This means it is due at 7am on 17th Jan (Sydney time) or 4am 17th Jan (Singapore time). At both these times I will be in the air. Paper 2 is due at 23:59 on Tuesday 16th Jan/Wed 17th Jan and that means it is due at 12:59pm 17th Jan in Singapore and 3:59pm Jan 17th in Sydney.

Can someone please tell me if I screwed that up? Every last minute counts. Its so boring to have papers due while being on holiday

a christmas letter

"Dear friends. We are getting older but are in fairly good shape and moving forward insofar as we can tell. We still drink strong coffee and read the paper and drive the same old cars. We plan to go to Norway next summer. We think that this war is an unmitigated disaster that will wind up costing a trillion dollars and we worry for our country. Our child enjoys her new school and is making friends. She was a horsie in the church Christmas pageant and hunkered down beside the manger and seemed to be singing when she was supposed to. We go on working and hope to be adequate to the challenges of the coming year but are by no means confident. It's winter. God is around here somewhere but does not appear to be guiding our government at the moment. Nonetheless we persist. We see kindness all around us and bravery and we are cheered by the good humor of young people. The crabapple tree over the driveway is bare, but we have a memory of pink blossoms and expect them to return. God bless you all."
Garrison Keillor- A Prairie Home Companion

Journalistic Independence

How important is it? Should the journalist record the facts (even while acknowledging that merely choosing which facts to report involves editorial discretion and therefore introduces some sort of bias) or should the journalist report in a bent in accordance with her paper's owners (as the editor will typically slash a journalist's piece in such a fashion if he too follows such a code). Or should she follow her own sets of morals and outrage and implant her lens on a story told to millions, shaping millions' point of view? The risks of that are of course high. Like Robert Fisk, who said that "It's a journalist's job to be a witness to history. We're not there to worry about ourselves. We're there to try and get as near as we can, in an imperfect world, to the truth and get the truth out.” and that "Tanks come in two forms: the dangerous, deadly kind and the "liberating" kind"; one faces discrimination by readers and by other members of the Establishment. For example Dumeetha Luthra of the BBC who reports in Sri Lanka about Sri Lanka (and who is Indian and not Sri Lankan) has been accused of reporting bias in favour of the Tamils and now rumours abound that the young lady is seeing someone Tamil in Colombo. She has received so much flak from the country that the BBC has posted her elsewhere. Truth?
"There is no such thing as truth here, there are only opinions", Anil's Ghost

pain!

Wah. My face still ting-ling one ok! Wa leow! Went for facial today: the woman dig dig, I pain, crying somemore. Cannot tahan! Next time, going to one with no extraction hor. Wah! Die Already!

another's but our's

charcoal musings II

As I look out of the window, the Lady of Lourdes (requirement for a saint- something magical must be done to be canonized. O Catholic Shenanigans) disappears to be replaced by something else, a muggy haze cut through by brilliant burning sun-rays, steam rising from badly-potholed asphalt melting in the heat, autorickshaws swerving heroically in the face of honking lorry drivers, ubiquitous white vans (synonymous with dread), ancient Ambassadors with windows permanently stuck down and civil servants stuck inside wilting valiantly in the gridlocked heat anxious to punch in their time cards, Galle Road merchants parked on stools observing, chador-ed Muslim women moving in packs giggling and laughing gutturally, schoolgirls clad in white, plaits swinging with unconsciously sensual walks, (a pack of boys not far behind self-conscious), Colombo women clad in suits and short skirts with incongrous Japanese hair as is the fashion now, beleaguered traffic policemen waiting to go off on lunch breaks, fruit and fish stalls spilling out onto the main Galle thoroughfare, cows meandering chewing at garbage, wheelbarrows piled high with glistening rambutan and mangosteen, 5 rupees each, billboards of Rajapakse (President) and Muralitharan (cricketing star) threatening to crumble down from cheap scaffolding and always the scent of the Pacific wafting over Colombo, doing strange things to its insides, rotting old houses from damp, turning all the rules upside down.

I remember too, driving along the same road the day after Rajapakse won the election. Every store was shuttered down and the streets were empty and an ill wind blew. There could not have been more than 3 cars on the main road. Checkpoints abounded, manned by grim-faced soldiers, boys of not more than 19 or 20 who used to flirt with us but now noted impassively the birthplace on my passport. Jaffna, Sri Lanka. The road deserted, the schools shut down in fear of communal riots predicted to descend in the aftermath of the election of a hardline son of the south. The eerie silence was punctuated by a car backfiring and we paused, silently, heart beating violently, for was this the start of the bombings?

"You and then the Americans converted us. With your missionary rules. And Indian soldiers wasted their lives as heroes so that they could be pukkah. You had wars like cricket. How did you fool us into this?" Kip, in the English Patient.

charcoal musings

Is it rather fatuous to write on the importance of com(passion)? in my time here both amongst friends and strangers, I have witnessed now so many instances of intolerance and irritation, an unconscious sense of class-based arrogance towards others, that it is disturbing to realize that perhaps as we age, and revert towards a conservative isolationist stance as we were no doubt taught to by the generation above us, that we perpetuate the same structures that we once wanted to demolish. Everyone lives in boxes here but it's sad to see the lack of politeness, manners or just plain nice-ness that I thought people once had. Maybe it's frustration at their own lives or perhaps not, but still.

Onto happier things. What would Manmohan Singh do? Those of you who understand the growth diagnostics of that vast sprawling planet called Amazing India, please email for my paper is due in two days.

The Aristotelian 'golden mean' values moderation essentially versus either extremes. Clearly moderation and I must become better acquainted especially in this new year, for at either end lies only eventual despair.

A Random News Day

The news seems to have thrown up some interesting facts today and I thought I might share it all with you, in my never-ceasing (surely better than neverending- can we put that in a poem somewhere?) procrastination on two papers regarding Indian economic strategy for the next five years and conflict in Sri Lanka.

a) Zubin Mehta a Bombay born conductor became a conductor in Vienna at the age of 22. He is married to a B list movie actress by the name of Nancy Kovack.

b) Prospect magazine is a London-based 'salon' magazine mainly written by centre left writers and pundits. I have a friend who writes for it, but so does Pico Iyer and I have come to the conclusion that any magazine that allows Pico Iyer to write for it, must remain the bastion of a mediocrity. I loathe Pico Iyer.

c) I want to see Shortbus. But I don't think I can, quite.

d) The jury is still out on Nancy Pelosi.

ref

Am in the Lee Kong Chian reference library looking out at Our Lady of Lourdes church, a lovely old, biliously repainted Catholic Church. I am here because I am trying to write business school essays. Why I don't specifically know as yet. One of the essays is totally paralysing. I've already spent two hours staring at the question which revolves around what are the ethical challenges you see in your life ahead. The crappy thing about a new year is that it always involves reflections on the year past and not all of them are pleasant. Anyhoo.

step

Step

The ceremonial funeral structure for a monk
made up of thambali palms, white cloth
is only a vessel, disintegrates

completely as his life.

The ending disappears,replacing itself
with something abstract
as air, a view.

All we'll remember in the last hours
is an afternoon – a lazy lunch
then sleeping together.

Then the disarray of grief.

On the morning of a full moon
in a forest monastery
thirty women in white
meditate on the precepts of the day
until darkness.

They walk those abstract paths
their complete heart
their burning thought focused
on this step, then this step.

In the red brick dusk
of the Sacred Quadrangle,
among holy seven-storey ambitions
where the four Buddhas
of Polonnaruwa
face out to each horizon,
is a lotus pavilion.

Taller than a man
nine lotus stalks of stone
stand solitary in the grass,
pillars that once supported
the floor of another level.

(The sensuous stalk
the sacred flower)

How physical yearning
became permanent.
How desire became devotional
so it held up your house,
your lover's house, the house of your god.

And though it is no longer there,
the pillars once let you step
to a higher room
where there was worship, lighter air.

Michael Ondaatje in Handwriting

sandboarding

If enough of us dream, if a bare thousand of us dream, we can change the world. We can dream it anew! A world in which no cat suffers from the malice of humans. In which no cats are killed by human caprice. A world that we rule.
The visionary cat, in SANDMAN #18: "A Dream of a Thousand Cats"

There is another version of the tale. That is the tale the women tell each other, in their private language that the men-children are not taught, and that the old men are too wise to learn. And in that version of the tale perhaps things happened differently. But then, that is a women's tale, and it is never told to men.
From SANDMAN #9: "Tales in the Sand"

The paths fork and divide. With each step you take through Destiny's garden, you make a choice; and every choice determines future paths. However, at the end of a lifetime of walking you might look back, and see only one path stretching out behind you; or look ahead, and see only darkness.
SANDMAN #21: "Season of Mists", episode 0

We were never lovers, and we never will be, now. I do not regret that, however. I regret the conversations we never had, the time we did not spend together. I regret that I never told him that he made me happy, when I was in his company. The world was the better for his being in it. These things alone do I now regret: things left unsaid. And he is gone, and I am old.
Lady Bast, in SANDMAN #72, part three of "The Wake"

Holiday of the Melon

What a week politically! First the death of Anton Balasingham, which will have far-reaching changes in the political leadership and strategy of the LTTE and now Niyazov, the head of state of Turkmenistan, a brutal dictator by all accounts but a most unexpected death and a very uncertain future ahead for that country

in?

Crossing various seas soon, the atlantic in a few hours and then the pacific. In today's world, if we are to be explorers, we must traverse the frontiers of thought geography, those boundaries where convention stands on one side, and the unproved on the other. And in crossing those frontiers, we become necessarily changed. I know all this and I can't help but go forward, trusting. Are you in or not?

exams

12 more hours exactly until my last exam and straight to the bar thence. Begone ye ghosts! I was in the library for 12 hours today. It's been 4 and a half years since an event like that has happened. Like Haley's comet, it'll probably be as long until next!

barack

Did you know that Barack Obama's middle name is Hussein? Jesus Christ. I wonder why we haven't heard that wonderful morsel of news in the mainstream liberal media (god love 'em) yet? You gotta laud the guy just for making it through politics and thinking of running, with a name like that.

Talking to a law professor, whose student Obama was and who genuinely thinks that he's brilliant off-the-charts. There's a lot of desire in the Harvard establishment to see a mixed-race kid from the wrong side of the tracks, with an A-rab middle name, anointed.

Live life as an epic adventure

The last lesson of a Professor whom I have adored and for good reason too. I can’t explain all the emotions that arose, but he delivered a stunning lecture today and was rewarded with a standing ovation at the end of it. The class is a development economics class, but it ended with the best leadership class I have ever been in all semester- he said cut the crap about what you think you want to do. If you’re white and want to work in a developing country, don’t look at them as locals and you as American, don’t act out of guilt in having had a good life and wanting to give something back. If you're local, they're going to look at you different, 'cause you speak English and are foreign and wealthy and they think you want a job in the World Bank or Wall Street after that. Forget it. Cut that crap. Do what you have to do well. Be a Hero, Not a Victim. Experience is what you do with what happens to you, not what happens to you. Don't say you couldn't pass that policy because of x, y, z. Make a mark. Leave a Legacy and Live life as an epic adventure. And take yourself seriously because no one else is going to if you don’t. And even if you fail, at least you’ll have had fun. Coming at the moment it did, as I had been reevaluating what to do going forward regarding a certain project in Sri Lanka, it was a call to arms and many responded as such. Dammit, I hate to say it, but I think I’m starting to fall in love with this place.

Go Big or Go Home

Years later, when I have finally become all that I want to be, and a successful film maker and author, I will look back and give interviews. Here are some choice quotes and things that I plan to let the world know about my life:

Dedication upon accepting the Nobel Prize for literature : As George Orwell said "The aim of great art is to be imaginative in its craftsmanship and politically committed at its heart". I dedicate this prize to the thousands of aid workers, toiling away in remote lands, away from those that are dear to them, materially unrewarded, at risk of life and limb, in the service of humanity. To you, to the lamplighters of Florence Nightingale, I am humbled and proud.

"I chose to start expressing with film, because I didn't have the discipline to start with writing. Writing is far more unforgiving of mistakes and unsuccessful experimentation, perhaps because of the long tradition behind it, and because all you have is a series of words. One more, or one less, and the whole thing falls apart. Film on the other hand, there are so many rescue mechanisms within it (sound, lighting, characterization, acting, tone), that its easy to start with because hardly anyone ever gets it all right. Writing on the other hand, is the higher art, and having been somewhat trained in the tradition of literature, as Byatt says, I approach the task of entering the canon with far more fear. "


(I say: GO BIG OR GO HOME)

whimper

This week is the last week of classes. To two particularly brilliant, engaged, charismatic professors, I salute you. And now, the ramp up for finals and then a flight out of these frozen climes to the tropics almost immediately afterwards. More discussion involving the limits of violence as well as the growth constraint facing China ("The answer is" the urban-rural gap). Two more massive papers to write through the break, applications, and a large project that will probably take over my life should I think about it. But until then a quote from T.S. Eliot will suffice :"This is how the world ends. Not with a bang, but with a whimper".

Another interesting fact I learned today: that it was the First Council of Nicaea, convened by Constantinople in AD 325 that led to the formation of a universal standard Christian doctrine.

dinner out

Talking about civil disobedience was quite emotional. Was the first time in weeks that I had done any reading for Ethics and only because it was Martin Luther King assigned. He said that we must confront the community, and if it does not want to negotiate then we must take to a program of direct action, by which he meant a nonviolent protest of civil disobedience (of breaking the law) and yet subsequently submitting to the law willingly and its penalties. And that that in reality would be expressing the highest respect for the law. But what does a group do if the community that it wants to confront simply does not want to negotiate and if a nonviolent Gandhian movement does not succeed? I want to believe what Gandhi said, which I do believe sometimes, that in the end, the way of love and truth will triumph every disaster but what if I , or others can't wait that long? And a state has violence, a monopoly on violence which it can legitimately (in the sense, electorally justified) use, and what of groups that do not? and what of those that say that war is an extension of politics by other means as Bismarck did? and yet I would not want to go so far as saying violence should be used by those who cannot achieve their ends by other means.

also had dinner yesterday with an ancient civil rights professor of law who's taking a lot of heat in the national press for his support of the use of torture in qualified situations and who really loved the sound of his own voice as well as dinner with Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha who sadly had nothing interesting to say.

reconciliation

I had a class yesterday on the justification and limits of civil disobedience and after that I was talking to someone last night about truth and reconciliation and it made me pause and reflect about the nature of conflict. X said that in south africa for example, he had lived through apartheid and seen the violence and abuse perpetrated by a system against its own people. If you had asked him 12 or 15 years ago whether he was proud to be a South African, he would have said no, but today he is. Yet, he won't sing the whole anthem (which has three different verses from Afrikaans, Xhosa and another dialect I believe) and believes that the truth and reconciliation commission has a lot to answer for, for it let a lot of white perpetrators off with amnesty yet did not include any modicum of financial reparations. He said he was denied his identity for so long that he would never surrender it again. War may be political but first and foremost it is always a human experience; it tears the heart out of memory and experience, leaving one with scars that run deep, perhaps never to be healed. He said that all the young, we, can expect from the old generation is tolerance and that they would come together but never forget the scars of the past. And it made me sad to think that there were some things that we would always be imprisoned by and that the past could never be wholly cleansed.