Gamelan Galaktika

Taruna Jaya (the name of the dance)
Originally uploaded by MotleyPrincess.

Saturday was spent taking care of a sick boyfriend and then ditching him to hear my roommate's concert at Copley Square. Gamelan Galaktika is an Indonesian orchestra (gamelan). If you visit their site, you can hear what it sounds like. I find it hard to describe except that it's awesome.

West Africa

A woman named Céline Dubreuil from the World Water Council emailed me today to ask if she could use my photos in a report she's writing "The Right to Water". I of course said yes. I then realized that I failed to post several of the photos I took while in Niger, and that many of those omitted photos were pretty water-centric. So there are about 40 new pictures in the West Africa set. Enjoy!

Freaking Yuppy

I never thought that I would be the one feeling preppy in Kentucky, but in a roomful of tattooed, pierced, chain-smoking poolsharks, and me in my pink Gettin' Lucky in Kentucky T-Shirt, that was exactly how I felt. Maybe I really am just a yuppy as my now forced to be secret friend constantly accuses me of being because of my affinity for fine wine and food. It's not even that fine! I swear!

Anyway, Kentucky was a great time. I ended up with $350 in vouchers for future travel after having spent $300, so I guess I really did get lucky in Kentucky. It was absolutely beautiful weather and absolutely beautiful to have a reunion with my friends. A renewed spirit.

So I came back to not too many piles of work as I had worked sporadically throughout the weekend, including my most scary challenge: actually teaching. I actually taught. Or maybe I just did homework for the students in the statistics class. Either way, I did it right and wasn't even a little bit nervous. So that was good.

Now to teach the boyfriend how to design, develop, manipulate and maintain a relational database. Shouldn't take more than an hour and a half... right.

Live, Work, and Play

Louisville is the place to do it if you ask the slogan on their trash cans.

I was not expecting much from this place, but so far it has produced several very fun, eclectic clothing stores, affordable prices, and even a good beer selection. I had a Dogfish Head today, and the same Irish pub served all of the Guiness selections, Chimay, Maudite, Fin du Monde, etc. I have to say that I was expecting the premium beer to be Blue Moon (Coors product).

The city is in preparation for the Kentucky Derby, and today was "Thunder", which means that there was a massive fireworks display over the river. Not exactly Boston 4th of July, but pretty impressive. Plus they actually serve beer.

The population is decidedly different from Boston, but I will have to expand on that thought later.

It is past my bedtime.

Mr. Kessinger

As I sat in the Detroit Airport at 7:04 (my departure time) last night, waiting for my plane to leave Cleveland... I was facing Mr. Kessinger, a soldier in the Army. He was clad in a pixilated camouflage desert-storm-style suit. I of course was disgusted by the blatant sign of violence because as I generally feel, the military is just a sick place where people enjoy shooting other people. However, I was reminded that this is not necessarily the case when I boarded the plane.

He was in the seat in front of me and the first class flight attendant came up to him and said, "Come up with me to 4C." He seemed confused, so the flight attendant explained that they wanted to upgrade him. He stoically said "I'm fine. I don't need to move." I think some other dude followed the flight attendant up to the front. The common man class flight attendant said to him "We like to upgrade our soldiers when we can" in an almost apologetic tone. Then the man across from him turned shook his hand and said "Thank you for your service."

That was when I remembered that these soldiers really are giving us a service whether we like the means of their service or not. Many are probably unable to find other work and find that enlisting gives them an opportunity to make a living, albeit a dangerous one. So, with renewed respect for our service men and women, I end this post. Thank you, Mr. Kessinger.

Celebrating Old Age

I did it by significantly reducing my liquidity. Yesterday morning, I made a last ditch effort to contribute to my Roth for 2005. I was successful, but only because Massachusetts has a special holiday called Marathon Monday... I mean Patriots' Day.

Oh, and by the way, I have some clarifications to make. What my mom didn't mention about my Mexican granddad is that a) he's her ex-husband's father (not her father) b) he was a legal immigrant and c) that when he came to this country, he refused to speak Spanish and joined the Navy. He's about as Flag-waving American as they come--as far as I can tell.

As my dad pointed out, the Mexicans aren't so nice to their own immigrants from the South... though at this time in the morning, I'm not sure how to deal with that eloquently. So I won't.

G'night folks!

Blamo! Another finish!

My friend Anna who also ran the marathon did quite well and beat her personal best. In addition, she raised nearly $3000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, in memory of my friend Laura's dad.

Yay for people who don't pass out when running more than should be humanly possible!

Finish				Pace	Official Time	Overall	Gender	Division
				0:09:36	4:11:22	14966	5331	3274

Speed Demon

My friend/coworker just finished the Boston Marathon with these results. I now know never to piss her off to the point of chasing me.

Finish				Pace	Official Time	Overall	Gender	Division
				0:06:48	2:58:10	884	39	33

La Paz, La Paz

Es fruto de la justicia.

Thus, Justice Comes FIRST.

You can't be unjust and expect peace. I hope the rallies yesterday helped solidify that.

Si! Se puede!

Yesterday my mom called to make sure I "got [my] butt to the protest" . . . "there are protests all around the country, and I'm sure there's one in Boston" . . . "your grandfather is from Mexico," she said, as if I didn't know. And all of this without as much as a hello.

I did eventually get down there, but only after people were dispersing. It was still nice to walk upstream facing a constant flow of people all speaking different languages yet standing together for justice.

I do not claim to know everything about this issue, but I'm going to, for now, err on the side of thinking that a huge wall, a bunch of money, forcing churches to gather and disclose information, and some trigger happy border police are not going to solve either our economic or our 'terrorist' problems.

Different is....

American?

You would think that I, being a cultural anthropologist (if you can add the "-ologist" after a few short years of not exactly focused study) and an American, would know how Americans work culturally. I even took a class on American culture. I suppose we did actually cover this topic and it's not entirely new, but I hadn't thought about it recently until Laura jogged that memory for me in a recent post where she left us some interesting quotes from a Fulbright preparation packet. The paper is: “The Values Americans Live By” by L. Robert Kohls.

“Americans think they are more individualistic in their thoughts and actions than, in fact, they are. They resist being thought of as representatives of a homogeneous group, whatever the group. They may, and do, join groups…but somehow believe they’re just a little different, just a little unique, just a little special, from other members of the same group.”

How many times have I considered myself different, an outlier, outside the norm, beyond explanation, strange beyond belief and a whole host of other descriptors to indicate the same thing? Does that mean I'm America's American. Red, White and Blue through and through? Oh God, the thought of it disgusts me, yet, that sentiment furthers this guy's argument.

I mean, yeah, I'm in "finance", but I don't work for the man. I'm a Democrat, but have a Republican boyfriend. I go to church, but think the church is inherently evil (which is not why I like it). I'm in the Back Bay Chorale, but I'm the youngest. I do database work and am good at computers, but have no interest in becoming an IT professional or a programmer or any of that. I didn't even take math in college... and I'm guiding statistics students. I have two mommies--not even that is so different anymore.

Think of the ad campaigns that support this idea in American culture. "Different is Good." (Apple). And there's a new one which I saw repeatedly while watching the Masters' today: "What makes you special?" (IBM). There are plenty that talk about tailoring to your special needs etc.

So how did we get this way? Is it our economic system? Capitalism driving us to specialize, diversify, and drive toward the top? That they only way to be successful is to stand out from the pack? Or was it the culture that created our current economic system? Is it even that special that we want to be different? Are we still trying to break away from the British influence?

My experience is that people are often desperately seeking to "fit in" somewhere. Is our interest in non-conformity inherently conforming?

But, is there anything wrong with wanting to be different, special? Or is it just that thinking you're more special than you are (which, of course is insanely subjective and largely based on perspective) the thing we should watch.

I don't know, but I doubt that being aware of this concept is going to make me stop adding "that does analysis on environmental, social and governance factors" to the end of "I work for an investment research firm."

By Popular Demand

I added photos of myself to the Flickr set. They are from Jill, Joe, and Laura. I also bought a Flickr Pro account because evidently they don't show more than 200 at once in the free version. This means that I can have more sets as well, so you'll see that it's organized a little differently.