You are not alone (11/30/2016)

It sometime takes strange circumstances to realize things in life.  After "unfriending" someone in Facebook (I'll write about him a bit later), getting a text from a friend, and listening to the radio on my drive back home, I realized something during my meditation session in yoga: "I am not alone." 

I have been interested by that concept of being alone in the world for a long time; as a young boy my favorite book was "Nobody's Boy" by Hector Malot (free download on Kindle). The title in Dutch is "Alone in the world" and in it's original French is "Without a family".  You get the drift, I remember reading the book over and over and sitting there crying over the pages.  I read a few disappointing reviews on English translation, but others say it is still worth the read.

As a teen I have felt alone in this world.  It was a combination of circumstances, doing a lot of moving as a child, having parents who did not seem to care about us children, being shipped off away from the family for a half year to a different culture, getting to a high school where everyone had their own established groups and clicks, you name it.  I felt different and alone.  I mentioned it before, as a young budding photographer, my favorite hobby was taking pictures of empty park benches.  About a year ago I heard the same thing from an old friend who I grew up with on the islands in the Caribbean.  She felt different and alone as well after being transplanted to Switzerland.  

The latest empty park bench picture I took (yes I still take them).  I took this one May 19, 2016 in the Norfolk Botanical Gardens when I visited it with my wife and daughter.  So no I was not alone and I did not feel alone!  I liked the composition.

So here we are at a time in our culture that we surround ourselves with artificial friends on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter (I do not have a Twitter account), and many more, but you get it.  I have written before about on how I rely on them during my travels <here> and <here>.  But it really hit home during this past year during the elections.  I have my political preferences, and I started wondering why I put up with the crap put up by the people that were opposing my candidate.  But I let it slide, I believe in the first amendment, right?  OK, my candidate lost, and I am part of the sore loser crowd.  I have a right to complain.  That's fine.  But the guy I unfriended, now more than a month later, is still trying to bash my candidate.  He is like a sore winner, get over it dude, your candidate won.  For one, he is just a distant acquaintance, a guy I supervised nine years ago, and then I have to look at that crap he keeps posting?  He should be celebrating that his candidate won, and not still try to trash my candidate.  It was then that I decided that I needed to surround myself with my true friends and not with fake friends.  Why anger myself over something like this?  At the end of the day those fake friends make you actually feel that you are alone, they are not there for you, they are there for themselves to accumulate friends and to aggrandize themselves; they are not worth your attention.

This realization together with a text message exchange with a true friend and lunch with another, culminated in that realization that I am not alone, but that I need to make a concerted effort to purge myself from the negative people that surround me (sorry Bob ... nah, not really sorry at all ... good riddance) and cultivate my current friendships and enjoy the people who have the political, cultural and social values that I have.  I know I have started this process in the past and will continue to do so (and at times when I let those toxic people back into my life, they turned toxic again; it is just a matter of time).  I am not purging myself from people who think different but only from those who are obnoxious about it and toxic, we need a healthy discourse and friendship.

These are my baby steps to my independence from toxic people around me and embracing of friends and like minded people. (Photo taken on 11/29/2016 at the Virginia Arboretum during one of my favorite things to do: a walk in nature). 

Laws and regulations suck (no they don't) (11/18/2016)

It should not be a surprise that as a teacher of regulations it helps me to spend time out in the field to see how regulations that I teach are interpreted, implemented, and enforced.  So last Monday I spend a day with an inspector in a locality that will remain unnamed looking at construction sites in town to look at what the builders do to comply with our regulations.

Inspector Jan

I came away from a day in the field amazed by the huge difference I saw between individual projects.  Be assured the inspector was great and the town I was inspecting in was really good too; I had issues with the builders/contractors.  In one project the foreman was cooperative, friendly and wanted to work with us, while in the other project we were definitively his adversary and he just looked at us from a distance with angry face.  Later on I learned that our angry player treated others the same way; he does not cooperate and you need to threaten him with shutting down his project, before he grudgingly cooperates. His project looked horrible and was littered with violations.  When we visited they had just torn out some concrete because it had not been pored correctly, even there he had done a shitty job. 

This is supposed to keep the sediment in the next time it rains (and it was supposed to rain the evening after we visited).

It is amazing the difference between these individuals.  Some are so against the government telling them what to do, and they fight it all the way.  The result is that they have to comply anyway, but all the fighting will cost them project time and most likely money.  For one, time is money, but all the after the fact clean up, the slowing down of the project because they have to correct or repair things, and so on, will all cost them money.  It is all so short sighted, but they are all standing on their principle!  In a previous post I wrote about catching flies with honey, this guy just acted like an asshole, and that attracts attention too, but not the long-term attention he would like.  He will have a reputation with inspectors for the rest of his career.  He will have cost overruns and it will never be his fault; always those damn regulators; it will always be the government's fault, those laws and regulations.  

So why do people hate regulations?  If you believe in the Bible, it was Adam and Eve who were the first people that did not believe in the regulations that God put in front of them and gosh darn it, they took a bite from the apple.  This famous bite still reverberates all over and we are living with the consequences.  But from what I see some people have been against laws and regulations throughout history.  Revolutions have been fought over this problem.  I am no philosopher, but I think a lot of people feel that they are put in place to control them.  Wake up call, the laws and regulations have no one specific in mind.  But without them society would probably be chaotic, there would be no traffic rules, there would be pollution everywhere, there would be no one checking who was bringing what on to airplanes, you name it.  As you can see I can give plenty of examples of laws and regulations that are essential to our safety, our life and health. 

Ruben's depiction of Adam and Eve's temptation (this picture is hanging in the Prado Museum in Madrid)

In our current political climate you hear conservative saying that we need to get rid of regulations; and that is what that one foreman’s behavior essentially was pointing at.  He did not care about environmental regulations and you had to force him to comply.  But these conservatives are the first in line to pass stricter and heavier regulations on the use of marijuana, on abortion rights, on euthanasia, or the death penalty. 

So now you say: "I hate bad laws and regulations, but I like good ones."  But who is the judge?  It all depends on who we listen to.  It is often said that if a lie is repeated often enough we will start believing it is true.  So it is the political pundits that we listen to on the radio, on TV, on the internet and maybe even in those books that we read; they will eventually convince us what laws and regulations are good or bad for us. 

Brooke Berger wrote an interesting article in U.S. News and world Report in 2013 entitled: “Yes, Regulation Can Make Government Better.”  Regulations often fail because they are so complicated.  People don’t understand them or the reason behind them.  In my teaching, I have been a huge proponent of explaining why we have certain regulations and I still find resistance.  “Just teach the law and tell them to follow it,” I am told.  To me this makes it: us the educated elite versus the non-educated masses, much like what we have seen in the recent election.  Simplification and explanation of the intent of the laws and regulations should not be a partisan thing; I believe that you get better buy-in when people understand how things affect their life and wellbeing.  However, repeated lies and biased interpretations are not constructive; they pin us against each other and don't help society grow.

Elections (11/8/2016)

So the election is over (for me), and yes I voted.  As of this writing, we do not know the outcome yet, and contrary to many predictions, the sun will rise tomorrow and the world will continue to revolve around the sun.  The problem may be that this country may be even more divided than when President Obama was elected president eight and four years ago, regardless who the president elect is.  That is scary to me.

I am sorry, another selfie.  But this is proof I have voted.  Here in Virginia I am wearing a shirt that I bought because I liked it, but people will stop me on the road complimenting me on my choice of supporting the University of Virginia.  It seems that this is their team's colors.  I was not aware of this when I bought the shirt, but now I get Virginia Tech alumni mad at me for not wearing a maroon shirt which is their color.  The world is so polorized it drives me crazy!

I turned U.S. citizen in 1994.  I have the correct skin color and if I keep my mouth shut, I can pass as any good red blooded (white) American (yes, I still have a funny accent).  I have not missed any election since turning citizen, and honestly I am fascinated by U.S. politics (often to my wife's chagrin).  I think a lot of immigrants can tell the same story; however, some are not as lucky, being of different ethnic background as I am.  These guys have been in the center of the attention, whether they liked it or not.  This election has pitted friends against each other; the educated “elite” against the working class white men; women against men; husbands against wives; black against white; it has polarized our entire society. 

I am afraid it is something that will not go away when the last vote has been counted.   Truthfully, I am not sure how we can heal; politicians in Washington are already promising obstruction and pigheadedness instead of compromise who ever will win.  I just hope civility and tolerance will win.

Having lived all over the world, I can attest to how important democracy is; how it is valued and how horrible it is to live under a dictatorship or under a military regime.  My parents grew up under the dictatorship of Hitler and I saw fanatics of both political parties claiming on Facebook that the candidate of the opposition was just like Hitler or would be just like Hitler.  They don't know what they are talking about!

I lived in Uganda under Idi Amin, where if you said anything bad about the president you ended up becoming alligator food somewhere along the Nile River.  The standing joke (or threat) was that the alligators had never been so fat as during Amin’s reign.  There was no opposition, discourse or democracy.  In Nepal, the King was a reincarnation of God and try to question God!  The dictatorship in Yemen where I lived was not much better; although there the local villages always seemed to rebel against government rule.  There was little compromise in all three countries that I worked in; it was always the dictator's way or the highway (or worse).

Where are all these countries now?  They are still in political turmoil, in civil war, poor, you name it.  I am a strong believer, that democracy, literacy, science and education in general is the only way out this vicious circle.  That is what made us what we are right now.  I am just afraid that in the current political climate we are descending to the same level as those countries I worked in.  Let’s prove me wrong America, let's compromise and work together!