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Silverflame's Sanctuary"Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric." (Bertrand Russell)
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May 31 So long, MSN...Breaking news: this blog is changing homes. This may be a bit sudden and unexpected because I haven't really mentioned it on here until now, but I've been thinking about it for a while and, now that I have about 400 things to do piled up this weekend, I thought: what better time to go ahead and get it done?
So: as of today, the Sanctuary will be moved to Blogger. Why Blogger? Because I'm a Google addict. And it's relatively flexible, at least more so than MSN Spaces are. And it's free. And especially ad-free. And the formatting isn't giving me as much of a headache. The one downside? There doesn't seem to be any way of importing the entries on this space into the Blogger. So this Space will continue to exist, it just won't get updated any more.
Here's the new address: http://silverflame-sanctuary.blogspot.com/
Please update your bookmarks, links, RSS or Atom feeds, Google Readers or any other tech-y mechanisms you choose to use in bringing my ramblings onto your screen. As for those who prefer to Facebook it, the idea is the same: posts will continue to be imported as Facebook notes but pretty please, with sugar on top, comment on the blog itself, at the above-mentioned URL (or by clicking the "view original post" link in each note).
I hope all of you will continue to indulge my delusion that I'm remotely capable of writing interestingly and that you'll bring your comments and ideas to the Sanctuary's new home. I'll see you there! May 30 Cool!I was writing my assignment and suddenly I thought "hey, why don't I read the news instead!"
Because that is, of course, what any normal, conscientious person does when they have a critical response due in just under 6 hours.
I know I'm a technology addict, thank you. One thing, though: would you really want your coffee table to act up when you put something on it? Also: why oh why would you want a computer that you have to lean over?! Aren't computers indirectly responsible for enough neck and back pain as it is?
So: yay for the novelty of it, but I'll wait for the laptop version. And for it not to cost over $5 000, of course. Pollen?In spite of what I'd thought and hoped, my allergies haven't forgotten about me this year. I still have no clue what it is exactly that makes my sinuses throw fits every morning. Not that I imagine knowing it would help.
Still, here are some episodic news from my puffy-eyed self:
May 23 Ok, so I was wrong!One of the first things you are taught if you take a personality psychology course is to distrust first impressions. Someone who strikes you as a bit of an antisocial jackass may just be having a bad day; the guy you're out with, whom you've just met a week ago, is nothing but sweet to you, but his ex has a different story to tell. And so on.
Still, we all (mis)judge people by the first impression they make on our egos, and often maintain that judgement in spite of subsequent evidence to the contrary. It doesn't take much to make a first impression, either. An awkward handshake, a dumb comment made at the inappropriate time, a wardrobe mishap, and you're classified as an asshole before you know it. Of course, it works the other way too, as Douglas Adams's towel demonstrates:
Most of us have such a weakness in the form of a trait/feature/experience that makes us instantly like or admire anyone posessing it, based on assumptions that might not be remotely true. My "towel" is travel experience. Whenever I hear someone I've just met say they've traveled a lot, I instantly, automatically, spontaneously admire them. What I think is that anyone who's traveled extensively can't help but have a plethora of stories to tell, of experiences to share, and of interesting insights to discuss. I immediately assume that traveling has broadened their horizons in all senses of the word and that they have that much more informed of a world view because of it. This is, of course, due to how I feel whenever I travel, but also to a more general conviction that experiencing a different lifestyle or just observing life in a different setting than one is used to helps develop perspective in a way that living one's entire life in one city/country/climate/culture can never hope to do.
Unfortunately for me (I'm running low on living people I admire), I seem to keep meeting people set on proving that my assumptions are as unfounded as the above strags'. Two people in particular have seen fit to burst my bubble recently ('recently' is used rather loosely here, meaning "so far this year"), proving that one's perspective can be not only impervious to the effects I thought travel would/should have on it, but that it is, in fact, possible for it (perspective, that is) to become narrower in the process!
Person #1 (I'm being discreet, can you tell?) got my immediate attention when he proclaimed he'd traveled to every continent except Antarctica. He'd even met his wife while volunteering in Africa and, of course, had a million stories to tell. My eyes grew the size of tennis balls with anticipation and awe, until I heard him have quite a different conversation with a colleague. The colleague was about to spend his vacation in the Dominican Republic and asked the very well-traveled Person #1 for impressions and/or advice. Person #1 started expounding on the many services offered by various resorts and mentioned in passing that, apart from the tourist attractions, the rest of the country's rather rural and uninteresting. That was a partial red flag, but the real blow came when he started on the "free trade zones" in Central America in general. For those who don't know, those are areas where what North Americans know as sweat shops are in full bloom. Person #1 had this to say about that: "the locals are so proud of these places, they'll want to show them to you and boast about them, but really, they're just sweat shops!" This said with the most revolting tone of disdain for "the locals" and their lack of outrage/misery over their own condition.
As anyone who's spent more than 5 minutes talking about globalization will know, manufacturing companies and corporations will always seek to minimise labour costs and thus look to outsource to countries/areas with the lowest wages. The high and mighty North American individual who sits in his ivory tower preaching the salvation of the world by not buying Nike's may look down on the people in those areas as poor exploited ignorants, but the reality is that the local economy IS actually getting a boost from this outsourcing. Factories are being built where there was little industry before. Jobs appear by the thousands, allowing many people, especially women, to have incomes they otherwise would not have had. I'm not saying these are ideal conditions, of course not. But, seen from the perspective of "the locals," it's a bit less bleak of a situation. Furthermore, many of these people see the arrival of these brand names in their country as something important, as a sign that they're part of some big, famous, global enterprise. So of course they'll be proud of it, and of course they'll want to show it off.
I know this without having been there myself. You could say I've had more experience of life in a developing country, which is helping me see things in perspective. I also understand that many people, North Americans especially, would not be able to immediately grasp this view, since they're used to their own perspective of it. What I fail to understand is how someone who has been there, who has talked to these people, who has also volunteered in various parts of Africa, who's worked with some of the poorest people in the world, can still have maintained such a narrow, biased and ethnocentric view of the whole thing.
Person #2 is slightly different. Much younger than Person #1, she's already traveled to close to 30 countries and makes a point of wanting to travel to every single country in the world during her lifetime. Admirable, I thought, someone that determined to see the world in all its aspects. What I didn't realise at the time was that this is someone who doesn't so much want to know the places she goes to as to be able to say she's been there and to tell a story about each place, preferably one of how much worse/less comfortable/more messed up life is there.
Case in point: she recently traveled to Eastern Europe, including a brief stop in Romania. Several people (including myself) and guide books have, of course, issued the requisite warnings such as "don't carry anything in your pockets" and "here's who's gonna try to rip you off" and "be careful on trains" and so on. The same people and guide books have also advised her of places worth visiting, things she can't miss seeing etc.
After her trip through Romania, I read her travel blog entry on the one city she did visit (Brasov). Her impressions of the place itself were "there was a festival and the weather was shitty." The rest of the entry (1) detailed one instance in which she and her travel companion got ripped off in a restaurant and (2) enumerated the warnings people gave her and almost regretfully pointed out how these things didn't happen (hardly any rroma, nobody mugged them etc). The major conclusion of her entry was that the city -- and presumably the country -- had shattered her expectations by not being anywhere near as dreadful as she had expected. What she got from it was a sort disappointment and indignation that the place turned out not to be completely savage.
I suppose there are some people, like her and like Person #1, who travel for the sheer novelty of it, all while looking down their noses at the places they visit. I hope never to become one of these people. I also hope I'll learn to take the words of well-traveled people with a grain of salt. Evidently, traveling alone won't open your mind; some predisposition has to be there in the first place. May 22 More life lessons
May 20 Rainy, in every sense of the wordI know everyone has mood swings now and then. I also know the weather and side of the bed you wake up on and the number of times you look at yourself in the mirror and your exposure to CNN and the number of TVs per capita in developing countries and a billion other random factors have a weird way of affecting your sense of self on any given day. (Ok, maybe not the thing with the TVs. But it might affect some people, for all I know.) It's normal and healthy for one's "how are you feeling today?" chart to fluctuate a little (or a lot?) every day. But this? Today? As opposed to yesterday? Pretty damn drastic.
Yesterday I was beyond happy. Some would even rate me as worryingly good-mooded (yes, that's a word, if only to me). And with good reason(s):
Today, on the other hand, I feel weirdly depressed. Not actually grouchy, not exactly mad at anyone/thing in particular, just generally down. Blah. Cloudy. Or is it overcast? Hmm.
If you don't know the feeling, it's sort of a mix of the following:
Or maybe I do and I'm just too proud or guarded to write about it here. Either way, there it is. I'm sad. And I don't like it. May 16 More of the wonders of the human psychePeople, in general, are impressively impressionable. Aren't they? It's a constant amazement to me how easily we can be convinced of this or that based on little evidence, as long as it sounds plausible. Like horoscopes, for example. "Emotions could be very intense right now. Resolve not to take anything at face value. Simply observe what's going on, and make some notes. You can come to conclusions later, when you're better able to process what happened." Think about it long enough, and you're sure to relate.
That being said, I have no idea how anyone can become a doctor without being a severe hypochondriac, or a psychologist without crying for at least 14 hours a day. Is there anyone in the world who's read a medical textbook without going "damn, I have that... crap, I have that too... well yes, I have been feeling a little dizzy lately... and now that I think of it my stomach's been weirder than usual..." ?? And similarly, has anyone got through the "abnormal psychology" unit of a 1st year psych textbook without being convinced they're a manic-depressive narcissist with OCD?
I was in my psych class tonight, talking about physiological approaches to the study of personality and I have to say... by the end of it I was equally convinced that I was an introvert, an extrovert, Type A, Type B, neurotic, left-brained AND right-brained. Maybe I'm just that beautifully well-adjusted that I can't seem to fall off the fence? Or at least lean slightly to the side? I suppose I'm doomed to half-die of some cardiac problem while half-becoming a serial killer on SSRIs. May 14 Not that I'm complaining; but:A famous quote that's been attributed to everyone from Mark Twain to Oprah says "good judgement comes from experience; experience usually comes from bad judgement." Here's what I'm learning from today.
On Saturday, I decided to finally get back into some semblance of my weight training routine and, being extremely intelligent as we all know, went straight back to my old weights. After a 1.5-month absence during which I hadn't so much as looked directly at a barbell. In case that wasn't bad enough, the new BodyPump release isn't exactly what you'd call easy. I don't know what it is about whoever comes up with each new release -- sadism, or just ill-disposition toward people in general -- but lately they insist on making each lunge track longer and harder than the last, even when you think it's not humanly possible.
Put those two together, and you'll be very sorry not to have been around me for the past 2 days. Spent Saturday not so much moving as vibrating, and wondering what new muscles were going to come out to play the next day. Right now? I'm walking with sound effects mostly consisting of "ow!" ... which is a mild euphemism for what my quads have to say when confronted with a flight of stairs.
As a sidenote: it's amazing how many volumes of witty quotes have been attributed to Mark Twain over the years, isn't it? Ever think he's lying in his grave going "damn! I wish I'd thought of that!" or something? May 07 Second-hand wisdomImagination. To Einstein, it's more important than knowledge. Charles F. Kettering called it "the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future." And according to Jules de Gaultier, it's "the one weapon in the war against reality."
So why is it, I wonder, that the one industry that makes it its business to offer us distraction and entertainment and thus help us along in any such war against reality -- the movie industry, that is -- lacks so disastruously in imagination lately?
Case in point: yesterday, in a long series of events, I caved and went to see "Spiderman 3." I don't know if they make a point of only previewing sequels before a sequel or if it just sort of happened, but even before the opening credits I had seriously started wondering if every single original idea had long been wrung out of Hollywood and if the entire industry is now doomed to making money off of proven -- yet weatherbeaten -- formulae.
Then came 2.5 hours (yes, it was that long) of the following, in no particular order:
As someone else (Tom Stoppard, in this case) said: "skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets" and, maybe, standardized movies? May 05 In case you were wonderingYes, I'm still here. Though the symbiotic relationship between me and my computer is somewhat weakened by the sun being out most of the time and also: by me having real, actual, tangible time off. Which feels a bit weird; but good.
So. Things:
A quick list, to make up for all this time. I love:
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