“Stop it, you’re killing me!” I laughed and continued to tickle her tender tendrils. She caught my wrist and slowly eased it away, trembling with mirth. Turned out her race has a genetic mechanism built in that synthesizes a deadly, fast-acting poison from the oxytocin released by laughter. She went on to say she wasn’t sure whether the process was natural or it was introduced into their DNA during the species’s dystopian epoch; in the end, they never bothered to remove it from their genetic code. She and I had a falling out not long after that and I never saw her again. I heard on the grapevine that she died out on some hole in Centauri. With her condition, I guess it’s not a bright idea to work at a comedy club.

Conrats to Melissa Clemente for the dropping of her Spring 2010 collection EPOCH. Inspired. Gorgeous. And Santa Guerrilla was lookin’ hot that night too, featuring Robin Lacambra on lead vocals for the first time. Killing that kulingtang. Bet you never thought Filipino everything could be so hot?!

I met Ms. Hattie Ruth Pompey as part of a work assignment. As a communications consultant for the School District of Palm Beach County in 2001-2002, I was charged with getting her  late husband’s manuscript, “More Rivers to Cross,” properly published and distributed into school libraries.

She would only talk with me in person, and I had to go to her home. It was like sitting with my grandmother; only in real life, I wasn’t that close to either of my actual grandmothers. So I treated her as I would have treated a “fill-in” grandma, whom I actually knew and adored.

She welcomed in a relative stranger with only a recommendation that I was worth the job. It was a hefty tome Mr. Spencer Pompey had left behind, full of his work and memories bringing this county’s race relations into the modern age. Ms. Pompey was relieved that a real person had been assigned to usher his work into permanency, and I felt honored for the task.

“More River to Cross” took my meeting with Ms. Pompey several times, making trips between her home, the School District’s offices, and the publisher in Lake Worth, relaying her wishes, keeping her abreast of progress and setbacks. I didn’t write anything or edit a word. I just made sure the book was done.

And from that was born a friendship that resulted in me being scolded every time I saw her afterward. “When are you going to bring your boys to come meet me?” She asked me without fail or hesitation. I would make my promises, hug her, take in her graceful beauty (she was very pretty), and wait until the next time…

There will be no more next times for me and Ms. Pompey, a founding member of Expanding & Preserving Our Cultural Heritage (EPOCH), Inc., the organization that made the Spady Cultural Heritage Museum possible.

I’m blessed to have known her, sat in her kitchen and managed a project so dear to her heart.  It was my privilege and honor.

Ms. Hattie Ruth Pompey

]]> http://physicistonlife.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/post-00/ Mon, 23 Nov 2009 23:57:27 +0000 physicsekwulslife http://physicistonlife.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/post-00/

I’d like to take a moment to show a bit of who I am. Let’s start with the title of this blog: Mi(Life). Life is the variable of the function named Mi. This is a mathematical approach to blog nomenclature. I did this on purpose because I love math. I also love physics and chemistry(although physics is the source from which all life springs[F=MA]).

I thought about titling the first post of this blog with a philosophical quote such as Lao Tzu’s ”A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” I decided that that didn’t quite fit. I even tried to create some sort of science fiction or geeky sounding title such as “Epoch” or “The Maiden Voyage of (insert fictitious name here) Starship.” Yet again, it didn’t hit the mark.  However, I feel that by creating this blog, I am at an Epoch and thus shall begin writing a new set of algorithms to redefine Mi(Life). In mathematics the origin is the best place to start from, in fact, most algebraic expressions that I know of have the origin as it’s basis. Thus I have named this first post at this epoch of Mi(Life), after the origin. 

Let’s take a topic jump to politics. Currently, I am for the Obama administration and in support of healthcare reform including the public option. Yes, I will occasionally express my political views on this blog. I do not, however, subscribe to any political label. I am me and I believe what I believe. That does not make me leftist or rightist or feminist or misogynist it makes me humanist.

Jump(Subject): Interests (Yay for nested mathematical jokes ). I enjoy paintball and plan on hopefully being able to go out to play again(kitty) soon. I am an avid music lover with a bit of a metalhead tendency. I also enjoy reading any type of book I feel like but especially science fiction and classic novels. I currently feeling like I am filling out a profile for some sort of dating site but thats not what I am trying to accomplish. I enjoy reading the online comic XKCD and googling various terms and phrases I find therein.

Basically, this blog will be about my ideas, opinions and various other sorts of tidbits and rif-raf(haha, Rocky Horror Picture Show) that I want to post about. Hope you enjoy reading it all.

- Physics is life and life is fun!

The First Million Years or So

600 Years of Unwanted Guests

Middle Ages and the Turn of Provence

Wars of Religion and Hocus Pocus Popes

Oppression, Resistance, Quel Renaissance!

Debating The Age of Bad Taste ou Epoch Classique?

Post-War brings Socialist Mitterand and the Revival of Occitan

The Joys of Being French, Oui or N’est Pas?

C’est La Vie in The South of France

Santon Fairs in the Var et Renoir at Les Collettes

Columns, Columns, Columns and a Bridge

Troubadours Cansos, Love Story, La Californie of Europe

Hug the road winding the Cote d’Azur

Bordeaux, Beaujolais, frescoes in Peille

Sailing to Promenade du Soleil

Down the Rhone: Orange to Beaucaire

Malabar’s bulging biceps swell

Jagged Alpilles, rocky plains of the Crau, marshlands of the Camargue

For the Rhone is a Saturdays Child

On to Nimes, the Gard and Montpellier

Le Vin’s de Herault and Agde founded by the ancient Greeks

Narbonne, the Corbieres and the Aude, Castles and Cathedrals abound

Last but not least, there’s the Catalans of Roussillon

Getting There

By Air, By Coach, By Car, By Train

By Boat, By Bus, By Bicycling

The Song of Summer, Cicadas tune

Siesta under pine trees and game of boules

Tender is the Night with starry skies

Bouillabaisse, Aioli, Thirteen desserts

Estocaficada and onion tart

Before Laying a Bet, will it be

Holiday Destination or Life on the Riviera?

Like the Fitzgerald’s and Hemingway’s

You will not be the first to stay

Avec votre coeur dans la méditerranéenne.

Skipping beats, flashing jeeps
I am struggling
Daydreaming, been sitting, the corner cafe
And I’m left in bits, recovered tectonic, trembling
You get me everytime

Why’d you have to be so cute
It’s impossible to ignore you
Must you make me laugh so much
It’s bad enough we get along so well
Say goodnight and go

—

Poppy music makes me happy. It makes me feel like I’m part of one big, beautiful, technicolour, happy world. Well, what can I say? I’m a sucker for cliches. I like believing that what I feel is what hundreds, thousands, millions of others have felt, are feeling and will feel because that makes me feel a tiny bit less lonely. Being without my laptop, without the internet and my constant connection to other people almost drove me crazy last week but made me realise how much I rely on this kind of ‘validation’ every single day.

I spent two weeks in this beautiful new city sitting in my room communicating with people halfway across the world. Which is utterly ridiculous, I know.

Perhaps it’s time I learnt to do things on my own.

—

I miss home so much that I dare not think about it. I miss my bed, my room, my quilt, the smell of my books, my mother, my father, my brother, the incessant noise of the tv, our dog, the noise of the street, the smell of exhaust, the unfathomably familiar sights of the trees, the mud, the sky, the sun, the heat, the cars, the people. I never realised how much I could miss those things that I took for granted everyday. I miss being able to climb one flight of stairs to drink tea with my beautiful grandmother or argue with my opinionated grandfather. I miss being able to fight over the tv with my father or brother. And the thought of all that I’m missing nearly makes me want to go home, and immerse myself in the familiar, enveloping picture of family, home, life.

But I don’t dare think about any of that, because it might, just might be too much.

On Thursday, we had the Discover Epoch event at school. The day ended on a negative note for me. I was one of the winners of the Photoshop event I was participating in. And it felt good to see the intro I created the day before was appreciated by everyone. But on the whole, the show ended with me disappointed. Severely disappointed.

I was supposed to be the SOLE anchor. I had been given the instructions three days back, and even though the time was short, I had planned everything. What I wasn’t told was that Bhatnagar International School, which was co-organizing the show would bring their own anchor. This was the first of the many surprises I would get over the day. That was how it began. Next before I knew anything, she (the anchor) was taking the stage every now and then, much like the excitement a child has when he speaks for the first time on stage (provided he has not goofed it up due to stage fright). I think ‘Divya’ was her name.

I don’t know for sure but I felt that she was more spontaneous that I was. Perhaps it was because she had been preparing for a long time (I finished writing what I was supposed to speak at 8:50 AM, the show started at 9AM – hence no rehearsal), or maybe simply because she was more spontaneous. I had that complex for a while when I realized that her common sense wasn’t as impressive as her spontaneity. It wasn’t long before she screwed up the entire order of things. She made announcements without consulting anybody. Later she went to the extent of asking the judge to come up onto the stage and give away the prizes. WTF? The results had not even been compiled yet! This was the time I was supposed to read the school report – brag about how great the computer department was (I had made up most of it – and the part I had not, I exaggerated it beyond recognition).

Then she looks at me and asks me for the result.

Results? What results? What are you doing?

By this time the judge had taken the podium. The poor guy had to speak on the spot to use up some time so that I could rush the sheets in. The speech was obviously a disaster and all he could manage were  the older than time itself sentences that all mean “This was the best event I’ve seen in my life. All the participants were excellent. I had a very tough time deciding the winners. You all deserve the prize…*blah blah blah and so on.*” when it’s clearly the opposite. I bet he knew no one was listening to him. Maybe people would have listened to him if he would have said what they all believe in. No one says it, and so no one else listens to the ones who don’t say it – that the whole purpose of the competition was to divide the students into winners and losers.

Anyhow, I had now brought him the result sheet. And he made sure that he made the most exciting part of every competition – the prize distribution – as boring as possible. His efforts were fully complimented by an audience (which was the worst I have ever seen) that took no interest in the event at all. Well, they were missing many hours of what would have been boring class – they couldn’t have asked for more.

Next we had the dance performances by a group of cocky 11th graders from Manav Sthali School and 3 Bhatnagar International School’s (BIS) students. Our school’s performance was on computer virii and anti-virii. WTF? I know. Read it again for added effect. It sucked big time. No coordination, poor choreography, no one even seemed to remember their steps – they were all looking at each other and then go, “ow! That’s what I am supposed to do!”. And the audience went “Once more!”. Seriously? Once more? Now I was disgusted. I went to the green room for some air. I returned when the BIS performance was to begin. And seriously, their performance was awesome. If that comes from me, it really was awesome! I mean, they seriously humiliated the previous performers. The audience once again went once more, but they were not given a chance to. Typical school politics. If you BIS guys read this, my compliments.

The mismanagement had just begun. The winners were brought on stage. But the management had made sure that the trophies and certificates were not anywhere in the radius of 20 light years from the auditorium. So the 30+ winners just stood on the stage exchanging quizzical looks, stare blankly at the audience which had finally started paying attention, amused at the happenings.

So while the participants were standing on the stage with no purpose, the head of department comes to the stadium and asks for me to show up and to manage the stage (ironically I happened to be right behind her). Announcing on the stage without consulting the organizing staff, well thought! So I walk up to her, and she tells me, without turning off the mike, that I should take control of the situation – like Niveditaa (a friend of mine, also into performing arts) does.

No offense to my friend Niveditaa (‘NVG’ from now on), but when has NVG been an anchor? Debates don’t count as anchoring. And I still have more debates (victories) under my belt. If that is so, please ask her to take it forward from there. Ego? No. Self-respect? Yes. Announcing this on stage definitely bruised my ego. But I put it aside and spoke the department report out to the audience, which was now starting to get amused by the developments.

Now it was the time to start the prize distribution again. The head of department once again took her love for the mike by making rash announcements. Of course without consulting anyone. I was now once again called to the stage by announcing my name when I was right backstage. Neat move. Anyhow, pushed to the stage, I started to speak a little about how exciting the prize distribution was. Whatever happened to organization and the order in which things were to proceed. Anyhow, I had to bore the audience with the blabbering because I had been sent to the stage for the prize distribution, AND THE FORMAL LIST YET HAD TO BE WRITTEN ON A PAGE! And by the way, the winners were still standing on the stage.

Finally some girl rushed and handed me an incomplete list and told me that I was to announce that the results of the movie making competition were previously told to cover up the lapse. Who thought of the brilliant excuse? I will whip you someday. By now someone had brought the pile of trophies and certificates to the stage. But as things were going, they were not the least organized. When I was announcing the names, the backstage staff was searching for the appropriate trophy. There was on an average a five minute time the team had to wait on stage. And then somewhere the girl who was carrying the trophies dropped them. YES, DROPPED THEM! The glass trophies broke into a thousand pieces! And then there was the awkward feeling the winners on stage were having. Walking forward, taking the trophy, and then walking back to stare at an amused audience. There were awkward moments, many of them, such as when everybody waited for the backstage staff to find the right trophy, but nobody died.

Finally when the disaster ended, the judge took his seat and started talking on his blackberry again, like he was earlier. He had to take a memento, so I requested, in the most polite tone I could manage, him to receive the memento.

He was talking on his phone. He did not notice. So I asked again. Still talking. I requested him for one last time and meanwhile asked one of the backstage staff to go to him.

I had thought that I would not bash the judge, but when I remember this part, I think I will. What the heck were you doing man? You’re a nobody. You’re just a service line manager at some company. I know a guy 5 blocks from my house who drives a cab to a BPO. We should have made him the judge instead. They had to call you because nobody else would want to come to this pathetic excuse of a computer fest. And the teachers lie : “We would like to have you as our judge every

Finally after many “We come to the end of Discover EPOCH 2009″s, the event finally came to a stop. I had never been more relieved.

One thing that did turn out good was that the school’s director wasn’t there to see the event. If she would have, …. I really can’t think of what to write here. She is an amazing woman, she could inspire the most depressed soul on the planet (which happened to be me one year back), and if she had been present, this comedy would be an insult.

My Photoshop event required me to create a digital version of a drawing my partner, Niveditaa by the way, had created. To add to it, she tells me (jokingly?) that we won the prize because of her. Joking or not, that hurt me. Very much. This happened at the International Student’s Science Fair as well. She took the credit. Another day, another story. I have a lot of things about her as well, but I won’t bash her. Partly because I don’t want to. (I like to point out to her that this was a Photoshop event in a computer fest and not a drawing event) and partly because she’s perhaps the closest thing I have to a friend. But she could have been there after the stage. She left right away. I mean, we are supposed to be a team. Teammates stick together. I see everyone celebrating with their partners. And I walked back alone. No celebrations, no photos, no shouting. Just picking up my trophy and certificate from the table where she put them, walking back, trying to enjoy stepping on every tile I walked on. My life. Exciting.

Anyhow, I’ve omitted many incidents in between because it’s already Monday and I still haven’t published them. I’ll publish them as separate posts later on. I asked some of my classmates how they thought the event was and asked them to rate the event on a scale of 1 – 10. Half of them liked it, the other half disliked it and the mean rating came around 5.6. If any of my classmates read this (I hope not, this is a very caustic post – there will be reactions at school), do leave your comments below. And please do not publicize this post at school. The school’s computer department’s teachers, however, seemed very pleased with how the event proceeded.

P.S. I’m open to all of your views on the event. Comment, Facebook, E-mail, Phone – Any and every mode of conversation.

P.P.S. This post in unedited. Most of this has been written in a flow – an angry stream of thoughts. I may have missed something (that I did not intend to) or might have scrambled the order of events (most probably not), do drop me a line. This is raw emotion, and is not intended to be a literary masterpiece. Thank you for reading the whole of it.

epic- a long story, large, enormous

epoch- a long period of time

Late-night coffee shops are something Austin students can’t get enough of, so here are my top picks for late night hangouts or study time locations.

Bennu, located at 2001 E. MLK Blvd.

1. Bennu-If you need a great place to study or just want to get out of the house at 2:00am, Bennu (open 24-hours) is a perfect place for you to go. It offers good coffee; some great loose-leaf tea; fun, eclectic, literary-themed mochas, such as the Moby Dick or The Great Gatsby; and  wonderful, personable workers.

2. Epoch- Another 24-hour coffee shop that is a great place hang out but doesn’t usually double as a great study place. The coffee is good, but their tea is o.k. Also, the place can get really loud between the people and the music. But, it is a good alternative if you live in Hyde Park and are not close to MLK (which is where Bennu is located.)

3. Spider House- Spider House, although it closes at 2:00am, is another great hangout spot. Usually they host events, such as episodes of Saved by the Bell. Their big outdoor porch is a great place to relax on a nice evening. However, since most of their seating is outside, if it rains (which may seem impossible in Austin,) your screwed. The indoor seating is very minimal. Also, it’s not a great study place because of the noise from the crowd and music and the low-lighting.

4. Halcyon- Located off of W. 4th street, Halcyon is a fun, exciting place for weekend nights. Since it doubles as a coffee shop and bar, you can decide between having a drink, having a caffeine fix or both. (Yes, this is something Spider House offers as well.) However, if you want to come here late a night to study, I wouldn’t. The place is always loud, louder than Spider House and Epoch. But, it’s a great place to observe the weekend night crowd if clubbing and bar hopping is something you don’t enjoy doing.

Funnily enough, I spent roughly three months crying over my imminent departure from Chennai when I was 15, about to relocate to Bombay. The change seemed so overwhelming and immense, despite the fact that I’d already come to regard the city as my second home and I was only going to live with family, that crying seemed to be the only way to express all the tumult going on in my head.

Over two years, Bombay seeped into me – a beautiful, intoxicating mixture that, try as I might, I cannot describe. Like I said to a friend when we made a trip there recently, something about the air of the city just makes me happy, the minute I land there. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Bombay really was my Kirrin Island, my holiday home from the age of 4 to 13/14. I saw the same things each time I went there – the museum, the Gateway, the aquarium, the bookstores, the art gallery and the sea – and though moving there did change a lot of things for me, Bombay has become my favourite city in the world.

If you’d asked me, at 15, whether I wanted to come back to Chennai after my 2 years in Bombay, I’d probably have said no. Chennai was never on the cards for me. I assumed I’d be just like my batchmates – applying to far-off, intimidating sounding universities and discussing the respective merits of airline carriers and UK unis vs US unis. Evidently, something up there had other plans, and I very reluctantly packed my bags and wept copiously over having to leave Bombay only to go back to insipid, somnolent Chennai.

Three years changed everything, though. I don’t think I would be the person I am today if I hadn’t come back – and I realize now that I might have ended up very differently if I’d rushed off to the UK immediately after Bombay. Oddly enough, the one place I always thought I would be a child in became the place that threw unanswerable questions at me, the one place that pushed and shoved me onwards, on the road to ‘growing up’.

I’ve found my best friends in Chennai. People without whose opinions I couldn’t live; people who’ve seen me at my worst and my dubious best; people with whom I share a strange, struggling bond. I’d never had a “gang” before I came to Chennai. I’ve always been a nomad, and I suppose I’ll always be one, but something kept us together and I’m infinitely thankful for my people.

I’ve made heinous mistakes here. I’ve fallen in and out of love like a Jack-in-the-box on a sugar high. Up and down, the rollercoaster ride never seemed to stop. Hollywood romance and Victorian wishfulness were my only ideas of love before; I know now, after multiple crashings and burnings perhaps, that love is awkward, funny, unexpected, capricious, and terribly, terribly difficult to feel or express.

Drama. Three years, of never-ending drama; each time, just when I thought things were settling down into a comfortable, cozy sort of routine, somnolent Chennai threw a new, harrowing, confusing, multiple-phone-call inducing nightmare at me. I’ve been ecstatic, confused, disgusted, hollow, sick, cynical, idealistic, deluded and thoroughly astonished. But, of course, I enjoyed every minute of it all, good and bad. Drama is necessary, drama keeps things real, people!

So that’s it then.

The bags are lying on my bed, clothes and shoes, bags and scarves, books, books, books on the floor, on the bed, on the shelves. I feel oddly unreal, putting things into these giant strolleys. I’m going. I’m going!

I’m going to miss home. Bombay may be my city of dreams, but Chennai’s always been just that – Home.

What an entertaining week and a half.

I am now the proud owner of multiple pretty coats and jackets and woollen things, along with 4 new pairs of shoes (that brings the horde upto 10!) and a fluffy pink bathrobe.

The train to Bangalore was amazingly shiny and clean. If it wasn’t for the view of the villages and fields outside, I’d probably have forgotten that I was still in the country.

Last night was crazy. I haven’t been that drunk and not thrown up or passed out in a while. Ladies’ Night, yay!

This is most uninspiring post, but my confused mental state at the moment along with the vestiges of a hangover don’t allow for much entertaining or intellectual writing.

But seriously, as a sidenote, I must rail against the vagaries of Fate. Or Destiny or the Almighty or whatever capricious Force it is that governs our puny lives. Does it really amuse you to throw me into awkward situations and then watch me fumble my way through them? Also, while I’m railing, I might as well ask why everything that happens always has fine-print on a sheet of paper tucked away somewhere, just where I can’t get it until it’s too late. Can’t there just be Good things and Bad things and none of this confusing Grey Area nonsense?

Bah!

Türkistan Art Publishers adlı kuruluşun web sitesi:

<http://turkestonart.uz/en/index.html>

Sitenin ticari amaçlı olduğunu en başta belirtelim, yeni kurulmuş (2009) bir site olduğu için henüz içeriği pek doyurucu değil. Sitenin müziği siteyi burada değerlendirmemize sebep oldu. Bu müzik eşliğinde art-galery’ye bir göz atın derim; egzantrik. Bu kuruluşun EPOCH adlı bir de dergisi var, ikinci sayı henüz yayınlanmış.

Ah! I’m fed up:– But, dear Satan, a less fiery eye

Satan abhors the instructive or descriptive faculty in a writer. The pen which chooses not to write of the world, but dawdles in the imagination. Safety is found in sameness, Poetry erupts from nuances. A lack of the descriptive faculty points to a mundane sense of sameness and apathy which is the most intolerable of all sins, and the most pleasing to Satan. Apathy is the funeral of hope.

Damned by the Prince of the Damned is not damned at all. Unless one considers the rigor he will use to snip at your heels. Satan has no use for the non-descriptive or the un-instructive because boredom is playtime for his disruptive passions. His love is therefore empty. A fruit drained of its juices is without flavor and without use. Satan only loves that which does not challenge his stasis.

The notebook of the damned is the textual photo genesis of Poetic explosion. The Poet is damned because he can not rebel against the world as Satan had done. God’s divine grace slips into the cracks of each thought reigned by the Poet and cements his status with the world. Despite his admonition of society, the Poet can not turn his back on the house of social construct for its beams provide the foundational structure of his Poetry.

Rain hardens his gaze, and solidifies the glaze. Satan’s stare is a trap, the Poet’s gaze is a release. Satan recalls and cherishes the Poet’s early bumblings and ramblings, but infinity embraces the Poet’s discerning eye. The path of the explosive arches of poetry are disconcerting to an unsuspecting public, but this sudden infamy is a temporal cloth covering the ass of history and likely to be changed with the coming epoch. All that is left behind, all that the canon of Poetry omits is the hell which terrorizes the hope of all humankind.

© n10VIII Vagabond Lit

There’s such a world of difference between reading, knowing and dreaming about a place and actually being there.

For years and years -I think since I was eight years old- I’ve been reading, knowing, thinking and dreaming about the United Kingdom. Well, to be specific, England. I never understood why I was so captivated by the most mundane things (potted meat and black pudding, from Enid Blyton, to name some) but it always seemed like a fantastical place, with boarding schools full of youthful camaraderie and bands of child-detectives who roamed about the country solving mysteries and eating a lot of strange food that sounded much more appetising than anything I had.

I experienced a dual childhood – parts of me read the Amar Chitra Katha series on Indian Mythology, the Mahabharat and the Ramayana, and absorbed these stories and their values; the other side of me read Enid Blyton, L.M Montgomery, E.Nesbit. Frances Hodgson Burnett and countless abridged volumes of Austen, the Brontes, Dickens, Scott, Verne and H.G Wells. For real fantasy, I had Narnia and Tolkien and J.K Rowling – all quite undeniably British in their sensibilities.

And what I read told me that England was a land where things like honour, chivalry, intelligence, courage and friendship were valued. I discovered history; I preferred not to read about my own country’s formidable struggle for power because I thought our nationalist leaders were poor imitations of British leaders. I, quite honestly, was more engaged by the exploits of the various Governor-Generals and Viceroys of Imperial India than by those of Gandhi, Nehru, Tilak or Bose.

My grandmother, daughter of a man in the Indian Navy before Independance, was as torn between being an Anglophile and an Indian as I seemed to be. We went to England when I was fifteen; it was like a trip into a book. I was enchanted by everything I saw, I took photographs of everything from sheep grazing in a Yorkshire field to the perennially gray skies over London. I can’t describe what it felt like; to see, touch and breathe the trees, the grass, the flowers, the buildings, the air of a place that, in my mind, retained its mythic grandeur from ages past.

It was only as I grew older that I realised just how much of my identity derived from my own country’s history as a colony of Britain. And I feel torn, all the time, between my strange love for the history and culture of a country that today attracts pity rather than awe from the big players in global politics. England today seems petty, self-involved and weary: nothing at all like the big-hearted, domineering, self-assured power that it seemed to me. My own country’s problems press themselves upon my notice; I cannot stop being Indian, just as I cannot stop loving the idea of England.

My identity has always been dual; I can correct a native Englishman’s incorrect use of grammar but I cannot read or write my own native language. I can tell you stories from the history of that little island, right from its earliest inhabitants, to the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons, the Danes and the Normans, but I cannot tell you stories from the much older history of my own country. And I feel a terrible guilt in admitting both of those things, because in this world, my nationality is an integral part of my identity, even if I don’t want it to be.

Right now, on the brink of actually living and studying in that land (albeit a little removed, in Scotland, about whose history and culture I know very little), I’m terrified that my fantasy world will be shattered and I’ll be forced to adopt the same stance of sympathetic pity towards England that people feel today, or worse, that I’ll discover that the colour of my skin and my nationality prevent me from ever seeing that true face of England that I’ve idealised throughout my twenty years of existence.

He reminded me of a younger version of the nuclear physicist in "Repo Man"

I’ve been out of town! I just returned from visiting relatives in Marin County. I spent most of my time walking the trails, and visiting my wonderful relatives out California-way.  They were kind enough to drive me to a coffee house in San Raphael for a couple of hours, and I did a few paintings in a coffee house there, called the “Royal Ground”. It looked like an upscale franchise, but we don’t have those here in Austin. I got a few paintings out of the session, and will post those, soon. I really want to go back and go into San Francisco. I will start with Mario’s Cigar Bar, off Washington Square Park. I visited there, and just absolutely loved it. I’m hoping to return in the fall.

BACKGROUND
On February 24, 2008 in Los Angeles, California the Nu Skin Galvanic Spa was recognized as a “New and Notable” product winner at the 2008 Los Angeles Spa & Resort Expo and Conference and Medical Aesthetics Conference and Expo.

The Spa & Resort Expo and Conference and Medical Aesthetics Conference and Expos, the only trade event that continually caters to both the fast-growing spa and medical aesthetics industries are the ultimate resources for cutting-edge industry information, product innovations, technological advancements, and access to the newest developments in service and treatments.

The New Product Showcase winners in both the spa and medical aesthetics categories were selected by a distinguished panel of judges from SpaFinder, a 360-degree media marketing and gift certificate company dedicated to the global spa marketplace

Over the last few weeks, my energy has been focused on my day job. i work in supply chain management as a buyer and the customer that my team services has been making their big push too fill orders to realize End of Quarter revenue. At the same time, I can’t say that I’ve had any observations that stood out as being noteworthy and worth sharing. The articles that I’ve linked have been more poignant, hence their prominence as posts.

There has been one thing I’ve been obsering over the last couple weeks and that is regarding other people’s observations that stand out to them as indicators of our genuine econoomic health.

Here are some snippets, in brief/summary, that are sticking in my mind:

• The volume of rail traffic at a large hub in Georgia is down, a local worker saying down “25%.”

• How a peaking in weekly new unemployment benefits alone does not signify the end of a recession/downturn- you also have to look for an increase of factory/capacity utilization, which has served as a very accurate gauge on its own.

• New housing costruction being up in May from April is not a good thing considering that we currently have a 10-month supply of housing stock and there has not been a dramatic reduction lately.

• Over the course of the upcoming year, an increasing number of retail chains with reduced sales and earnings are going to run out of cash an may very likely have difficulty refinancing debt obligations (which would mean the risk of bankruptcy filings and/or store closings would increase.)

• The above plus individualized store closings leads to an increase in vacancies and a reduction of cash flow for property owners, which in turn leads to cash crunches and the posibility that debt that needs refinancing won’t get refinanced. Dead spaces lead to decay in neighborhoods and communities, which I have not thought through or have read about at lenght. (My comment on that matter is that I hope that people would care enough to take advantage of the situation and do something constuctive with the property, even if it is only demolishing/disassembling the building for scrap materials.

As the above businesses close, that means more stresses on the institutions that financed the debt, which puts us back to the uncertainty of 2008, not knowing who will float and who will sink, since I truly don’t believe that their executive management teams have been as open and honest with us as they probably should be.

The added retail layoffs will likely lead to more mortgage defaults and foreclosures, more credit card debt defaults, which leads to more stresses on financial institutions, which leads to more potential for a repeat of the uncertainty of 2008.  I think you can see where this is going.

I think right now, we are in the Great Un-wind.  We are in the stages of transition (or just post-bubble pop) where like a tsunami, the wave of the financial shock is still spreading over the economic landmass.  Some people, business and governments are better able to weather the damage unfolding than others, partly by resources, flexibility, action taken or just by virtue of their line of work (political offices are still in need of elected officials, regardless of competancy.)

I think at this point there are still many dominoes to fall that have not fallen and aftershocks that have not played out into the economy yet.  If what I am starting to see is any indicator, there is a slow decay/breakdown occurring that will take years to play out in all of its forms, in all of the areas it possibly will.  In the mean time, we need to stay abreast of what is going on and try to think a step or two (or more!) ahead so that we aren’t overtaken by the wave as it washes over all of us.

Fare well,

The Epochman