The Quiet Road

There’s plenty of catching up to do. Plenty of “Previous posts” links to be clicking. Though browsing through my blogroll, I find that it’s been quieter than usual all round. It’s not just been me.

Larry‘s only had four posts since Chrimbo for instance. Mind you, one of those was a video of a man playing Angels We Have Heard On High on a piece of broccoli. I’ll take quality over quantity every time, and it doesn’t get much better than a man playing Angels We Have Heard On High on a piece of broccoli.

An anecdote about my life as an engineer

John B’s been over in Haiti. I came within a mildly amusing anecdote of spending a few months in Haiti in 1996 but it involves a corporate blunder that’s almost certainly still covered by confidentiality clauses, so I’ll have to be vague.

At the time I was working for an engineering consultancy that specialised in managing medium-sized projects for US corporations (food and beverage mostly, but there was bits and pieces of other stuff). The company had built its reputation on handling projects in what were euphemistically known as “hardship locations”… Nigeria, Angola, Ghana, Tanzania, the Middle East, the Philippines. Though by the time I joined they’d shifted both into working in ‘first world’ countries and also to the “new hardship locations” of the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia.

In early 1996 a multinational corporation contacted us. An almighty cock-up had been made in Haiti and our company was one of a small group who had the expertise to put it right. Because there was a certain level of political sensitivity involved, there was a kind of “name your price” air to the whole thing. I put together our quote for the job and was encouraged to “be generous” with the budget by my boss; the company owner. I’m talking about the high side of reasonable here, you understand, not silly. The project had a healthy profit margin, but still we looked certain to win the contract.

I’d begun preparing to head out there. Seven of us would go out. Myself, a director of the company, and five engineers. After a couple of weeks, the director would head home and I’d run the thing for the next twelve weeks or so. It was to be the third project I’d managed, but the first in a hardship location… and what a location! Admittedly, our project would entail spending most of our time in a secure compound well away from population centres. So it’s not as if we were going to be hanging out in downtown Port-au-Prince every evening. All the same, it was a pretty daunting prospect and I had more than a few sleepless nights freaking out about it.

The day before I was due to fly out for a preliminary visit we got word that the project was put on hold. I don’t recall ever being so relieved. A part of me was excited by the prospect of visiting the place, but it was a small part. Overshadowed significantly, I might add, by a far larger anxiety about running a site office and managing a bunch of men, many of whom were twice my age, for three months. In Haiti. In fairness to my boss, and contrary to how I may come across here, I was actually quite good at that kind of thing at the time. It’s not like he was sending some blithering academic off to fix stuff in Haiti. Even so, I was mightily relieved when I informed the office secretary to cancel my travel plans.

The company was expanding at the time. We were being asked to quote on far more work than we could possibly do and despite moving to larger premises and taking on more staff, we were actually turning down as many projects as we were taking on. So losing Haiti wasn’t all that big a deal. Within a week I was looking at the schematics for a plant in Baku.

For the next couple of months the Haiti project was on-again / off-again. It was getting on my nerves, and it was pissing off my boss. Over a liquid lunch one afternoon, he brought up the subject and vented his exasperation at trying to get anything organised in Haiti. The place was, he assured me, impossible to deal with. This from a guy who’d built factories in Angola and Northern Nigeria.

“Yeah, and that’s without the voodoo! Just wait ’til one of the lads pisses off a local voodoo priest. It’ll be The Serpent and The Rainbow all over again”. I was laughing, but my boss’s interest had been piqued. What was The Serpent and The Rainbow, he wanted to know? I told him it was a book and then a movie about Haitian voodoo and was supposedly based upon a true story. We chatted about voodoo for a while and I told him to rent the movie from the video shop if he got the chance.

He did. And clearly a bit squiffy from a few ales, he sat down to watch it that evening.

Now, I don’t know about you, but there are one or two horror movies that — for me — stand far above the rest… films that got to me. Got to me at a level that most horror films, even the very good ones, never get to. Films that crept inside me and did nasty things to my mind when I lay down in my bed at night. And it’s not about the quality of the film; it’s about the time and place you see it. Set and setting. How you’re feeling, what’s been on your mind, what you’ve eaten, drank or smoked. For me, An American Werewolf in London was one of those films.

For my boss, it turns out, The Serpent and The Rainbow was one of those films.

We’d had that drink on Friday afternoon. By Monday morning he’d read most of the book and was in something of a state. That afternoon he made a call to New York and withdrew our involvement in the Haiti project.

Now, I’m not saying that we’d still have pulled out if economic conditions had been different and there hadn’t been other work to do. And the way we’d been jerked around for so long certainly hadn’t helped. But The Serpent and The Rainbow was very much the straw that broke the camel’s back. The fact that my boss rented that movie on that particular night and it scared ten shades of shit out of him is almost certainly the reason I didn’t go to Haiti in the mid 90s.

So yeah.

There you have it. Well, I did say it was a mildly amusing anecdote. Though I must admit, it certainly went on for longer than I’d anticipated.

But look, it is almost 4am. I’m very close to nodding off. And I wanted to get something up here tonight but the thing I’m writing about nuclear power isn’t quite right yet, and the thing about police brutality and civil protest just isn’t hanging together either. At least this meandering nonsense is labelled as such.

Is that one of the best film credits ever?

And is this one of the best opening paragraphs to a blog post ever…?

The approval ratings of Austrian rapist Josef Fritzl have fallen below Gordon Brown’s according to a Daily Mirror YouGov poll published today which suggests that Brown would win a 20-seat majority at the next election if the Conservative Party were led by Fritzl.

Harry Hutton, Fritzl’s Approval Ratings Fall Below Brown’s

Certainly when you add it to the closing paragraph of Harry’s prior post, it’s clear that despite the lack of quantity, Chase Me Ladies, I’m In The Cavalry… is also still providing high quality:

I honestly believe him to be insane. And the fact that this very dangerous lunatic is still poking his nose into the Middle East shows that Blair remains one of the most serious threats to our national security, and that his arrest and execution should be matters of the highest priority.

Harry Hutton, Blair Must Hang

There have been plenty more pearls amongst the online swine during my absence. I’ll get to them in due course. I’m travelling a lot over the next couple of weeks. London. Then Serbia. But I’ll try to post as often as possible, even if only briefly. For now, I’ll leave you with Politicari + Virusi (Politicians and Viruses) from Serbian band, Disciplin A Kitschme.

What’s that? 2009, you say? Blimey! When did that happen?

As is traditional, I’m starting the year a little later than most of you. Just think of it as an extra-long lie-in.

Actually, it’s just that I’ve had some stuff going on in my life that didn’t involve sitting in front of a screen. Good stuff, I should point out, but the blog kind of fell by the wayside as a result. Now that I’m shifting some focus back onto work again, I’ll be screen-bound more often. So let’s see if I can’t get this place up and running while I’m here.

I hope y’all like the (slight) makeover. Just a couple of minor tweaks to the palette and a new header, but it seemed like the right time to run a duster over the place. I’ve done very little browser-testing as it’s mostly been minor changes to a relatively well-tested template. All the same, if you notice any problems let me know what browser / version and OS you’re using as well as what’s wrong with the page. Also, if you think there are any colour clashes, please let me know. I really like the white / yellow text on red background (the metadata / infobox style), but as has been been made clear in the past, my design aesthetic is occasionally idiosyncratic. So if something’s hurting your eyes or giving you headaches, bouts of nausea, nosebleeds, etc… do let me know.

As for where I’ve been? Well, it’s been a memorable few months from my perspective. Most of it great, I’m pleased to say. I’m now sharing my home with the lovely Citizen S, which is by far the biggest — and most positive — change in my life for untold aeons. Wish us well.

Also, I recently received final confirmation that my thesis passed. Yay me! Of course, now that I’ve collected a few more letters after my name, I’m not entirely sure what I want to do with them.

You have to understand, a lot of the things I’d planned to have done by now…? They kind of went the way of this blog for a while. If I’m to be brutally honest about it, I could probably sum up the past few months with the phrase “hanging out with S”. And frankly, I’d be more than happy to have that sum up the next few months too. I can think of few better ways to spend the summer than laying about together, reading books in the sunshine and watching DVDs on the days it rains.

Except. Well, I really need to find time to write in amongst all that laying about. And of course, The Good Citizen has a rather busier schedule than me. There’s exams looming and much studying to be done (S is an architect, but has decided to pick up some alternative skills and qualifications now that the arse has dropped out of the global construction industry).

So yeah, that’s where I’ve been. And that’s why I’m back. Hope it all makes half-sense. And while I do apologise to my regular readers for absconding as I did, with nary a by-your-leave; don’t imagine I feel in the slightest bit guilty for taking a few months off and laughing a lot. Global capitalism, it seems, was happy to continue collapsing without my assistance.

Somebody gave me an Advent Calendar from Woolworth. The windows were boarded-up and there was fuck all inside.

Shamelessly nicked from here.

As a short addendum to my previous post, and to indicate exactly why Obama is not going to address the fundamental problems facing America — and the wider world — this article over at the BBC contains a revealing quotation from the man himself.

Now, let me preface this by pointing out that his plan for massive government investment in infrastructure projects is a sound one. The problem comes when you analyse the type of projects he wants to invest in.

We’ll invest your precious tax dollars in new and smarter ways, and we’ll set a simple rule — use it or lose it. If a state doesn’t act quickly to invest in roads and bridges in their communities, they’ll lose the money.

“New and smarter”. “Roads and bridges”.

Because that’s what America needs in an era of decreasing oil availability. More roads.

I have plenty to say on the new president(-elect) of the United States. But I want to get this single point out of the way. I supported an Obama vote, because I honestly felt that the presence of a member of the Christian Right on the Republican ticket made them too damn dangerous. But I did so with the clear caveat that Barack Obama was merely the lesser of two evils. There is no evidence whatsoever that he intends to — or is even capable of — implementing the kinds of radical policies necessary to address the serious problems facing us today (resource depletion and Climate Change).

It’s certainly nice to see America have it’s own little Portillo-moment, and I do not begrudge in the slightest the celebrations of those Americans who view Obama as a major force for change. The hangover will be painful, just as it was in Britain in the late 90s, but after 8 years of Dubya Bush who can blame folks for having a bit of a piss-up?

Politically speaking, I agree completely with Merrick when he points out that the new boss is the same as the old boss.

See, there is one decision that a western leader could take which would indicate that a fundamental change for the better has occurred. One decision that would send out a powerful signal that we are finally on the right track. And even though it’s a difficult decision, and even though there would be no guarantee that its implementation would be successful, it would be like an announcement to the future that someone had finally understood the problem. Though, what’s remarkable about the decision is that it goes against the ideas of the capitalist right and the traditional socialist / communist left.

It’s the decision to end our fixation with economic growth. We need to decide to scale things back. Less work, less consumption. A managed powerdown. And I’m not talking about some absurd neo-primitivism. This can only happen through intelligent and efficient use of technology.

Anyone really think that’s on Obama’s agenda?

BUT…

The story is never that simple though. Obama’s election does not herald a major political change (I’d be surprised if it even heralds a minor one). But a huge social change has occurred. And I’m willing to applaud that and support it with all my heart. I lived in Texas for a short time and in the US midwest for a bit longer. The division of the country along race lines was far more pronounced than it was in other places I’d lived. Even when I lived there, during the Clinton years, there was a palpable racial tension.

Now, obviously I’m not saying that the election of Barack Obama means that US racism is a thing of the past. That would be far too easy. But it is a powerful symbol of positive progress. From slavery to the presidency in less than 150 years isn’t to be underestimated.

I’m thinking mostly of those children — both black and white — who will start going to school over the next few years. They’ll open their history books and see pictures of all their presidents. For the first time there’ll be a non-white face among them. The social and psychological message that one, simple picture will send out should not be dismissed, merely because Obama’s politics are business as usual.