November 11, 2009

Give my head a good shake, attempting to determine whether everything internal is working, and then attempt to deduce ‘user name,’ ‘password,’ and a variety of other seemingly meaningless details from the fogs of memory.

I’ve really been away a while.

6 PM, April 28, 2009

Urbanwriter is gone. That was a phase, you might say. So many of us wanted to be hip, or to write, whether right or wrong, to our friends, ourselves.

I’ll just come back to the electronic commons, a place proved by, and governed by, my host’s conditions. It’s less money that way.

Writing is a forced activity sometimes, and even as I squeeze these words out I know the tension that drives the writing. There is a paradox there; I write because I must, but I know the writing won’t reward the reading.

That’s a shame.

But with time, and effort, I hope that those of you who take the odd look will find something worthy of your time.

Moving on…

Well, www.urbanwriter.net/wordpress is up and running, and this will be the last post to this blog address.

I made use of the ‘Install4Free’ function at WordPress, which got WordPress installed at my domain, hosted by Bluehost.com. Then I struggled for hours with FTP programs, doo-hickeys, thingmabobs, widgets, lines of code, php whatzits, and a pile of other stuff that left me feeling absolutely drained. And nothing happening as far as transferring my ‘old’ entries (and comments) to the new site. Grrr.

Finally I figured out how to post at http://wordpress.org/support/topic/87563?replies=3#post-446308 and the moderator gave me a set of instructions that performed, in about one minute, what I had been struggling with all afternoon and evening.

Yes, I sent my heartfelt thanks.

And now, it is time to close this chapter. I won’t be moving from www.urbanwriter.net, I’m actually paying to be there, it’s mine – at least insofar as any virtual space belongs to anyone – and I hope to see your comments.

Thanks for reading.

Ah, technology

In any field of endeavour it is the tiny little bits of information that rule our lives, if we lack the ability to decode, decypher, decrypt the seemingly endless variants of language we are held hostage to our ignorance. And this is all brought to my attention, once again, by my ignorance of the technology that drives this blog, and every invisible bit of mechanical, electronic, optical, and code work that is ‘out of sight, out of mind.’

I want a real web address, one that is not a sub-directory on some company’s server, one that is mine to do with as a I see fit, within the limitations of legal requirements, good taste, social responsibility, and my own interests. So I got one.

www.urbanwriter.net

This blog will, with any luck, migrate there over the next few days. I say ‘with any luck’ because I am counting on the good graces of people at, or affiliated with, WordPress, who offer a free migration service for WordPress users. Meaning these people will install WordPress on ‘my’ website at no cost to me. Which, when I get the least bit involved, seem the best thing to do.

They require that I give them a bunch of information, seems reasonable to me, given that much of what they are going to do requires names and addresses and passwords. But for the Internet ignorant, the FTP foundlings, the ’support forum’ ignorant, is all Greek. Or even older, Assyrian perhaps.

I’m sure that when I know what I’m doing with this stuff it will all make sense. But much of it reminds me of my start on the Internet over a decade ago. Different programs, suppliers, manuals, support functionaries all used different terms for the same information. One program would call it ‘primary account,’ while another would call it ‘user identity,’ and this went on throughout every program on the machine. And every level of tech support.

And I’m sensitive to tech support; I’ve been fixing stuff for a long time and I appreciate that your amplifier absolutely has to be plugged into the wall outlet when you turn it on, or there will be no output. You have to have fuel, oil, air, spark, unless you’re driving a diesel. And then you can live without the spark. But automotive stuff has been around a long time, long enough for the terminology to become standardized, normalized, encoded virtually in our genes. And there are always hand signals when words fail us in some far away place where language doesn’t quite ‘translate’ when ’support’ is needed.

Just a couple weeks ago I had the opportunity to help an old acquaintance with his first-ever computer. And I had the opportunity to remember just how foreign, how totally ‘unintuitive,’ how weird most of the tools we use are, when we are novices. It was, in fact, humbling to have to remember how much I didn’t know, once upon a time.

And now, again, I am reminded how little I know.

Wish me luck getting www.urbanwriter.net up and running, learning those little bits as I go.

A bit more colour

Memory is a wonderful place; like the past, a country where they do things differently – the difference being that in memory, you are the past, yet enabled to change the subtlest details to suit a present agenda. I can’t say that we all do it, I can’t prove that statistic, but my suspicion is that most of us edit, embellish, and alter the past. This on-going change to the past is not necessarily a bad thing, if it allows us to tell a story in such a way that the reader can discern our intent, without being actively lied to. Presenting a story, re-presenting the past, either path may suffice.

When I write of the cities I know, or the cities I think I know, I draw on an unimaginably small data set, my own experience. No proper scientist could possibly create a position out of such scanty cloth. Well, Freud did it, but he was writing about women. And men don’t know anything about women, so the size of his data set didn’t matter, nor did the fact that all of his female patients were ‘middle class’ when that meant a lot more than it does today. But, I’m afraid, I digress.

Back to writing of cities. I bring my own experience, logics, taste to the areas I write about. My own individual ideological stance is revealed not only by what I write about, but by the things I neglect, and it is the reader’s opportunity to tease apart the arguments I present. Such an examination may reveal flaws in my argument, or they may reveal ideas that the reader had yet to articulate, and that is where I’m headed next.

My last post, ‘Fade, to grey’ suggested (I hope) my views on the loss of individuality in the urban landscape, primarly for the purposes of that post, the loss of economic, visual, and cultural diversity within the urban streetscape.

Now I want to explore another cultural loss, intimately tied to that loss of individuality amongst streetfront businesses. And, again, this is a reflection of my own experience. Your results may vary, may include nuts.

High school is a horrible time for most kids. Hormones kick in, mice cry in anguish when you squeak – I mean speak, every guy in the class can shave. Except you, loser. And a couple guys actually got a date. And an even smaller number got decent grades.

I hid from as much of the high school angst as possible, by working, for so many of those now-vanished businesses.

Drive, you want? I had drive. I wanted money, not much, certainly not enough to work anything resembling a permanent part-time job. But I always had work.

Legion Taxi, out in suburban Burnaby, needed a dispatcher. At least that was the answer the guy came up with when I pounded on his door for the umpteenth time. Desk. Radio, mike, PTT. That’s ‘push to talk.’ Telephone, single line. Phone book. Map. Chair.

5 PM – 9 PM school nights, two a week, so Wednesday and Thursday. 6 – 10 PM Friday night.

My qualifications for the job? A recommendation from the guy at Cougar Electronics, two doors up the street.

So, at 16, I was a taxi dispatcher.

For a one-car cab company.

But the job at Cougar Electronics was cool, at least to me. The guy did something with electronics. There were a number of radioactive samples in a box under the workbench, and he made things (electronic things) that detected radioactive thingys (I was a bit rusty on all this then, and that’s a while ago) that emanated from the samples, under the bench. But I got to sweep the place, once a week, for about an hour, every week, probably for $5. Hey, it was about $1.50 over the ‘adult’ minimum wage. And I got to take one of the detector thingys on a school filed trip, to see if I could find anything that made it evidentt that there was radioactive bits about.

Too bad it didn’t get me a date.

But my diligent, hard-working, money-grubbing nature was giving me a reputation. At least on that block.

Andrew’s Customline Upholstery needed someone to dismember, oops, dismantle, furniture for reupholstering. And you couldn’t just rip the fabric off, rending it to shreds. Out came the tack lifter, off came the welting. The felting and horsehair just went in the garbage, but the welting, and the fabric, all went ‘upstairs’ to the sewers. And did they have it in for me.

Four or five women, all skilled at what they did, worked wonders with the material I dragged up to them. And they hounded my can. All of them, at least as old as my mother, and each and every one of them ready to tease, torment, tantalize, and toss the teder ego of the shop boy. I knew then that it was done in fun, but any kid suffering the same treatment today would be advised to seek punitive damages for sexual harassment. God, I hated going up there.

But the guys in the shop, a couple of journeyman upholsterers, didn’t know or care about my private travails with the cutters and sewers. The Boss, and his thirty-something son, probably had an idea. But the son survived, and probably so would I. And I was damned fast on the button machine.

Machine is a stretch. We normally think of motorized, nominally self-guided, mechanical contraptions when we think of machines. The button machine was none of these things. I powered it. I guided. I cut little, tiny discs of fabric with a die. I assembled thousands of buttons, each one lovingly handcrafted by a skilled tradeesperson. No. I cut and assembled thousands of them alright, and, yes, one at a time. But it was boring, repetive, unskilled, unfullfilling, numbing, work. But I was fast. I got paid piece work for the buttons, with a penalty for faulty ones.

I paid that penalty once.

All these shops were situated ‘in’ the community where they were located. They hired a local kid, mostly because I kept pounding on the door until I got a job, but they contributed not only to my pocketbook, but to the cash register of other businesses in the community. I spent my money at Bob’s Sporting Goods (irrascible SOB), I spent at the ‘67 Shop,’ at the hardware store, and, most memorably, at the Millionaire Coffee Shop. I spent at Jon’s Pizza, when pizza was a new-fangled foodstuff, and long before there were any local franchise pizza joints.

The money flowed from customers of Legion Taxi, named after the Canadian Legion, outside of which he parked most nights from 5 until closing. I was an alarm clock for the odd night he wanted to grab some shut-eye before delivering a few slightly inebriated sods to their respective homes. Their tips may have helped pay for the dispatcher.

I’m sure there weren’t many customers of Cougar Electronics in the local area, but the guy who owned it lived not far away, and his money went into his community. Even if his money went through my pockets first.

The upholstery shop was my first career mistake. I got terminal macho, decided I wanted to be a heavy duty mechanic (which in British Columbia’s ‘wild west’ resource economy meant big wages, big wrenches, and if you were really lucky I suppose, big wenches), and headed off to the College of New Caledonia, a Provincially operated trade school in the centre of the province. First frost in September was a harbinger of things to come) rather than some barely credible opportunity as an apprentice upholsterer. I mean, try saying ‘apprentice upholsterer’ several times without just curling up on the floor, laughing.

I should have stayed in upholstery. but I don’t know if I could have survived the machinations of the women, upstairs. Even if they did live not far from work.

But all this is about the opportunities, the interconnections, that can occur when we work, live, shop, think in local terms. And it is not about not thinking outside our immediate community, for ours is only one of millions of local communities. But it is about thinking about our goals, our ideals, our hopes.

Why should McDonalds, or Burger King, or Sesco, or Wal-Mart, or any other business of their ilk care about the kids in the local community? Why should they be expected to care where your kids spend their money, other than encouraging them to spend it where they work, through employee pricing plans? Does Burger King management even consider where their employees might spend their money? Not likely.

Whether these companies are privately held, or accountable to their shareholders (hehehehehe), they are worrying about one thing. The financials for the next quarter. They are not worrying about the health of the community you live in. It’s not their job. It’s not what they were hired to do, it is not their area of expertise, and they don’t know anyone with a Masters in Community Development and Social Engagement. And, they just don’t care.

So, if there is a local coffee house where you live, ask if they hire high school kids. If they don’t, ask why. And suggest, if necessary, that there might be a long term payoff. Not only for the business at hand, and the coffee in your hand, but for the community.

For why should kids give a damn about the local business, if the local business doesn’t give a damn about them? While the ‘cynicism’ of the current young generation is over-hyped in my view, they are aware of the consideration that they can expect from locally situated branches of the “Really, Really, Huge Company.” And they don’t expect very much.

And they don’t get much. They know they are getting abused with ‘training wage’ schemes, whatever their local name. They are supposed to work as hard as ‘adults,’ show up on time – like adults, and pay taxes, again like adults. But they work under a set of rules that if applied to a racial, sexual, ethnic, or religous minority, any Court in virtually any land where this will be read, would toss the legislation. Well, perhaps one or two places, just north of the Equator, and about 15 time zones from my seat, would toss the complaint. But that is another blog entry all together.

And those kids will have ever less to tie them to a community that does not offer its youth some hope of a job, a real actual job, at home. And, yes, lots of those jobs will be part-time. There are some of those jobs that will be ugly, dirty, demeaning, foul, smelly, hard bloody work. Just like being a machinist. Or a civil engineer. Or any one of thousands of real jobs. They will also be jobs that help move money through the local economy – rather than jobs that exist only to strip mine the community of all the available funds, and then, having no ties whatever to the people, or place, the doors close.

And everything goes dark.

But I remember that those local jobs added something. They added colour, to the community, the colour of money, of a future, of hope. Just a bit more colour.

Up and running, again

This is a short post – more to keep my typing skills fresh, than to elucidate, illuminate, or critique.

My new iMac is now up and running, after a couple days of sorting various system bits, tossing redundant software, downloading stuff I want, and getting the ‘look and feel’ about where I want it.

Sounds simple, particularly in advertising-speak, one of the sub-sets of Orwell’s ‘Newspeak.’ Plug it in, and use it. Well, sort of.

Housekeeping, the chores that one had to do in the days of 500 meg hard drives are near useless now. This machine has a 160 gigabyte hard drive, and I’ll be damned if I can figure out how, even after much tossing, the system still uses nearly 20 gigabytes. I started with 132.91 Gig of free space, added the programs I wanted, and tossed enough stuff that I now have about 139.69 Gig of free space…

But, needless or not, I heave junk into the garbage. And one day (ho ho ho) I might learn enough ‘Unix’ to use the command line interface, and trash even more stuff.

And, as one might guess, as soon as this machine is finally ‘up and running,’ the repair shop calls to tell me my laptop is functional again. So I’ll have to re-load stuff there as well, and set that machine up as back-up storage, what with a new hard drive and all.

I feel connected again, and some of you will have noticed my presence on your blogs, especially those people in Malaysia and Australia.

Now, time to de-stress after work. Then, over the next few days, a bit of writing. Classes start in September, so I’ll be back at the Master’s grind. And some happy news; a new Director has been hired for Humanities 101, and it is someone intimately familiar with the program, and someone that I can say I have the utmost faith in. And, maybe I can get another two-night teaching slot, though the next time I’ll teach Witold Rybczynski rather than Jane Jacobs.

iStuff

Well, it may be a tiny bit premature, but it appears my Macintosh i-Book has collapsed in a wiggling heap. With the proliferation of ‘i’ labelled product, will I be having an ‘i-Funeral’ for my laptop, followed by an ‘iWake,’ where people pine for the days of OS 8.6?

I tried to circumvent the problem, buying a new iMac (one of the new Intel chip machines), hoping that the gods would laugh at my feeble attempts to out-fox them, all the problems on my laptop vanishing once the new machine was plugged in to replace the old.

Waste of time.  This evening the i-Book refused to fire up at all. No amount of manipulation seems to make any difference whatever; all those cryptic key combinations made no diference at all, keyboard gymnastics can now go by the wayside.  And then I get the e-mail reply (on a Windows box no less) from the service technician, suggesting that he can order parts, on two or three day turnaround, to fix the old beater.

I replied, with a further description of problems as they developed, with the vaguest hope that the thing is, like the ’six million dollar man,’ rebuildable.

Well, the next week will tell.

And, as it develops, more information on my prospective Masters thesis. Most of what goes up here, at least with respect to my thesis, is a form of talking out loud . And I’m hoping that any of you reading will offer constructive critiques…

Remember that ‘u’ key?

Hey, remember that ‘u’ key that didn’t work, mentioned in the last post? Well, now the entire computer is a bit suspect.

I have now been fighting with my laptop for 5 days. Re-install system software. Nope. Buy over-priced anti-virus software (which won’t boot from the disk, seems awfully stupid to me, means any ‘real’ viral writer worth her salt should be able to defeat that problem) to no avail. Now the CD drive assumes there is a CD, actually two or three CDs, that need to be ejected during booting…

All very confusticating…

If you haven’t seen ‘Cars,’ the animated flick, do so. It’s not ‘about’ cars, its about people and their relations to stuff, to culture (including ‘car’ culture), ethnicity (and there are a couple REALLY good jabs there), change, memory, all the elements of good story telling are addressed!

And, stay for the credits. Not only out of respect for the minions that toil in obscurity,  but because there is some really funny stuff going on there.

I’m keeping this post short, ’cause I have no idea when this thing will decide to crash again, and it crashes in the cutest possible ‘Macintosh’ way – the SBBOD (the ’spinning beach ball of death’ to the uninitiated) just spontaneously appears. And never leaves until I pull the plug. But it’s a cute little beach ball. And, I guess, it beats the ‘chimes of doom,’ a sound few Mac users have ever actually suffered.

I’m struggling with my Masters proposal (Masters in Urban Studies) in part because I have take 4 of the 6 courses and registered in number 5 for this coming September, which would leave one more ‘elective,’ and the thesis work which is spread over two course numbers in this program. Part of the difficulty is that getting to grips with my thesis isn’t going to happen until next Spring (2007) as the end of my last elective draws near. The other reason is that the Program wants everyone to elect their thesis supervisor by July 10, 2006. That’s right, last week.

But we got an extension.

I sent program secretary a note, suggesting that the requirement applied to people who ‘knew’ what their thesis subject was? ‘No, the requirement applies to everyone, even those who do not know the subject of their thesis.’

So, that ties this post to the ‘urban,’ insofar as my Masters in Urban Studies is concerned.

Pick a supervisor before you know the subject, eh?

But, it is a lovely, sunny, Sunday. And I’m off for a urban exploration, an ‘expotition’ if you are a fan of the philosopher bear, Winnie-the-Pooh.

More later.

On a more positive note

On a more positive note…

It’s Wednesday. Nothing very much out of the ordinary, just a Wednesday stuck in the middle of the week, flanked on either side by ‘days of the week.’ Quotidian, somewhat tedious, and nothing very special.

But I had a couple things happen today that are out of the ordinary, things notable for their specific implications in my life.

Ever try to type on a keyboard where the ‘u’ doesn’t really work? But that is only a digression.

The “Cottage’ is a little place in Gastown (Vancouver’s earliest surviving street grid and architecture is here) that serves a fantastic clubhouse sandwich – no fries, a couple slices of good dill pickle, and real turkey. Bacon, veggies, and made-to-order service round it out.

There is nothing fancy or up-scale here, not the food, not the owner, not the staff, and certainly not the ratty old carpet. But the owner, Carlos, is always happy to see me. The coffee is always fresh – or they make me an Americano, no extra charge. The staff, that would be Peter, are just as outgoing as the boss (and always ready to have a laugh at the absent boss’s expense) is.

And the smell is heavenly. The upstairs seating area has the ‘million dollar view’ of Vancouver’s still-working harbour. Seaplanes, mostly DeHavilland Beavers and Twin Otters do their scheduled runs all day, a lovely heterodyning of twin-turbines and Wasp Jr radials. The heliport sits directly opposite the café windows, and a variety of commercial choppers, scheduled and charter come and go.

Freighters come into port, freighters leave. Cruise ships act as greyhounds, dropping one load of passengers in the morning, sailing out-bound again often within 24 hours. Harbour tugs, fish boats (for the few fish they haven’t already snagged), the transit service ferries Burrard Beaver and Burrard Otter complete their 16 minute passages between Vancouver and North Vancouver dozens of times a day.

Trains. SD-40s and GP-38s service the rail yards. The crashing and banging as trains are made up; sending Chinese running shoes to Montreal, Korean white-goods to Kenora, and leaving the odd detritus in Vancouver. As a token of good will I suppose. Grain goes out. Coal, sulfur, and goods (I hope) all leave, though not necessarily from below my café vantage point – though all within view.

One of Vancouver’s multiple container terminals runs its huge, mantis-like, container cranes day and night. Well, it’s day and night when there is a ship to unload – but there are days when there are no ships at ‘my’ terminal – and then the delicate dance of wires is stilled, the marionette abandoned by the master’s hand.

And I had lunch with a friend. An architect. Retired, mostly. And one of the very few ‘professionals’ in my select circle of friends.

One doesn’t want to reveal too much here; the sensibilities and sensitivities of friends must be considered, and if not known, then decorum makes its own, specific, demands.

But lunch was a delight. He brought good news relative to his own work, writing as well as architecture. And we discussed some of the work I am currently engaged in, again, some of it real, physically tangible work, and some of it writing. My current ‘day’ job offers much, but perhaps oddly, demands a certain reticence on my part – there are the institutional, policy, and personal requirements for privacy and discretion – at least as long as I am swinging a screw-gun on contract.

I shared some of my mood, evident in the last post here a few days ago, and of which my friend is familiar. And, the fact that I could handle having lunch with him meant that I was in considerably better shape mentally than a few days ago. Though Churchill’s ‘black dogs’ still gnaw at my legs.

That lunch was the first part of the day that I wanted to write about.

The second part, and one more ‘urban’ oriented, was a walk this evening.

After a light dinner in Chinatown with another friend I headed off home, fully intending to sit and read ‘Nothing if not Critical’ by the Australian art critic, and long-time writer for Time Magazine, Robert Hughes. He may be, or may not be, an irritating and obnoxious drunk, but he can write right about art. And write with spirit, sensibility, insight, and a refreshing lack of cant and obscurantist theory. And I was going to read some more of him this evening.

But I went for a walk instead. My regular walking routes all take me east, or south, to start. And that means out of the downtown core, and into what would originally have been streetcar suburbs. This evening however I turned west, and headed for Stanley Park. While the 400 hectares (1000 acres) is all second-growth forest, and unbelievably heavily ‘tended,’ the park is an urban gem.

Taking the seawall route that describes the outer perimeter of the park re-exposes me to the city I live in, and many of my reasons for loving cities in their near-infinite variety.

Entering the park proper I’m greeted by the raucous verbiage of a great blue heron, sqruonk, sqruonk, sqruonk. And the troubled, and troubling, looks on the faces of rowers new to the coxed eight. And yachts, large and small, in reality, and in name only. The ‘nine-o’clock gun,’ which is a 16 lb cannon, cast in the early 19th century, that goes off at 9 PM (more or less) every night.

The tide is flowing, probably about 5 knots off Prospect Point, and in a back-eddy I  catch a glimpse of a harbour seal just checking out the human world. My walk takes me past memorabilia, past bits of litter lost in the wind. Lovers, walking hand in hand, and in just about every variety they all look like lovers, walking hand in hand.

Freighters come through the First Narrows as the tide starts to slow, the inner harbour nearly full. Charter cruise boats, hoping to pay their fuel bill off the customer’s bar tab, slowly edge their way out under the bridge, and like a reluctant swimmer, dip their bows into English Bay.

Another seal, and Siwash Rock. And more lovers, some all alone, run, or walk, or rollerblade by. And I watch. I eavesdrop on private conversations. I make elaborate stories to surround the bits of conversational dross I have picked up. Stories. But they are all stories without beginning, they are without end, they really have no lives of their own. But it allows me to engage in the lives of the protagonists without ever meeting them, without liking or disliking them, without ever knowing anything about them. Except that little bit they let slip.

And then, almost 9 km after I started walking around the park, I’m out of it again. And then home.

But, one thing before I leave. I look at all those cruise ships, mostly heading to Alaska, all summer out of Vancouver. Are they, in any sense, floating cities? And, if they are, are they the penultimate gated community? Second only to whatever Heaven, or variant thereof, that one’s faith promises? And if they are cities, in much the same way that Celebration, Florida, is a city, do they represent some fascist architect’s dream realized?

Just a thought, comments always welcome.

I went to post this last night, it is now Thursday morning, and my computer decided in its infinite silicon wisdom, to freeze. An hour and a half of fighting to no avail and I went to bed. This morning, for reasons completely unknown to me, everything seems to work just fine.

Miscellaneous rambling, ranting, rumination

Sunday night, and time to labour a tiny bit. This post will cover a number of tiny details; I'm sure there will be something about Kuching, there may be something about Sibu (no, not Cebu, that place is in the Philippines), something about work, and a variety of other assorted nuggets of wisdom. 

As many of you will have gathered, I have recently returned from Sarawak – one of the states that make up the Malaysian Federation. The vast majority of my time was spent, quite happily, in Kuching. It is a bustling regional hub, the seat of State government, and the largest urban population in Sarawak. Sibu, located up-stream on the Rejang River, is somewhat smaller and displays a different personality than Kuching, sometimes a stunningly different personality.

Kuching. I always feel an obligation to my 'hosts,' whether that is one individual person, a family, a neighbourhood, or a country. That sense of obligation forces me to consider the effects that my writing may have on those people. Who am I to suggest that 'they' don't know what they are doing? Who am I to suggest that I, a middle-aged, economically disadvantaged, white guy, has some knowledge that would make their lives far better, and only I have the vision, apptitude, attitude, and opportunity to impart this pearl of wisdom?

What I do have is an interest in my host's condition. I am interested in the forces that shape the lives of my hosts, the social, economic, cultural, political forces and images that define how their world is different than mine.

While I was in Sarawak this trip I kept a notebook, when it is entirely transcribed, it will be a document approximately 75 or 80 pages long. And that transcription is taking a while. But the notes account my curiousity. They reveal the hours spent considering the role of Bing!, a fantastic coffee bar in Kuching, well worth visiting if you have the opportunity. 

Is Bing! really a harbinger of globalization? And, if we decide that Bing! is in fact part of the globalization of Kuching, is that a 'bad' thing? I spent a lot of time, in Bing! as well as elsewhere, researching that question. I took with me the remnants of middle-class, leftish small-l liberal, considerations of globalization. You know – all that concern about the Coca-cola-ization of the world, and all that that entails. 

I sat there, as I sit here, and worried myself into a lather. My notes, and they go on for page, after page, after page, question the meaning of Bing!. Is it a cultural and economic surrender to tourist dollars?  What about the patrons; who are they, where are they from, what do they represent? What about the staff?

There is an argument in economics that suggests 'a rising tide floats all boats.' But my notes question whether that 'rising tide' acts differentially; does it float some boats higher, and faster, than other boats? Can the staff at Bing! afford the product? Because, according to one economic model, only if they can afford the product they make, are they included in the economy of which they are an integral part.

Henry Ford was not an enlightened prince as an employer. He did not give his employees more money than his competitors paid similar employees because he had visions of economic paradise in his head. Ford paid his employees more to keep them, for starters, because he used a production system that was anathema to most. He also paid more because he realized that by increasing his employees wages, they could (eventually) become customers as well.

Can the customers of Bing! share that dream of economic inclusivity? I don't know. I never thought it prudent, or polite, to enquire after their income. But I doubt it. Unless Kuching operates in a universe parallel to the one I live in, service-economy wages never allow full inclusion into the economy that service providers toil in. I suppose one could argue that if they were included, if their own wages were high enough to admit them as customers, then the labour version of perpetual motion would have been acheived. And that only really happens to CEOs and their lick-spittle cronies.

And globalization in all of this? Well, the owners (a spousal team), are global citizens. They have lived, and worked, in S.E. Asia, and N. America, at the very least. They have global tastes, which they have decided to give expression to in Kuching.

And the replication of those experience that inform the creation of Bing! includes the re-creation of non-physical, non-economic, non-consumable elements. Not only must the physical environment re-present their experience, not only must the product be part of the experience, but their staff must re-produce the experience. And that staff reproduction is difficult.

The staff must be encouraged to think, and act, differently than their cultural background may encourage or sustain. The ability to give good service is immensely more complex than being servile. Good service staff are smart. Good service staff are allowed, actually encouraged, to think for themselves – because only by thinking for themselves will they be able to think for the customer. And, for the very best of service personnel, customers are clients. 

The semantic shift from 'customer,' to 'client,' represents the shift from, essentially, the grossest of wage labour, to a professional outlook. That shift in outlook allows the service provider to take responsibility for the client's needs, desires, outlook, and outcome. Anyone can drop a cup of coffee on your table, shoddily, with no interest in what they are doing, or in what you are doing. 

A professional, even a professional coffee server, goes beyond just dropping the coffee off at the table. They are actively engaged in delivering 'your' coffee. They are paying attention to your needs, wants, and expectations. They bring the coffee condiments – cream, sugar, sweetener, spoon, saucer if locally appropriate (and locally appropriate is extremely important here, globalization or not) – and replace what need replenishment, and remove the detritus. And all this is done with a minimum of fuss, professionalism demands that.

When I asked one of the owner's "what do you do when your employees become valuable to the Hilton, or Holiday Inn?" the response was very interesting. There was no indication that wages or salaries would be increased, but there was an immediate, and cheerful comment: 'I tell them to go work for the best, where the demands are high, because they can respond to those demands.' And it wasn't just the Hilton or Holiday Inn that were included, surprisingly, so was government.

A business owner, anywhere, that is prepared to lose good staff to the government, is a rarity. But the rational went something like this. 'If they are good, if they are prepared to work, to think, to plan ahead, to take a risk once in a while, they will take those skills with them, to enhance the jobs that open to them.' And, they get glowing letters of recommendation, apparently.  

So, in this instance, globalization of the local cafe scene might actually lead to better governence. Sounds like a pretty good deal.

And my role? To be the best customer I could be. When there was a tiny gaffe, I brought it to someone's attention. Politely. When work was well done, I was gracious in my praise. And, when one day a 'tip jar' appeared, I tipped. When in Rome…

Sibu strikes me as a rash, brash, youthful sort of place. One of those cities on the cusp of respectability, but with the occassional bitter flash of adolescence, to remind us that we are not quite ready to sit at the big table with the adults. At least not all the time.

Two years ago I went to Sibu, twice actually, and had a great time. The people seemed much friendlier than in Kuching, more welcoming of an 'ang moh' (literally 'red hair,' but a mild perjorative in fact; though often used as one might reference a slightly odd uncle) in their midst. It was a pleasant experience, and one I wanted to repeat.

Well, not this time.

The youthfull, brash, exuberance was still there. The streets had more cars, more scooters, more people than during my last visit. With the exception of the 'express boats,' (sidelined in part by expansion of both road networks and automobile ownership) the port facilities were bustling, cargoes of all sorts being loaded and unloaded on a variety of vessels that would make the Port of Vancouver jealous.  

But my reception was 'mixed,' one might say. There were about four people who seemed perfectly delighted to see some tourist wandering about the city, but four in a city is awfully small potatoes. I can't say anyone was actually, outright, rude. But outright rude is rare anywhere. More telling is the service. Cafe, after cafe, after cafe the coffee was slow. Or non-existant. Lime juice (often actually flavoured syrup, with a lime dropped in at the last minute, with tons of ice) seemed unknown more than once. Odd. So I left. And I won't go back.

Work is always a vague presence in my life. I like it vague, I don't mind working, but I hate work. I hate the idea of showing up, every day, knowing that whatever I did yesterday really won't make much difference today. And, that if I didn't show up, someone else would be doing the same fool job.

So, I either take jobs that I know are temporary, or I make them temporary. I quit. In years gone past I agonized over quitting, usually after the agonies of depression had set in (and they always did) and my performance was either suffering, or about to suffer. And I hate doing a poor job. I just hate it.

I left Vancouver on the first of May, 2006, having done as good a job at what I was doing as was possible. That job performance included training, at least in part, someone to do the job. You can probalby guess where this is going.

When I got back to Vancouver, after my Malaysia trip, my boss wanted to talk to me, about an array of things. Seems my trainee has a delicate constitution, and might take it as a slight if he were to lose some of his shifts to me, on my return. So the boss suggests that I do two days in another area, one day in my original area, and all will be well. Sure.

So I though about it.

And, on sober second thought, I quit. I couldn't see working with someone who I allow to stress me out on the job. I couldn't say that I felt particularly appreciated in either of the two positions. I felt as though I was being used. And, finally, my income would drop below the figure that people in British Columbia make if the qualify for 'disability' welfare.

So, tomorrow, I start a new job. Fixing 'stuff,' mostly physical building maintenence as I understand it, but possibly some electrical work. Possibly some carpentry, though I generally loathe carpentry. Repair of metal bits and pieces – doors, lock-sets, closers, and heaven knows what else. And, over a six month period it should average 2 1/2 or 3 days a week. Hope it works out. For a year at least.

Other nuggets: I'm afraid it has taken longer to write the above than I might have thought at first, so I'm starting to nod off here, not much more to go.

I finally got a meal at the Water Street Cafe, here in Vancouver's Gastown area, after years of mumbling about it. The details are relatively unimportant, the who, when, whatever, are not relevant. But the trip was worth it.

Not speaking for anyone else's food, but mine was excellent. The bruscetta (sp?) was the best I've ever had – a seemingly simple little appetizer usually, but a key to the enjoyment of the meal. If they can't get the appetizer right, why hang around to find they can't get the rest of meal right either? The pasta main was excellent, my only complaint an odd one, there was too much of it. So I left half of it behind. 

All told, damn good company, damn good food.

With that, it is time to leave. A piece of e-mail has arrived a short time ago from Tony Hoar ( http://www.tonystrailers.com/  if you're interested in bicycle trailers at all) and I really must go answer it. 

22:35

edit 22:45