A View Made More Clear; A Love Made More Strong:

Of Patriotism:

The proper means of increasing the love we bear our native country is to reside some time in a foreign one.
~William Shenstone

Borrowed from: http://www.quotegarden.com/patriotism.html

A Golden Path (Part 3)

Note: this blog entry was started in mid October and recently re-edited for posted.

Part One - The Stimulus

I've been in Bulgaria for more than two months now and I take nothing for granted. The language is not only spoken differently, but so are the letters of the alphabet. I haven't learned to read them yet, though I can recognize a few words and say a few, mostly useless things in Bulgarian.

The culture and customs are different. Especially with driving and shopping, I have to keep in my mindful my movements, what I say, how I say it and how quickly I say it. I do not want to activate the evereager automobile horns from near by cars in traffic when I get to drive nor do I want to stutter though an explanation in broken Bulgarian or broken English of how I don't know how to speak Bulgarian nor do I want what someone is selling.

Since I don't own a car here, I need to walk (except this week) which, while that isn't a new experience for me, the frequency and scenery is. While driving a car is faster in most cases, walking allows enough time for me to actually see what I am passing by.

Shortly after arriving, I broke a bone in my foot, causing pain most of the time when I'm mobile.

I arrive at the office place a few hours before the rest of the company because I have to take the car ride at the time its available (I don't mind actually.) In the office for two hours of silence (near silence: there is a door and window factory across the lane), I get to work on things mostly related to my work and build up experiences with new technologies.

After the rest of the company arrives, I watch (or look for) the Bulgarian team dynamic in my company and try to remember to speak slowly when speaking to colleagues I don't often interact with.

At lunch at "The Communist" diner (which is actually an unnamed dinner but our group has named it this,) I make educated guesses as what some items are (and double check with my lunch buddies if in serious doubt) and stay well clear of food colors that I am "trained" not to eat.

Television is a slow search of something familiar through yet-another-vast-wasteland of foreign languages, cultures and traditions. What I do see as familiar is oddly different with the lack of commercial interruptions in both movies on TV and TV shows. (The unbroken continuity is an incredible delight!)

The Bulgarian political and business corruption present is a source of unending frustration and novelty. From the flat window I watch car drivers, stopped by traffic police, for "spot checks" and the occasional "donations" before being sent on their way. The novelty is considerably less (but the frustration more) as I find out exactly what graft occurred and seems to want repayment what hot water from flowing in the flat all together.

And I fail to understand why, after two months, I don't have a work visa in hand so I can work as a Bulgarian employee. Don't lawyers work faster than this?

I am thankful but also concerned about the recent border crossing to Serbia for coffee (and to get my passport stamped as having left Bulgaria for a period of time.) The Bulgarian border guard rightfully pointed out that I am over my allowable stay in Bulgaria for this six month period. "But it's just a formality." I was allowed back in because it's a US passport and the Bulgarian government is unofficially extending lenience for US passport holders.

My personal relationships is good but the subtitles of language and the often stubbornness of my personality, coupled with just about everything else I've mentioned above, has posed its challenges.

Last week I had surgery to re-break and re-set my broken bone from my first week in Bulgarian. This visit included a stay in the hospital, two screws in my toe, with lots of needles including a nerve block for the surgery, more swelling and more needles for post-operation health, a lack of safe and pain-free bipedal locomotion and follow up visits to the hospital in coming weeks.

I have been uncomfortable to say the least.


Part Two - The Realizations

When I came here from the states, I brought two books with me: "Destination: Void" by Frank Herbert and "The Zombie Survival Guide: complete protection from the living dead" by Max Brooks.

Which at long last brings to my point(s) of this blog entry. Shortly after breaking my toe in August (the first time,) I decided to wait out some of the swelling on my foot, a bright blue 4 inch by 6 inch bruise on the top of my foot from top of the arch to the base of some very angry toes. I popped over Frank's very old and, frankly, difficult to read "Destination: Void" and passed the time.

After a couple of chapters I was hooked, despite the difficult language usage. Near the middle of the book, a discussion starts between the characters about being really awake, not just "not sleeping" but fully, actively conscious and not just a reflex organism. It takes me a week to finish the book and in this time I'm walking to work into the office, painfully at times and slowly, and making the best of the time and getting to know the people and work environment.

I finish the book in the midst of all this activity (and laugh my ass off on the last line of the book) and start the "Zombie" book, a term also used in Frank's book. It starts to occur to me that with all this stimulation, I have awakened from my long sleep over the past years; that I had been a hypnotized zombie.

"Sleeping people" are like zombies, unresponsive (or irresponsible) to self determination and just using stimulation reflexes to just get through daily life. These stimulation reflexes are learned in a pack or herd mentality from the dominate culture themes expressed in each individual's respective societies.

While the kid in "Six Sense" saw "dead people", "I see sleepers": human zombies everywhere (minus the need to literally eat human flesh.) Group mentality, group movement but no group decision making, just blind obedience to the pack or herd.

In past years, I've been doing a lot of the same thing. So wearisome was some of it that even after a full night's sleep and after a shower, I was completely exhausted. I was easier to control and remain in the herd if I was over worked, over stressed with no time to stop and think.

Work lacked intellectual challenge or interest (a growing problem in the software technology industry in the US where the trend is towards very short term, contract only episodes of work with no long term thinking required or allowed.) In fact, at times I found it hard to stay awake at work and had to start taking walks around the building to clear the mental fog (or the bile from my mouth) so I could get some focus back. Absorbing new technical information in this state was near impossible for me as there are almost no long term rewards for it. "Know what you know and bill for it." I was unhappy because of the tension between the herd mentality and my need, my struggle to be awake and fully aware.

In the last months because of a) new mental stimulation b) new relationship c) [and perhaps most interesting of all] some level of constant and considerable pain and discomfort, I seem to be more fully awake, alert and thinking again. I have been able to new information. I have gained back some practical experience of abstract thought ( expressed though software) and enjoyed it! I've had some great conversations with a college from work and enjoyed this too.

Pain and discomfort as a tool for full awakening might have been themes which Mr. Herbert touched on one of his books in the Dune series but I forget which. The implications for parenting are interesting but subject for a different discussion.

In the last few weeks, I've felt a backslide into the sleeping abyss. I believe it's caused by tasks I can't accomplish because they aren't mine to accomplish and by the daily presence of sugar and caffeine, a left over from my herd training. (I started drinking espresso here in Bulgaria to be socialable and found a Snickers bar does stop hunger pains. I'm moderating this some. )


Part Three - The Herd Mentality

As I explore these themes and struggle to finish Max's book (if you take the word "zombie" out of his book, it gets pretty dry quickly), I can see trends in current news, cycles of human behavior that repeat as well as ebb and flow according to each cultural environment.

I read Isaac Asimov "Foundation Series" years ago and thought then that the ideas of Psychohistory, "...combined history, sociology, and mathematical statistics, in Isaac Asimov's Foundation universe, to create a (nearly) exact science of the actions of very large groups of people", was complete ... fiction.

With the blind polarization of cultural groups still strongly present in first decade of the 2000, the reinforcing stupidities sprawled out on the evening news as a banquet of hatred and traditional righteousness, I am having my doubts about Psychohistory's pure implausibility, fictional status now. With increasing few true individuals in action, pack or herd dynamics become more finite and thus predictable. The difference between pack and herd is the degree of cultural aggressiveness built in to the society: herds are passive followers where packs are volatile followers.

What I see is frightening. The herd or pack follow the "bright leaders" who often start merely as awake and aware human beings. These self aware and awake people often become bright leaders and then slide into self deception and Altruistic Goal Decay (I'm not comfortable using term "moral decay" but you might use it here if you wish.) I've experienced some of that within myself and found it very hard to break that pattern of behavior. Even being aware of it wasn't enough to defeat my herd training which reinforced myself deceptions.

Things most concerning is the institutionalization of herd mentality. Here are a few examples from US media that (sorta) highlite my thinking of creating a herd mentality. In the hard braces are what I interpret from the preceding slogans and mantras:

Note: I have obscured some of the product names as to not give out free advertising. There is a bit of tongue-in-cheek here too.

1. "Chew D**ble M*nt Gum [and you have sex with sexy, blonde twins!]"
2. "I'm a P*pper [be like me]! She's a P*pper [and she'll like you a lot if you are too]! Would you like to be a P*pper too?! [don't be different, conform, conform, conform...]"
3. "P*psi: the new generation [of mindless, brand consumers for life]"
4. "C*ke-a-C*la: catch the [same, sugary] wave [with our company forever]"
5. "almost any commercial animation [As this cartoon presentation clearly shows, this is reality]"
6. "If you aren't with us, you're against us [and we will kill you and feel good about doing it]"
7. "Love it [with blind obedience and without question] or leave it [in a body bag]"
8. "The (poor or rich or foreigners) are to blame."
9. "You're [for the US] Patriot [Act], ain't ya BOY!?"
10. "[country of choice] started as a [militant religion of choice] nation and we will reclaim it [by holy, deadly force bestowed up the righteous by GOD himself] as a [militant religion of choice] [only] nation once again [by killing all god-hating, non-conformist.]"
11. "God loves [hates] you."
12. "Satan hates [loves] you."
13. "[Muslins, Jews, or Christians] are out to get you [again.]"
14. "I'll give up [very real] freedom for [the illusion of] security."
15. "Missile defense systems make the world a[n un]safer place to live [die]."
    

More to my point: American TV and mass media outlets has been hiding behind sexual titillation (while informing us quietly that it's bad) and national sensationalism to keep its citizens off guard and under informed about what a small group of so-called "world leaders" have been up to. It's hard to propose a "conspiracy to de-educated and sedate American citizens" that sounds even half plausible. Even without a coherent plan, basic herd mentality can still create this movement though its own unthinking inertia.

If you doubt, ask yourself this: where are the non-sensationalized, non-yellow journalist who aren't owned by a political group? I fear the last investigates of real news reporting is hiding in the former sanctuary of US Public Television. Where are the science and education shows on US TV during prime child-viewing hours? I suspect that child are being trained to believe cartoons and animations more than real people.

In the US, these shows about real situations are hiding behind the expense of buying a media service (i.e. cable or satellite services) and then made difficult to watch because of the competing, "bright and shiny" and "sexual" shows available.

News flash: porn and cartoons aren't a long term viable human culture (as much as it pains me to admit.)


Part Four - The War Machines

While wars is often started for perceived resource or security gains, genocide lurks in aforementioned, albeit abbreviated, list. Those concepts have been employed during war as justification for murderous conflict and to hide the resource gains which are often the initial reason for war. But "a lie told long enough and loud enough becomes the truth" for the herd and for those who made up the lies. Genocide is fueled by the completely unthinking herd or pack and leaders with"feet of clay" and delusions of godhood taking the herd into darker sides of humanity's past nature for temporary and ultimately useless ends.

Interestingly enough, Wikipedia's entry on genocide lists the distinct stages this monstrous delusion.


Part Five - "So you want to be fully sapience? Or Do you?"

And so, I'm wake but do I really want to be? "Ignorance is bliss" as the saying goes for those sheep that haven't been led off the cliff side yet. Its hard to hear the last words of a falling sheep because of the Doppler Effect but I wager its similar to "What the f**k was I [not] thinking?!" just before a small and distant, bone-cracking sound echoes softly up the cliff wall.

This is the problem with humanity: our life spans are not long enough to learn from our mistakes, over them and teach our young to avoid the pitfalls; and not short enough to die before we get deadly ambitions about truly worthless, short term and short sighted gains or no ultimate importance.

If we added or subtracted 30 to 40 years (of quality life) from the human life span, maybe we could make it past the self destructive "hump" our species is caught on in our evolution. To get to a place where skin color didn't impact skills qualification for employment or for poverty; where cultural or sexual identification isn't used an excuse to exclude or include anyone; where the name you call (or don't call) your god or goddess or gods wasn't grounds or an excuse for murder and genocide; where ignorance and infirmity wasn't something you took advantage of or ignored but an opportunity to be of assistance if it was desired.

I hear the herd screaming from the bleachers: "Stupid!" "Pipe dream!" "Idiot!" "Dreamer!" If we are all alike in the herd, there are no more dreams to dream. And the last sheep would follow the first off the cliff side and no one would be left to witness or care.

I guess I need to decide if the fear of being awake (and speaking to be heard) is greater or less than the rewards of being awake (and maybe awake few others.)

A purpose in life forms: do I (do we?) have the courage to accept this primary task of true sapience while avoiding the pitfalls of herd training and it's counterpart of delusions?

A Golden Path (part 2)

A Golden Path is a Dune reference. Leto II sees "A Golden Path" to humanity's ultimate salvation. My goal is considerably less grand in scale: to become fully awake in life.

This might seem very odd. At times, I seem "odd", even to myself. For a number of years (my early teens through early thirties,) I didn't feel really awake. These times were usually uninteresting.

More interesting are the moments I woke up. Here is one such moment:


Joy and Rage

The day is nice and cool for Texas weather. Surrounded by trees and meadows, I was spending the afternoon with a group of close and trusted friends. I was there to work on myself.

I put on the helmet and safety harness as the safety expert put on safety harness. With friends in attendance, I position at the base of a twenty five foot telephone pole, hands on the climbing pegs.

As I started the climb, I knew I wasn't concerned about climbing distance, even with my fear of heights and fairly strong vertigo with looking into the sky without terrestrial reference points. I was tethered to a safety line so the climb was meaningless as long as I don't look up the pole into the clear blue sky above for too long.

Hand over hand, I left the ground. The safety harness was tight, the tether slaps against the pole as I rose. At the top, I took a moment. There were no hand holds at the very top and my immediate goal was stand at the top of this pole. I climbed and slide over the top, tucked my feet below me and pulled legs beneath. I slowly stood, with small satisfaction, and looked out from above the trees.

I heard my friends far below shouting encouragement but I dismissed it. I was tethered so the climb was without risk, just physical effort without mistakes.

Then came the moment of truth. Three to five feet from the top of the pole dangled a trapeze bar. The next goal was to jump from the top of the twenty five foot pole to trapeze bar hanging thirty feet above the ground.

I contemplated the bar while my legs shook. Fear and doubt was mounting. I knew if I was up there too long, I wouldn't be able to trust my legs. Time was running out for my jump.

I adjust my helmet, blink away a blurry vision, close my eyes and jumped.

As happens in moments of very high stress, flash tunnel vision and cognitive blackout engulfed me. The darkness and silence was timeless, a place where thoughts echo softly.

As I blinked my eyes open as my friends yelled from below, I realize I was 'm swinging from the trapeze bar, legs dangling in open air. I was profoundly and unexplainable overjoyed. My heart pounds and I feel fully awake. I swung a bit before instructed to release the bar for a slow descent on the tether.

As I descend, it happened. From feeling of overjoy at the trapeze bar changes to borderline rage as I touch ground. I could see it so clearly and my body shook in anger.

All my life, I had been waiting for someone else to bring me my life. I had been waiting for permission for everything in my life from someone else. Paradoxically, I resented anyone that told me what to do or attempted to control me. And I had let fear keep me from living and doing anything worth while. An finally, I was angry at the more than ten years of lost living.

Afterwards, I've spent many years trying to recover the missing experiences in life. But, as enjoyable, risking, educationally and painful as that was, that behavior was not really living. It was just experiencing. That was scarcely more than a reflex action which proceeded for too long unchecked. It wasn't the same as being a fully conscious, thinking human being.


Sleeping in Dulled Dreams

In a very active way, I was still "asleep" in my own life, only briefly awake on occasion. I was still bound to some phantom of permissions that will never come, by a need to break free of these imaginary restraints and trapped by the fear of consequences of freedom. As large as I had made my world of experiences, I had become trapped inside again.

I dared not utter truth least I have to explain myself. So I kept silence when I should have boldly declared "I don't like that." I withdrew instead of saying "I'm sorry you have chosen to feel that way but I'm not responsible for you your feel. You are." I moved away from conflict rather than stating "That was ugly of you and I won't accept it." I hide in the shallow life rather than declare "I want to be substantial. I need to matter."

Worse of all, though I had learn to put people in my life, I could still manage to "feel like an outsider" in the middle of this crowd, unable to understand things that seemed simple for everyone else and their a blind obedience to the slogan "this is how it is" rather than asking "why is it this way?" and "Can't we do or be better than this?"

I let this inner silence wash me into sleep again, keep me tranquilized from speaking freely. Though sometimes I speak as if I were awake again, episodes of lucidity are brief.

Blogger - Google: "We have a problem."

What?!

In reading my previous entries, I have been baffled by a
"missing word" issue. I finally saw it yesterday in action
after hours of circular work.


To IS NOT or to WAS NOT, that is the question:

First: a sentence like -

That is not the right thing to do or say.

Next, we edit by double clicking on "is" in the sentence, press delete and then type "was".

What we want is:

That was not the right thing to do or say.

But what we get is:

That was the right thing to do or say.

The "double click" on a word followed by a delete deletes the highlighted word AND the next word. So, replaced "is" with "was" removes "not" as well. The problem is that the double click highlights to the next word, include the space between words, then the delete removes from the start of the highlighted word to the next space past the highlighted area. That means the second word.

This problem can also be reproduced by using a select of "is" plus the space to the right of "is" (is. "is ") and pressing delete (not just double clicking.) This also happens for select-type-word-replacement, not just select-deletes.

Does this upset or bother anyone? This 180 degree edit direction change with the press of a single button? The lose of time to fix an article and to restore self esteem from the "Gads! I'm an idiot!" to "Ah ha! I'm not (that big) an idiot!)"

I'm not a terribly complex writer so I tend to use "is" and "is not" a great deal of the time. I am also out of practice with maintaining proper verb tense during the initial witting of an entry, leaving that for later editing and proof reading iterations. With this bug, a vicious editing loop is created that the unaware will not escape and the touch typist will abandon product quickly.

If I were a "hunt and peek" typist, this would be only a minor annoyance. But, I tend to touch type while looking else where. Add to this and the bug to the sometimes functioning and sometimes not functioning CTRL Z - undo feature and we quickly end up with unreadable trash.

I looked though the Blogger "help" section and, yes you guessed it, no help to be found. The "Known bugs and issues" says go to "help" and "help" says "here's how to use it".

Where is the "report a bug link?" Why isn't it a bold <h1> flashing on the "Known bugs and issues" page?

PS and where is the underline button? Freak'n html editing...

PSS and I just learned a valuable less about using < and > in posts and toggling into Edit HTML mode and back again. Ughs!

A Golden Path (Part 1)

I remember.

More than 12 ago outside of Bryan Texas, Tom and I came to a small "hole in the wall" diner for lunch just off highway 6. In the thin gray skies of an occasionally overcast fall day, we had passed by our lunch time destination the first time without noticing it due to car ride conversation.

The parking lot was east Texas gravel, like dirty limestone. It was rough to drive on and unpleasant to walk on. Tom had found the address for the diner in some listing of lunch time locations we hadn't been to before. As was our lunch time tradition then, we choose it mostly at random.

The outside of the diner was unremarkable and, alone, I would have never be interested in trying this place for lunch.

Inside, the decor was western. The wooden furniture was dark and worn smooth with use. The atmosphere was dimly lite even in the light of an afternoon sun. The food on the buffet was acceptable but expensive and not good enough to merit returning.

We sat next the window where we could see more clearly, carefully selecting from our plates what we might and shouldn't eat. I wondered at the nature of a left eye seeing a darkened room while the right could see the briefly appearing sun through the windows. I had gotten migraines from color and light variations in the past and wanted to be mindful of this now.

Tom and I ate, split between the dim and the bright of the lunch time table. The conversation was enjoyable and engaging for me though I have long since forgotten what technical discussion we were having. I felt a bit more alert than usual, like something was finally working properly in my head. As discussion continued, the sun shown through the clouds outside, flowed through the window and strengthened the contrasts of light and dark. I felt it again, that very rare feeling.

I stopped talking and eating for a few minutes and just "felt". With increasing intensity, my mind churned over ideas of everything, of all things. Concepts and abstractions flowed through me like a stream, then joined by other streams of ideas, cascading into new ideas. In a double vision the diner outside and the dazzling stimulus within, I felt elated and excited as concepts seemed to fit together, even if I wasn't consciously aware of their symbolic meanings or values to reality. Like a dance of gold, yellow, white and blue at the edge of my awareness, I felt a doorway in my mind straining to open. And I, like a child, eagerly awaited, certain that some wondrous gift of thoughts and knowledge would rush upon me. The dance continued and I dizzy within it. I felt fully alive and fully awake from within. Wanted to bathe in these ideas, to have them wash over me repeatedly until I understood everything.

While I had long ago become accustomed to silence in the company of friends, Tom became uncomfortable, shifting on the bench seating across the table. I wanted to stay in this moment for it felt fragile.

From my haze of possibilities, I asked Tom, "Have you ever had the feeling that if you thought the right thought, at just the right moment, everything would make sense to you?" He replied he didn't know this feeling. "I'm having that feeling right now," I spoke softly, distantly.

I wanted to stay in this place and wait for the doorway to spring open; to discover these hidden thoughts, no matter how long it took. But I staying in it only for a few moments more. Tom seemed increasingly uncomfortable as he didn't know what I was experiencing. As I had few friends at the time, I worried that I might damage another valuable friendship by being too "odd" again. Worry and fear were enough to keep the doorway from opening; golden thoughts faded like a burst bubble in shadow. In seconds, that rare clarity was lost.

I have not had the feeling of golden, shimmering thoughts since.

Growing Up or Just More Of The Same

Dune Genesis by Frank Herbert - http://www.dunenovels.com/news/genesis.html

I found this article written by author Frank Herbert in 1980. In this article, he discusses his writing of Dune series and themes of human promise and human failings. That these themes are as-ever-important in the first decade of the 2000s as in 1980 (1959, 1937, 1914, ...) causes me to wonder if humanity is really making an effort to grow up as a species or just are we only arranging "more of the same."

New Experiences and Old Experiences Returned

This week I had some new experiences

1. got a spinal nerve block (2 I think- one per leg?)
2. was a paraplegic (see #1, duration: 6 hours)
3. toe surgery without noticeable pain or events
4. heart rate at 46 to 50 beats during procedure (after all the shots were taken care of) - I got bored and found a reflective surface I could see some of the procedure
   
5. toe bone re-broken, repositioned and two screws placed to keep it there
   
6. 6 hours later, I could feel my legs and feet again and really, REALLY didn't want to feel the left foot at all! (Old Experience Returns from the beginning of August when I broke the toe and damaged other parts of my foot)
   
7. spent all day in the hospital where most didn't speak English - no problems though
   
8. slept between shooting pain events (med.s taking some of the edge off but not much)
   

   The pain invaded my sleep. Several times I kicked at the pain from my sleep only to be rudely awakened by more pain from the recently kicked foot!

9. Got back to the flat, hopping around on one foot if I need to move and now pondering if a "laptop" is just a silly idea as my Dell XPS heats up "my good leg"

Two screws and some bailing wire

Last week I went the doctor. It took two months but I finally had enough of the pain, and limited mobility. These things make Mike a "grumpy-boy."

The hospital was nice, clean and orderly. It's a Japanese "chain" hospital in Sofia and I'd heard good things about it. My girlfriend had made the appointment but, as I am A) not Bulgarian, B) not employed with a Bulgarian company and C) uninsured, she had to make the appointment in her name until we were able to come in and straighten it out.

The front registration desk was uncrowded and calm. After using my passport to register as a patient, we were directed down a hallway to another registration desk. At this desk, my "girlfriend's appointment" was changed to "my appointment." After paying the foreigner's fee of 50 leva, we were off to the waiting room. My appointment was for 5:30pm and I had little faith that we'd be seeing a doctor anywhere near that time.

No sooner had I told my girlfriend this than I the nurse (also called a medical sister in Bulgaria) called me into the examine room. Good foot remove from mouth, I limp into the room. I had been driving in Sofia traffic for a few hours and my foot was aching.

The room was clean, the doctor was friendly. He listened to my silly story, examined my toe and sent me off another registration area to schedule an x-ray. Apparently, "x-ray" is a term used more in the US. In Bulgaria it was referred to as "imaging", a more technically correct term.

Paying and scheduling the the imaging (another 30 leva or so,) we sat to wait. Three minutes later, the door opened and the imaging technique showed me in. He had a good chuckle at the start of my story about how I broke my toe and seemed not to need to hear the rest of it. He took two images and got my name spelled correctly and off I went to the waiting room again.

The ache in my toe told me the toe was broken. The x-ray told the doctor it was broke, offset and rotated slightly. After a two months, he said it wasn't likely to heal on its own in this position.

He summarized my uninsured options: ignore it and hope that the bone heals enough to not bother me or have a small surgery to reset the bones and put in one or two surgical screws to hold them in place while they heal. He also included a general idea of the cost of the later option.

A few days go by and my toe is still recovering from the beating it took from the clutch the day of the doctor's visit. I look at this a blessing - it made certain the x-ray showed a well broken toe. I gave in to my desired to be "all better again". Lili and I made a second visit to the doctor's early in the morning, without an appointment, so we might get some details on the procedure and more details on the costs (my paycheck isn't consistent right now and need to identify costs to avoid surprises.)

Again, I didn't feel like we were going to see the doctor in person without an appointment but, after waiting fifteen minutes, sure enough, he arrived at the examination room. He saw me as he passed the waiting room and I explained that I waited some details. My expectation was to be told to make an appointment but, instead, we went into the examine room and had a ten minute conversation on what I needed to know about the surgery (about 1300 leva.)

Later that day, the surgery was scheduled.

I have to say I am impressed with this hospital in Sofia. My Lili visited the US, we had a brief visit to an emergency care factuality and, while not crowded and very calm, they were not in any hurry to met the patent who was in pain. Other visits to US hospitals were wildly chaotic, passive-aggressive unfriendly and required a great deal of paperwork. I guess having no insurance has its paperwork blessings. Its probably not really fair to compare the two types of experiences but they are, after all, my only experiences.

Wednesday I will go for the surgery. I may get one or two screws and, if necessary, a small plate put on my toe. The doctors will decided then to use either full or local anesthesia. I'm actually more concerned with the anesthesia than the procedure. If its local, it sounds like I'll have my nerve endings turned off from the waist down for a few hours while they open, fix and close my toe. Of what I know of anesthesia, I don't want to feel the horrid cold of silent nerve impulses.

Later this week, I may have more time to blog as I will be on my back, foot and toe in the air for a week or more.

Short morning walk to work

Medium jacket on and backpack at the ready, I leap the car at the crosswalk after the brief pause and then Lili drives away. While not a designated debarkation site, most paved areas in Sofia are used to load and unload passengers. We simple choose a full crosswalk to minimize impact.

I walk to the OMV, convenience store, refueling stop, auto wash and diner. It's a larger chain in Bulgaria and, while, I don't know what OMV means (I "google it" later - no help) I walk up the entry drive and into the store as I've done for the past two months.

I have a snickers bar in my backpack, purchased at the warehouse grocery "Metro" over the weekend. Buying a small bundle of them saves me several stotinki over buying them every morning at OMV.

Of late, I've been having problems with dry skin on my legs and merciless itch which accompanies. This happens when it gets cooler out side. It's made much worse by the amount of caffeine I've been drinking for the last two months. Yesterday I skipped my morning trip to OMV to avoid buying a large bottled Coca-Cola. Today however I remembered the office water cooler is empty, the four 5-gallon refill bottles dry. At OMV, I slip inside to the coolers, hand in my pocket, fishing for stotinki coins. I've 1.50 leva in coins - more than enough.

I buy a mineral bottle of water from Bankia. I'd rather have nice non-mineral water but I make do with what is available. I know the cashier by sight but not by name as its in Cyrillic on her name tag. I say "Good Morning" as I always do. For the alert cashier, this lets them know I don't speak nor intend to speak Bulgarian during this exchange. Usually she catches this but today she is distracted by a conversation with a coworker and proceeds to up-sell me a Lion candy bar in Bulgarian, at least that's what I think she was talking about. I say "No, thank you. This is all" and make the hand-passing-horizontally-over-the-counter gesture. She nods and speaks the total and I read the total displayed. Tax is included in the listed price of products so I get 11 stotinki back in change. I thank her again, though the conversation with her coworker is still on going so my departure is mostly unnoticed.

Outside, as with every morning, I stop on the island between the fuel pumps and put today's "bounty" into my bag. Lili got me a very nice backpack carrying laptops. However, my laptop is about 4 inches too long so I use it for carrying personal gear to work each morning, adding my OVM purchases as I go. It also carries my access badge to the building.

Interestingly enough, it's not my face or name on the badge. It does scan me through the security turnstiles but I could just as easily go around like most of my fellow coworkers, including the guy who's face is on "my" security badge.

Water safely tucked into the bag, I return to the OMV drive way and head to work. Its about 4 minutes walk from OMV and crosses two and a half lanes of traffic. The cross walk I existed the car from is easy enough to get back across as it's well marked and, with enough pedestrians, mostly well respected by speeding motorist. Crossing over put me on a frontage road and free way medium with a bridge pathway of large, broken and differently oriented flat hexagonal bricks. As I navigate the bricks to avoid flexing my month-old, yet-to-heal toe, I am remind of something which Yana had said: "No one jogs in Sofia. They'd end up with broken ankles from all the uneven sidewalks."

At the end of the broken and uneven pathway is another crossing. The pedestrian crosswalk paint is gone, blackened over by road use and automobile oil. To the left of this cross walk is one lane of traffic off exiting from a clover leaf turn. To the right is the frontage road for the freeway. Further to the right is an exit from the freeway. This is the remaining one and a half crossings. I check left, right and further right and, when I think its safe, I hobble directly across the street. Where I more fleet of foot, this would still be less than ideal.

Safely crossing, I round the corner at the iron gate and down the side walk, also made of the same broken bricks, although in better condition. I turn parallel to a eight story build and walk its length, not certain what businesses are inside. I have seen men and women in lab sky-blue coats on earlier days.

I pass the dog houses for the adopted dogs who are away at the moment. Unlike the wild dogs in the fields next to the flat or the other multitudes of stray dogs in the city, these three or four have it pretty comfortable, by stray dog standards.

I round the corner of the sky-blue-people building and head down hill slightly. The cold air slaps my face lightly. Just at 50 Fahrenheit ( 10 degrees Celsius), I know I'll be adjusting to much colder weather soon. While I'm pleased my package of cold weather clothes arrived last week, I'm more concerned about my foot healing before the cold really begins. I can deal with pain and I can deal with cold but I do not want to deal with both at the same time.

I walk pass the book trading windows and down to the entry to my building, past the few chain smokers surrounding the door and the lady mopping the store entry way. I scan through the turnstile with the badge containing a face that is not mine. While I'd like to use the elevators, Sofia elevators are slow and programmed poorly. I take the stairs up to the second floor. I pass the cleaning lady that cleans our offices as she's leaving. I don't say anything as she doesn't speak English, nor I Bulgarian. She's got her hands full and looks tired, beads of sweat on her brow.

It's 9am when I reach the door to the office and, sure enough, it's locked. I'm usually her 15 minutes earlier but no matter. I am the first one in the office again, since office hours are 10:30am to 7:30pm. I come in early to make use of the offered car ride as well as some focus time before people start to roll in.

I open the office window. The office is fill with seventeen or more computers and it gets rather warm in here over night. The sounds of a band saw cut into the gentle hum of the office computers from the door factory across the avenue.

I settle into my office chair with my snickers bar and water and look high into the sky for the blue and low on the horizon at the dusty air and prepare for a few hours of solitary work.

Recursive déjà vu

I'm having bouts of recursive déjà vu ( déjà vu of déjà vu of déjà vu, etc ). I'm sure I've been here several times before. I'm sure I've written this line of code, from this office, from this point in time. And I'm sure I remember experiencing déjà vu the last time this happened.

I moved my work computer to a new place in the office this morning.

Only difference this time: I blogged it.

"OHHHhhhh..the weather outside is ...

While Texas does not, Bulgaria has all four seasons! I'm pretty excited to experience them. I've "sent for my cold weather clothes" (thanks to fear, doubt and ignorance, it cost me extra to have them postal mailed but I'll grumble about politics and fear another time.) I'm glad I thought to pre-pack that box before I left.

At the moment, Sofia is 15C (or 59F.) I call this kind of weather "free air conditioning" (from a Texas point of view.) Lili finds this humorous of course. Until this package of warmth arrives, I have long sleeve business shirts (which I don't wear) and a single, light and overly used pull-over fleece.

From the balcony at the flat, we can a nice view of most of the mountain. Over the weekend, between the cloud breaks over the peaks, glittering snow and ice twinkled in the afternoon sun. This morning the clouds scrapped lower on the peaks in the strong, cool breeze that started a few days ago. I've been told that a cold snap this early in the season usually means a long, cold winter.

I wonder if my boots are in that package...

While my foot is mostly healed and I can walk, the toe and arches still ache when I walk too long, too far or my foot gets too cold. At least one of the joints on the toe that I broke isn't "slim and pretty" like the other toes any more. I'll forgo freebie for a while longer.

Back at the flat, I hope the central heating is turned on soon. While I can deal with heating my bath water in a bucket, I don't really want to experience a Bulgarian winter without heat in the flat. The building company has assured Lili that the proper permits have be sent and we should have central heat and hot water in thirty days. "The hot water must flow!"

Third more powerful force in the universe

"Timing is everything... it's the third more powerful force in the universe, behind gravity and inertia!" -- M. Biggerstaff

There and back again...

Aside: this is a rough entry and very late. I've been busy lately. :)

OK, so a few things have happened since my last post. As I left it in the last entry, I had gotten kind permission from my (former - nice foreshadowing, eh?) employer to visit Sofia and work remotely for 4 weeks. That went very well both professionally and personally. I'm not sure everyone on my team knew I was working 8 timezones from then, since I was already working as a telecommuting employee.

After I returned from my four week trip to Sofia and to be with Lili, I had to decide: play is safe and stay in the states or take the option for "Love and Adventure." Hmm: decisions, decisions.

...

I arrived in Bulgaria July 31st, 2007, packed for a long stay. I had 90 days on a tourist visa so I had 90 days to find a job and get a work visa so I could say.

On August 3rd, 1 hour before a job interview, I fell, broke at least one toe (complex break) by falling on them and hyper extending them until, literally, the breaking point. Despite the break, I got to the job interview and landed a consulting job while working towards a work visa. To be fair, I had been working on this job opportunity for a few months.

By the next day, the swelling and bruising of the foot started. It's still healing as of this entry.

Lili and I took two trips out of Sofia, first to Trivarna (spelling?) to the north of Sofia and then to Devin to the south of Sofia. We also did a fair amount of work getting Lili's new flat habitable. While we still don't hot water (we don't take a bath, we take a bucket!), we have doors that close, a kitchen that works, internet that is pretty speedy and just got cable TV today. Soon, "the hot water must flow..."

I just finished my first week of work as a consultant with my new employer. It's a bit "lose and free" of a work environment but the purpose is to work. (This is contrast to a few jobs in my past which were overly corporate hierarchical in nature and made ineffective use of time, people and skill sets.)

OK, that's enough to let people know that I've not fallen off the ends of the Earth. I'm just a short 22 to 25 hour plane ride(s) way.

Note: speaking of planes, if you fly through Paris, check to see if the French teenagers on school fieldtrip to the US will be returning to Paris on that flight. If they are, rebook the flight or you won't get any sleep.

Another note: the airport in Paris isn't not user friendly. I'd advise flying through Amsterdam: at least they have signs to direct you and you don't have to guess as much. In Paris, I almost walked out the airport entirely due to lack of properly placed signs.

Leave of Absence

I have tickets booked. I fly to Sofia in a few weeks. I'll be there for four weeks. Unlike October where I quit my job, this time I have a leave of absence. Its taken me a long while to recover from my choices. I still have things that need to be finished here but I'm well over due.

Bulgarian Trip: Sofia, Capital City

I took a 2 week vacation in Bulgaria in October 2006. Here are my impressions of specific aspects of my trip.

Entry status: not proof read

CORRECTION: Vitosha is not part of the Balkan mountain range, which is further north of Sofia.

Sofia (София) Bulgaria is an ancient and active city of 1.2 million eastern Europeans, living at the foot of the mountain Vitosha from the Balkan mountain range.

Infrastructure

The streets are narrow (very tight by US standards) and radiate out from the city center. Most cars are small and it appears to be a generally accepted concept that people driving larger vehicles are merely flaunting wealth and tend to drive with a sense of roving-street-ownership. There were some suggestive gestures to compliment this opinion.

Fuel is measured in liters and cost much more than fuel in the US. In Sofia, parking is the number one problem, followed closely by traffic in general.

Traffic congestion is impacted by the radial nature of the city streets. From my experience there were only two freeway systems in the city and neither goes downtown (might be more but I don't recall utilizing them.) There are main roads but they have traffic signals and other obstacles mentioned later.

Parking is impacted by the nature of the city. In a word, Sofia is decentralized with a very high population density in all areas of the city.

While larger US cities have a distinct business and government areas and shopping areas, most old neighborhoods in Sofia have all the necessities with walking distance: drug store, liquor store, free foods, grocery, restaurants, bakeries, travel agencies, resell shops, gambling venues, electronics, cafes and coffee shops. All these were present with 60 seconds walking distance from the flat were I stayed. I noted this same arrangement at other districts, neighborhoods and alcoves.

High population density is maintained by large numbers of tall apartment buildings, large concrete honeycombs of apartments (aka flats). Unlike US housing where even apartment buildings are limited to three stories (at least in central Texas) , the larger apartment buildings pack (guessing) hundreds of people in the space that might hold as few as 40 people in the US (again, in central Texas.)

With this higher density, there is a parking problem. The city does not have more than a handful of public automobile parking areas and those are generally pay parking using pre-purchased coupons. With narrow streets, parking on the street is more than ill advised, its very bad form. As a result, parking is accomplished by using side walks. While that solves the immediate problem, the side walks were not built to support the weight of cars and so they buckle. Needless to say, sidewalks are for cars, not pedestrians with few exceptions.

Narrow streets, high density and a developing wealth so that more people can afford automobiles - what's the solution? Yes, its Europe so the solution is mass transit. Mass transit comes in the form of buses and double-length buses, an electric city-wide tram systems, an under-expansion subway (aka metro). All these transportation systems are packed full. Bus stops packed with people seem to often spilling over in to the streets. I would guess that more than half the city moves daily over the public mass transportation systems. A side effect of the trams of course is pervasive over head cabling through out the city, connecting poles to buildings to tram cars. The sky is only seen through this mesh of wires and narrow street ways.

There are taxis and, from my reading and brief discussions with citizens, taxis are less suspicious than in years past but I would still view them with some caution. I did witness some very "impolite" driving tactics from taxis drivers as well.

To explain what I mean by "impolite" driving tactics, I have to first explain the "base line" of driving behavior. Three lanes turning left, a car on either side of the single official left turn lane invokes some gestures but nothing usually too vocal. Its frequency of occurrence is common place. Forced lane merges create more vocal and gesturing offense. I have also witnessed driving completely into oncoming traffic for more than half a mile to turn left. In the US, painted lanes are treated almost like walled canals and offense can be given by even vering too close to the painted boundaries of a lane. In Sofia, lanes are treated as paint on the street - just suggestions and not much more. As a passenger, I experienced driving a car in Sofia and Bulgaria in general as a very organic experience. Taxi drivers are ten times more active as "impolite" drivers.

Adding an interesting twist to the driving experience, you would have to be completely committed to suicide to run red traffic lights in Sofia. Most intersections have a count-down time for green and red lights. Everyone knows then the light will be green. This takes out 3/4 to a full second of reaction time from the driving experience. As a result, when the light is green, traffic is already moving.

Sofia also has a few traffic circles when I do not like much at all. But at least they run counter-clock wise.

Because Bulgaria was preparing to join the EU during my visit, major roadway projects were underway, complicating the traffic situations. The existing Sofia metro is being expanded into new neighborhoods, further blocking lanes of traffic. Notification of these construction locations is usually about ten feet before hand, creating the need for more forced merges. Additionally, the amount of construction puts a large amount of smoke and dirt into the air. Add the mountains and you've a mostly persistent haze over the city, until it rains.

Adding to the presentation of the city is the legacy of local government corruption, involving garbage collection. As reported to me, this contractual pillaging of city funds has left the city with over full trash barrels through out the city and other neglected elements.

Despite these elements, Sofia is a modern European city and thus is pedestrian friendly. By this I mean you get to most any thing you need by walking or public transportation. I do not recommend stepping into the street anywhere in Bulgaria without looking (same was true of Copenhagen, Denmark although there you would mostly likely be hit by a speeding bicyclist than cars.)

In the center of the city is a non-automobile district with a higher shopping density. Other than trams, its only shopping, coffee drinking, socializing people moving about. Its a very nice district filled with very stylishly dressed people.


Architecture

Sofia is an ancient city with a rich and deep history. Populated, conquered and named may times over the millennia, Sofia's architecture reflects its history with the Turkish mosques and bath houses, the public hot springs in the center of town, the following influences of orthodox Christianity in the form of churches and monasteries. In specific contrast to modern, functional and utilitarian US architecture, the buildings show an amazing amount of history, ornamentation, style and general building care.

The exceptions to this grand architecture are the very drab apartment buildings. While they create density, that are often gray, show some external distress in the form of concrete patches of large cracks. Additionally, building construction varies greatly. I saw many paint jobs on the gray buildings to both apply color and seal in more heat.

Likewise, as a visitor to Bulgaria, I had to register at a local police station. At the police station, the rough and broken stone steps outside, old concrete walls inside, narrow hallways, iron grating blocking entries, electrical and networking cables running outside the walls over head, reminded me of old US produced "cold war" movies. I was glad to leave there.

Like my experience in Denmark, Sofia has many public sculptures on sidewalks, in parks and city areas. At least in my experience, these are strangely absent in local parks and city areas.

Climate

Because Sofia is at the base mountain range, its weather is dynamic but most often cloudy ridden. Adding to this the smoke and dirt of construction and general industrial manufacturing contribute to a smog that the mountain keeps fairly stationary until a rain or strong wind moves through the city. While it appears to be overcast in Sofia, it passes and offers a spectacular view in the distance with the mountain range so close. During my visit in October, there was some damp weather, occasional rain, broken up by occasional sunshine within the city. The Balkan mountain range is never far from view and adds a lot of visual stimulation for those of us that grew up on the flat(ter) lands of west Texas.

Temperature wise, Bulgaria has harsh, snowy winters and the occasionally blistering summers. I went during the fall transition just before it cooled down for the winter.

Citizen of the World

Citizen of the World

Has a nice ring, doesn't it? Unlike other people that want to put up walls and other destructive tactics, I want to go see the world, meet the people, see the sites, eat the food, be one with humanity, not just one from my country.

Its hard and its frightening. All change requires risk but I know this desire is changing me. If I don't go, I will return to regretting having a small life. If I do go, I will change everything in my personality ... again. I finally got comfortable with myself and its already past time to start changing again. I am struggling to create the illusion of personal security in this new life I'm working to create for myself.

I think I could manage this change if it was the only what to cope with. Unlike my very mobile childhood, I want something specific that was mine and "feltl like home", something fixed in location, defined as "home", reliable as my safe haven. Now that I have a home I love, managing the mortgage isn't easy with the 2007 version of the American Dream. Imagine, if you will, trying to manage it without a job.

Unemployed for three and a half months, I have about out to run out of my paranoia money I stored away when being laid off the second time. While I fully acknowledge that I left my last job, that decision was very healthy decision ( everyone impacted by that decision agreed as well. )

Over the past months, I have been doing odd jobs for friends for cash and, must to my surprise, that has made a difference for the small expenses. But I grow wearing of doing these odd jobs and favors for friends because "Oh, you're unemployed right? Then you must have lots of free time and I need a favor..." I love to help people and often help other people more than I help myself. But even this gets tiring.

On the days that I don't do odd jobs, I do six to eight hours of job seeking: returning emails and select phone calls, screening incoming calls and reviewing voice mail, scouring web sites and shaking down my network of friends and second degree contacts. I'm tired of this too. I've even apologized for over shaking some of friends for employment leads. Stress isn't a good motivator when used for too long.

Held in the balance of this few concerns are family, some of whom I have welcomed into my home to assist them for the next several months; other family that I wish I could visit during my "time off" but I can't; friends that don't want me to go and friends that are waiting for me. Lastly, my lover waits somewhat impatiently. I feel her impatiences, knowing full well relationships fade and die when the distance is too great for too long.

I have considered simplifying things, removing anything that gets in the way. Principally, this month at least, that would mean selling the home, putting my some of my family out on their own, liquidating all my possession sans what I few things can put in two or three bags, clean out my bank account, sell the truck and hit the airport. Its tempting but it also seems like a poor response to a plan that isn't working well yet.

I've done fairly well thus far but, other than the near continual job search and a newly developed nervous facial twitch I've had for two and a half months now, nothing has gone seriously wrong yet. But neither has anything gone serious right either. I'm risking everything and nothing is moving.

In the last week, interest has picked up in employment, mostly in my current city of residence. While this restores some hope that I'll at last begin to the movement into change, the employment opportunities are in the wrong city; wrong time zone even. Complicating this is my dreaded need to be honest with local employers. I don't want to edit the truth about my more immediate plans to move out of country but I must have employment somewhere.

And none of these concerns prepare me for entering an environment where I don't speak nor read the language, must less recognize alphabet (Cyrillic.)

Citizen of the World. The term doesn't mean only a change of my scenery; it means a change in absolutely everything for me.