Update^3 and Thoughts on Life Vol. 2

Hi,

So I've been thinking. I tried to break up each section according to topic, but they are sort of interrelated. Also, this ended up being quite long, and has no pictures. Anyway, let's begin.

Section 0: The Current Situation.

As covered in the recent posts, the shop is rough. Morale is low, I'm not really providing a ton of guidance for a variety of reasons, and I'm leaving soon. However, I would like to point out that the shop has a reasonable chance to succeed. I think my previous posts painted an overly dire picture of the situation, and my belief in the shop's potential after I leave has been strengthened. There is enough money left to cover the rent and costs for many more months, probably through the end of the year, which gives the TC guys a fair amount of time to get things in order. One of the TC guys is being trained at a good shop, and will learn an invaluable amount from it about both how to fix motos and how to run a shop. An MIT student is probably coming in the summer, and hopefully she will bring a lot of energy and problem solving ability to the project. In the meantime, to try and deal with the problems the shop is facing, Yousos, Leb Ke, Lee Him, Sai Ha and I are going to meet on the 20th and have a conference of sorts. Hopefully we will collectively come up with some good ways to move the shop forward.

Also, in my previous post I said fairly negative stuff about not caring about the shop, not wanting to deal with it, etc. This is an expression of an emotion, and not an accurate representation of how I am approaching the project. I don't know if this was clear to people, and would like to say that I do care. I have spent 8-ish months trying to make this work, and really do want it to be successful.

The reason I wrote that is that I am stressed out of my damn mind. Trying to sell my dirt bike has been something of a nightmare, and I can't get it out of my head. It's sort of a subtly overwhelming thing. I plan to never be in the position of rushing to sell a vehicle again in my life. I'm also really concerned about having no money when I get back, and the related issue of finding a good job. Also, I'm nervous to have to talk about this experience in front of lots of people, and trying to do something approaching a good job before I leave. And really, Cambodia has worn me down. Living here is not easy.

Section 1: The Blog, Employers, and Conclusions About Me.

There are a few big things I have come to conclusions on. One is that two character traits I consider extremely important, and that I hope to exemplify, are honesty and perseverance. I am confused about my track record on the latter, and am concerned about it. This blog is really honest, maybe even to my detriment, because I have been honest about my failings and frustrations. I'm concerned that potential employers will read my accounts of being really tired of Cambodia, and 'not caring', etc. and think I would be an unworthy employee because I am lacking perseverance or they would just have a generally negative impression of me due to my not-always-positive language.

While thinking about that problem, what I should do about it, and why it has even come about, this is what I realized: generally, when I write on this blog, I have very strong feelings about the situation I am in, and my writing expresses that. So way back when I wrote about my crisis of confidence, I was at a peak of freaking-out-ness, and that blog post is practically frantic. Similarly, when I wrote the recent 'update' post, I was pretty depressed about what was going on, and disappointed in myself for not making this shop totally successful, etc. I think that post may have come across fairly negatively. Really, this blog is a bizarre cross section of me at my most confused and frustrated. It makes me feel better to write about it, but man .... I'm afraid what people who don't know me and haven't wrestled with similar issues must think when they read it. Especially if they are considering whether or not to pay me.

I don't want to edit anything though, because I think it's important to accurately represent my thoughts, however fleeting the exact ones I write may be. And despite being in a somewhat better mood now, the underlying issues are true. The shop is in a tricky spot. Since that post, I have found reasons for the shop being in a weak position that are not my fault, which has made me feel less terrible. For example, the TC guys haven't exactly been taking initiative in the running of the shop. They don't seem to be working their butts off, as I had hoped they would, to make the shop successful.

The human mind is extremely good at rationalizing though, and I can't decide If I am just finding ways to make myself feel better, or if I this is a legitimate point. A counter to the above point is that they are acting the way I am, and being somewhat detached. So I don't know what the truth is.

Summary of this section:
I consider honesty and perseverance important. I know I am honest, but cannot decided how I score on perseverance. This problem is oddly magnified in my blog because I write in it when I am at an emotional peak. I'm concerned that people reading this blog, especially potential employers, will have a negative impression, but I don't want to edit things to put myself in a more positive light.

Section 2: What's Important in Life?

I have been trying to read "Irrational Man" again, which is a summary of existentialism by William Barrett. There are some incredible ideas in there that I would like to quote in the blog. But basically, the point I have gotten out of this second attempt is that man is lost, and we look all over the place for things to make us feel fulfilled. From what I have read, Barrett seems to be making the point that this is because our view of the world has shifted, starting with protestantism. When religion was denuded of its rituals and more 'mythical' attributes, which I think also coincided with science and 'rationality' becoming a more powerful force, Man began walking the road to today's sense of isolation.

This is because rationality is limited, and it cannot explain the world. Barrett uses examples such as Godel's incompleteness theorem's, which use logic to prove that an arithmetic system cannot prove itself to be true. Barrett makes this a broader explanation of logic/rationality being unable to explain itself, let alone everything else.

*Warning - this next paragraph could be totally wrong. I don't have the book with me, and am sort of winging this*

So Barrett says man turned to rationality to explain life, the world, etc, and it hasn't really worked out. Despite our impressive knowledge of math and science, and out ability to make incredible things with it, we have removed ourselves from the realities of life by making life an abstract, rationalized process. This process failed us, and we are lost. We don't really have mystical guiding forces as we did before rationality, and rationality turned out to defeat itself. Barrett uses modern art as an example. His view is that Art represents how people think, basically. So when people viewed the world from a mystical standpoint, and rationality seemed to be working out well, artists portrayed the world as sensible in the form of realism and 'classical' art. That started breaking down though, and people began deconstructing everything. I don't know the whole progression, but we have classical stuff, then weird stuff like cubism that distorts "reality" and makes it 2D, and finally we get to sharks in tanks of formaldehyde, canvases painted one color or seemingly randomly decorated with splashes of color, etc.

We cannot turn back the clock though, and return to a more 'mystical' world view, and he doesn't advocate trying to do that. I haven't gotten to the point where he advocates anything, really, It's still information presentation stage.

What this makes me think about though, Is how to find meaning in life. It basically seems like people find meaning from whatever they spend their time on. This is most commonly a job and a family. I have normally rejected finding meaning from these sources, because they seem like external validation. It would be nice if life meant something innately, and people didn't have to run around searching for things that make them happy, or occupy their time enough.

This is my thought - maybe it's not really very original, but here we go. People have moved beyond the need to survive, and that is, in the end, the meaning of life. Surviving is our most important job, with creating offspring and doing our best to ensure their survival being the next step.

I don't really know how I feel about this though. Survival (from my perspective i.e. lucky enough to be born where I was and into the family I was, obviously there are plenty of people for whom this is not the case) is not really the issue anymore. It is unlikely that I will starve to death or be speared in a war with a neighboring clan/tribe/etc. The issue becomes finding a way to occupy our lives. In the past, the jobs I have had haven't occupied my life enough to fulfill this need. I think I just found the satisfaction gained from doing a good job at something rather empty in the end. I enjoy working, and doing a good job at things, but then I think about what I have done, and it never seems 'important'.

Like back in the day, you and your family were starving. You kill a deer, and feed your family. You survive to maybe kill some more deer. Life makes sense. For the things that don't make sense, you have a bunch of gods.

Designing machine parts, repairing a fence, pumping gas, etc? Pretty abstract in comparison. You do this sort of random stuff, and you earn money, which is a fabricated means to store the ability to buy or own things. God is Dead, and has been dis-proven. Mysteries of Life? Don't think about them, just go buy some Duct Tape. Or watch one of 80000000 TV channels. Or read the news, which I can personally guarantee you will occupy your mind.

Who thinks about this crap anymore? I do, but I'm being broken. I want a job now. I want to design random mechanical doo-dads and earn money so I can spend it on other mechanical doo-dads and some land that really doesn't belong to anyone. I'm not sure I have the willpower to accept a life of survival. This is kind of depressing. I am being absorbed by modern life, into the womb-like embrace of a life of distraction.

Maybe that's the problem, Humans have lost their will to survive, and exist to be placated and fed soft drinks. Wall-E wasn't the future, it's now. Modern Art doesn't make any G damn sense because life doesn't. And nobody seems to care, or they have somehow, mysteriously, found meaning in their life despite it's essential emptiness, and the fact that it is built on fabrications of man, which efficiently distract us from reality. But it's okay, because reality doesn't really make sense any more, and the earth has been deconstructed and abstracted into a parody of life.

Sigh.....

Section 3: Um, I'm going back to the shop now.

I don't know what I'm going to do there, but I'll try and encourage the TC bros to know what they are doing.

Stunningly, I have run out of things to say at the moment.

Take Care.

Ned.

Brief update on the update

So today at the shop has been pretty frustrating. A kid came in to get his oil changed, which was good I guess, but when that was done Lee Him left,and I didn't know where he had gone. Also, Mr. Jiht kept going and coming, while Mr. Sovann is apprenticing at another shop. So for a while there were no TC guys in the shop.

Sai Ha told me that the guys are talking about moving the shop again, which I don't think is the right thing to do, as I have mentioned in the blog before. I think we just need to do a better job at the current location. This was reinforced by several occurences today. One was that a customer came to the shop while Mr. Jiht and Mr. Lee Him were gone. They left before Sai Ha was able to find Mr. Jiht. Sai Ha kept saying 'this is very bad'. I agree with him. The shop has a lot of problems right now.

Yesterday I spoke to Yousos, who works for the Harpswell Foundation, and he got pretty intense. He has seen the shop and is frustrated with what's going on. So he proposed that He, Leb Ke, and I all meet at the shop and talk to the TC guys and try to have a problem solving session. I think this is a very good idea, and told Yousos it would very good if we could make it happen before April.

That's what's up.

Ned.

Update

Hi,

I didn't realize how long it had been since I updated the blog. Some interesting stuff has happened, and I also have a bunch of pictures to illustrate some of what has been going on. This first picture is a delicious cake thing that Sai Ha's mom made for me, which was very nice of her. These cake things were made in abundance because of some Cham celebration, sort of like a new years thing. People made towers of these things, hung money from them almost like Christmas ornaments, and brought them to the local mosques as offerings. I went to a mosque to get some lunch, and had to wear a pink and white scarf on my head, which was kind of ridiculous. Please refer to the horrendous picture of me.



They killed a cow or two for this party, and I actually sort of wanted to see that, weirdly. I have never seen an animal be killed for food and feel like it's something I should do. This idea is probably from reading Michael Pollan and other food-authors. Accountability for what you eat and all that.

The killing also interested me because it's basically a religious sacrifice, and I just read a book called American Gods by Neal Gaiman. It's a novel about how when immigrants came to the U.S. they brought their gods with them, but forgot them over time, so now the gods are weak and pissed off. Anyway, it was a good book, and was interesting because the concept of religion being so important that we would sacrifice animals (and even people, I guess) is so out there to me, but these cows were being sacrificed, and there were these cake-tree things with money in them, and it really registered that religion exists in Cambodia beyond the American sense of religion, which seems to mostly have become about God giving everybody money.

Also, a note on butchering. I'm fairly sure that people just hit dead animals with knives in arbitrary places. Chickens get chopped up with all their bones in place, and when you eat beef you get larger chunks of chopped up bone. That's what the picture of food is supposed to show. It's odd. Eating meat that is on whole bones in much easier, although I have eaten bone here which I never have before. Like in soup, chicken bones get fairly soft and can be chewed up. I ate a chicken neck a month or two ago, which was pretty tasty. Cartilage and other weird joint stuff that used to freak me out is pretty normal now, also.


In life news, it appears to be puppy season and the puppy population around my house has exploded. This little dude assaulted me at the bottom of my stairs one morning, and was chasing my feet around, generally being impossibly cute. One of his siblings also has been around, It makes me happy to pet dogs that enjoy it. Adult dogs here are, for the most part, extremely suspicious of people, and not down with affection. It isn't really surprising, given the way they are treated though. Even the puppies are messed with. I watched a really nice Khmer guy I know grab two by the scruff and hold them face to face with each other to make them fight, and an old woman picked one up by the front legs, looked at it briefly, then lowered it from one front leg until it was about 2 feet off the ground, then dropped it. This is like a two month old puppy! They get cuffed about, and the jaws clamped shut by hands until they cry, etc. etc. It sucks to watch. Anyway, until they don't like people I am enjoying being nice to them.


It's also puffy seed pod harvesting season apparently. The family I live with has a storage area that is full of these seed pods, and they take the fluffy stuff out and pack pillows and mattresses with it for extra income. It's fairly comfortable to sleep on, and is extremely soft. I don't know what it is, but it would be neat if you could make cloth from it. I included this picture so that hopefully some one can identify the plant.


Moving on to the shop.... I came back from my week off to see this giant pile of dirt by the entrance to the shop, and two cistern things installed inside the shop. I was pretty angry, because A) they are actually sewage tanks, and I don't understand why you would put that in the space you are living in, and B) they left the tops of the tanks sticking out like 6 inches! I (through Sai Ha) asked why they hadn't been dug in deeper so the tops where flush with the floor, and the guy who did the work said they are harder to pump out if you do. Considering the one at my house is completely buried, I was ready to tell him he was full of it, and go the whole flip out route. But I didn't want to deal with the repercussions, and to be honest, I'm just tired of dealing with the shop.


To expand on that last sentence, I am really ready to leave. I am tired of stressing about so much stuff, and being responsible for the success (or lack thereof) of this business, and all kinds of other stuff. I just want to go. Fortunately, I don't really have a ton of time left, so my wish will soon be granted.

Being perfectly honest, the shop will almost definitely not be making enough to support itself when I leave, and I don't know if it will in the near future. I'm going to pay the rent for 6 months after I leave, and leave the TC bros money to buy parts and cover other expenses, but I have a somewhat dim outlook on how the shop will fair after I go. I'm fairly certain that a student from MIT is going to come here and do some work over the summer, and hopefully she will be able to take the skeletal timbers I have put in place and build a better functioning business.

The two main problems are that I have essentially lost my motivation to make the shop better, and I also am having trouble of thinking of ways to add to the business. It's sort of a chicken vs. egg thing, like did I lose motivation first, or did I lose motivation because I don't know how to improve the situation. I haven't come to a conclusion other than not really worrying about it. I'm too focused on leaving, trying to sell my dirt bike, thinking about how to get a job when I get back, etc.

The trip to Malaysia for the F1 race in April looks like it may pan out though, which is a bright spot. There are no F1 races in North America anymore, so I really want to make it to this one. Should I be taking time off when the shop is kind of in a fragile place? Probably not. But I'm stubborn and feeling selfish, so I'm going. I still haven't left SLP or Phnom Penh, and am bitter enough that If I don't see Angkor Wat or anything else in Cambodia, It's unlikely that I will regret it.

Hope everyone is well. In case you couldn't tell, I'm looking forward to coming back and seeing people, but in the meantime I very much appreciate the support of the people who have been reading the blog and those who have been commenting. Thank you.

Ned.