Aussie tales

I'm currently staying in Adelaide, and just got an extremely good job, which should take of me financially for quite some time. Because I've been looking for work I haven't seen all that much of the country yet, but Sydney and Adelaide are both beautiful cities. I can't believe how clean Aussie cities are - there is absolutely no litter, no even cigarette butts (buts?). I've thrown up some more pictures of Indonesia on my picasa (http://picasaweb.google.com/patgarrity/AsianAdventures#), so give those a look. The Gili Islands we one of the funnest places I've ever visited - highly recommended.

Stuck in Bali

Well I tried to fly to Australia a few days ago, only to find out my passport had gone missing. After several trips to the Australian Consulate (Canada's embassy is in Jakarta), I got all my paper work sent out and should have a new passport this Friday (I hope). I'm now staying at Peter Jansons (owner of The Dunes) villa just north of Kuta - this place is incredible. It was incredibly kind of Peter to let me stay here, and it's a huge benefit financially. I'm dying from the heat here, so I can't wait to get to the slightly cooler Aus. Indonesia has been a pretty amazing place, and the locals are ridiculously friendly (their favorite saying is "if you happy, me happy"), so I highly recommend you come here if you have the opportunity.

Over a month

Without an update; sorry about that. I've been all over south-east Asia and frequently have no internet access (or even electricity at times). I'm sitting in a cafe in Kuta, Bali right now, killing time until my 10pm flight to Sydney. Once in Oz I hope to have much more consistent internet access, so this blog should be bumpin' in no time. I've got lots of photos to go online, and some stories too. Stay tuned folks.

Helsinki

Just touched down in Helsinki after a long trans-Atlantic flight (which went right over Charlottetown, actually). When we landed at 9am the sun still wasn't up - I never normally think of the Scandinavian countries being that far north. I now have about 6 hours to kill in the Helsinki airport, most of which I hope to spend sleeping. I suck at sleeping on planes, so I only got about 45 minutes of shut-eye last night. One more flight to Bangkok!

Umm...

In the itty bitty Halifax airport, free wireless. In the mighty JFK, shitty wireless that costs $5 an hour. Time to man up NYC.

Let's get this on the go again

I don't understand how a plane can take off in high winds and nearly whiteout conditions, but according to the screen in front of me, my flight to NYC will be leaving on time. I had a decent nap on the shuttle drive to Halifax, which was nice. I'm not looking forward to having to sleep on planes and airport floors until Sunday, but it's all part of the traveling experience. I am, however, thoroughly looking forward to to next time I go outside, as it was -6c when I walked into the Halifax Airport, and when I walk out of the airport in Bangkok, it's going to be 30c+.

I couldn't find my uber cheap Old Navy flip flops this morning during a last minute packing spree, but I'm sure I'll be able to buy a pair on Khao San Road for something like 50 cents CAD.

I was looking at my flight path, and it looks like I'll be flying quite close to Mt. Everest, which is pretty cool. I doubt I'll be able to see much, but it's something to brag about nonetheless.

Well, I'll be boarding in a few minutes, so tata for now.

Turn the volume up to 11

I'm listening to some Death From Above, and I'm bringing this bitch back to life, for real.

I totally slacked off while I was in Dawson, but now that I'm home, I need somewhere to shove my thoughts/feelings/rage... so this will be it. And no more pussy-footing around what I'm really trying to say - don't like it, go fuck yourself - this is who I am.

I'm going to start right now by pointing out the pointlessness of life. This isn't meant to be bleak at all, just necessary to understanding life as a whole. My life doesn't matter, your life doesn't matter (it's true, and I make no apologies for saying it), even life on a biological scale doesn't matter. I'm not entirely sure where the values attached to everything came from, but me thinks the concept of god would have a fair bit of influence (I don't capitalize the g in god - don't like it? Suck it). Value is a human convention, but must transcend humans if value is to remain without human existence. How will I go about explaining this... Alright, I don't matter because you don't matter, you don't matter because no human matters, and how can this audacious statement be true? Well how can it not be true? Why do people matter? If all humans dropped dead in 5 minutes, it wouldn't matter, period. There would be no one around to miss us, which is really one of the few things that attaches value to anything. Even when a single human dies, the only way it 'matters' is that (generally speaking) people will miss said person. But that's it, other than the minor emotions of people, no one's death really 'matters' or effects the world.

I'm going to take this a bit further to piss off the hippies - it wouldn't matter if all life on earth went extinct. Why would it matter? A few billion years ago there was no life at all on earth - not so much as a micro organism. It wouldn't even be a set-back if all life was abolished, it would simply be a change (progress and set-backs are just labels made up by humans, and they really only apply to things like construction, definitely not the natural world). To take this to the enth degree, it wouldn't matter if the entire universe collapsed, and there was literally nothing left.

Nothing really matters - people die, and they rot, some people will probably miss then, but even so, things move on. Things would move on just fine without humans, or life on earth or without the universe as a whole (though here we'd be forced into a debate on whether 'nothing' can 'move on' - maybe just a poor choice of terms. Enjoy your life - do with it whatever YOU want, because in a universe in which nothing matters, the only thing that can have value is what we apply value to. So find what you love, and who you love, and value them - just don't forget, that in the end, it's all null

Regardless, none of this is meant to be disheartening, it's meant to be enlightening and freeing

A month in

I've been in Dawson for a little over a month now, so I'm starting to get a good feel for things around here. Work is work; I really don't like it, but it'll do for now I suppose. I'm not sure what I'd do if I weren't working here, though going to hang out with Gerry in Tofino sounds pretty appealing. I'm going to stick this out as long as I can, but it's wearing pretty thin.

Dawson itself is pretty good; weather is almost always nice and it's a really relaxed place to live. I'm definitely not looking forward to having night again; 24 hour light just seems normal to me now, and it opens up a lot of possibilities to hang out outside at night. The people I work with are pretty cool too, though I definitely miss my friends from home, and riding. The internet here is so-so at best (we are just stealing it I suppose...) so I can't get online as often as I'd like; it's really starting to curb my internet addiction, which is good. The area surrounding Dawson is quite beautiful. Last week I went camping for a night in Tombstone Territorial Park, which was amazing. Also, just across the Yukon River the highway to Fairbanks goes across mountain ridges and is an incredible drive. I hope to get to explore more over the next month and get some pics of the sights.

Pics

Finally got some (the second half) of my pictures up on my Picasa.

The Great White North

After 12 days and 8200km we finally reached Dawson City, Yukon.  The drive was amazing (sometimes boring...) but we saw lots and took even more pictures.  I hope to get the pics up within the next few days as there are lots to look at.  I live in a dorm style building here in Dawson and have roommates, all of which seem quite nice.  The sun didn't set last night until about 12:45am, which was odd, but night is only going to get shorter.  Hopefully I'll have pictures for you to see within a day or two; ta ta for now.

Antsy

I've firmly decided to head back down to the other hemisphere the moment I finish school (alas, still 10 months away...).  I'm not exactly sure what my plans will be once arriving, but I do intend to cover the south and east of Oz, Tasmania, and hit New Zealand all over again.  I can't even put into words how excited I am to go back to New Zealand; I admit that I'm quite stoked to see more of Australia, but to be completely honest the animals there scare me.  New Zealand and Tasmania are almost entirely safe (animal wise), which makes trekking alone a lot more appealing.  I'm so excited to spend time in a rain forest again (especially temperate) that I'm already having trouble concentrating on everything before my trip.

Hey Aquinas! Fuck you!

I've had my head buried in much of Thomas Aquinas's work over the last two weeks, and I have to say, he was a moron.  Any reasonable person knows you cannot base a theory off of an assumption, as doing so will render the argument circular.  Aquinas seems to have a problem dealing with circularity in arguments.  One cannot simply state that there is natural, divine, or eternal law and go from there; one must prove that these things exist before basing theorems around them.  Aquinas's second faux-pas is equating human behavior and human instinct as fact.  Human's are not inherently good, nor are they inherently bad, nor are they inherently anything; human behavior is extremely dynamic is cannot be used as a fixed point in any sort of theorem.  Aquinas's last, but most major error is assuming the existence of god.  I understand (to a certain degree) that persecution for heresy was an extremely serious matter in the 13th century and feigning religious faith was a fairly common practice (Hobbes did it, hell, even Einstein did it).  This religious equivalent of playing dead is understandable, but a Christian ethical/political theorist certainly is not.  If the bible or the idea of god were to be removed from Aquinas's work it wouldn't even have enough fiber to stay together.  My point is that basing an entire academic framework on a foundation of religion is about as foolish as it gets; at least find something reasonably truthful to work from.

Well, are you?

Are you looking forward to anything?  I'm not looking forward to a single thing - not a single thing.

VENT

I just tried to set up an auction on ebay EIGHT TIMES and every single time the form I had to fill out froze/refreshed/disappeared.  My advice to you, ebay, is to fix your fucking forms.  I'm not even going to bother now.

Maybe it's not all over?

Obama won the election; maybe the world isn't over just yet... though it may be coming.  I'm quite prepared to live in the woods and eat carrots and blueberries if need be.  

Things really are more tempting when they're off limits; at least it seems like they are.  Maybe instead of being 'more tempting' one's temptation just grows because it can't be released.  I'm not looking for a psychological answer (unless it's neurological, and it'll be some time - if ever - before that happens).  Regardless of the cause of this effect, it's insanity inducing and makes my heart rate double even when it's something relatively simple...

If you're feeling down or stressed out, go look at some demotivational posters; they win.

I guess we'll see on Tuesday

http://www.iftheworldcouldvote.com/

So stupid...

I like to complain and point out faults/holes in everything.  

That being said, Gail Shea becoming the minister of Fisheries and Oceans is ridiculous.  I've heard the argument that this is great because she 'grew up in a fishing family'.  Oh really?  Wow... that... doesn't matter?  How about someone who is an expert in oceanography, marine biology or even something like the economics of the fishing industry.  All of the cabinet members are just people, not specialized in anything.  I surmise that the reason there aren't highly educated specialists in politics is because highly educated people are too smart to fall into the peanut gallery that is our 'democratic system'.  

In a semi-related story, it seems barely anyone knows what's wrong with the American/Canadian/some European economies.  The problem wasn't mismanagement, or ludicrous salaries (though those are related to the problem): the problem is capitalism.  I'll freely admit that before this economic downturn I didn't pay attention to, nor know anything about economics.  Since this issue is all over the place I've been reading up (and we talk about it constantly in my radical philosophy class).  The more I read, the more I see that capitalism, the way we use the term, is doomed to fail.  Ever increasing productivity (and therefore profit) without ever increasing wages to follow suite causes people to borrow (from the people who are making the excess profit, at that).  These top few make more and more, the rest make the same, or slightly less while their debt grows and grows; doesn't take a PhD in economics to see that this is going to fail.  The problem lies in the workers not having a say in the companies they are a part of; obviously the fate of the worker is not a high priority with the omni-evil board of directors.  The answer is communism; Google does it, many other silicon valley giants do it, hell, my brother's business (silverorange) does it and all these examples show the success of such a system.  

Another cause of this teetering of this poorly engineered giant is the freedom given to the banks; the banks don't have a 100% reserve requirement for the loans they give out... are you fucking kidding me?

This will literally make you lol

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMOdPT7VzQE&eurl=http://subrosabrand.blogspot.com/

Are you jockin' me!?

Pants, jeans... I just want a pair that fits me, is fairly slim, and is stretchy; 30x36 is hard to come by.

Now this is what I'm talking about

Check it