Blogging Silence

Well, after nearly 3 weeks of Blogging silence, I will finally log on and do an update. I've been busy, as you gathered, with various things.

Last week was Spring Break. I stayed in Tucson and worked on some things I had to do.

My practicum is going well. We are currently involved in a large-scale project dealing with deselection. The term for this used to be 'weeding', but now we refer to the practice of removing materials from the library as 'deselection'.

The UA Main library has a collection of materials which still have Dewey Decimal classification call numbers. These are older materials which are shelved on the first floor of the library (the basement) in compact shelving. However, the library is moving its oversize and super folios (really, really big books) to the first floor to free space on the fifth floor. So this means that the Dewey Decimals have to be cleaned out. Our area is the closest bottom 4 shelves and top 2 shelves in the next section. I have, so far pared this down to, I estimated, 3 shelves if they were filled (which they will be).

Hitoshi is at a conference this week, so it became my job to review the Japanese literature section and make my recommendations for deselection. Hitoshi hired a student to help me with various things (using the money he would have otherwise paid me; he can't pay me due to issues with student employment and Graduate Assistant being on two separate levels of employment, so I'm doing an unpaid practicum), so I trained her on checking specific data in the computer regarding the books I think can be deselected. So, in a subtle way, I am getting supervisory experience, as Hitoshi said "just have her help you with whatever you're doing".

I was pleased to discover that we have a nice collection in the Dewey Decimals. If it weren't such a pain, we would probably be better off putting these with the LC-classified (Library of Congress) books on the 4th floor. It may be a long term project he can consider doing--eventually moving all the books to the 4th floor. There is probably some deselection that can be done there. I've done a bit, but there's more.

We have a several-volume collection of the Manyoshu. However, we also have a complete volume on the 4th floor. It's more compact than this set. But it's a complete set, and a well-known work, so we won't deselect it.

We have also completed work on our dojo. It turned out very nice.

I am writing a poster for the Information Ethics session tomorrow. It is title "Angkor: A Cultural Disneyland". It deals with the problems faced in Cambodia with allowing tourists to openly visit Angkor, because the monuments are starting to show wear and tear. Yet, at the same time, Cambodia gets some much-needed tourists dollars. But on yet another hand, Cambodians are not getting the money. It goes to a private company which bribed the government for the right to sell tickets to Angkor.

I don't have a paper written for this, I am only presenting initial research. Or this is how I will describe it. It is good professional experience for my resume.

Last week I went to Ikea (http://www.ikea.com) in Tempe. A friend assured me I would love it, and sure enough I did. Swedish design which is simple yet trendy and chic, and best of all inexpensive. I purchased an Octopus-design clothes hanger (the ones like they have in Japan to dry items), two area rugs for my kitchen, and a set of potholders. Ikea reminded me a lot of Muji (http://www.muji.co.jp) (or as I playfully deemed it, Muri).

I am purchasing my dive gear finally. I will take my Rescue Diver course next month. I am also thinking I will take the challenge and go for my Divemaster and Instructor. Those, though, I am thinking about doing in Thailand. I really want to go back to Asia, and diving may also be a way I can get a work permit in another country and then find a library position.

I spoke with the assistant director the other day about all this, because I didn't know if it was career suicide to not take a job right after graduation. The thing with the library world is that it's quite flexible. Many things can enhance your resume and increase your hiring capabilities. I have been applying for jobs left and right, but the fact is that places are starting to downsize. I spoke with my friend Tracy last week over lunch, and she hasn't found work, after graduating n December. Two other people we both know also can't find jobs yet either.

The asst. director said that it may, in fact, be more beneficial for me to get out and get into the world, make contacts, live my life and see what happens, then to stay in an apartment, filling out job application after job application and feeling guilty for being turned down again, and again, and again. Meanwhile getting increasingly bored and miserable with each day, and increasingly unhappy with the living situation, and being where I am, and who I'm around, and so on and so forth.

While diving certainly doesn't make one rich, dive instructors don't do it for the money. It's the lifestyle. And I think that's what makes me happier--having a lifestyle I can enjoy, in a place I like. If I can get work and at least pay to support myself, while putting some money away, keeping abreast in the professional world (she encouraged this, keep my professional memberships, do some writing, contribute to libraries, maybe get into some volunteer work in the places I want to go), and keeping my eye on the job market, then I'll be happier. I may also study for my TESL certification, making me eligible for part-time work teaching English. Yeah, I know. Not the ultimate job. But a part-time basis isn't so bad, and if it provides income and is temporary, why not.

I've solicited advice from several friends, and I've gotten encouragement that I should do what is in my heart, even if it's not practical and sensible.

So while I'm definitely still looking at job vacancies and certainly applying for them, I can do a lot of that via the Internet now. So I'm also shoring up my assets right now, looking at what I can perhaps jettison for a bit of cash, and looking at returning to Asia.

Southeast Asia is heaps cheaper to live in, so money goes a lot further. It's just depressing when a professional can't find a job. I'm sure I've done at least 30 job applications, and will continue to do them.

Book the cruise...

So I'm putting together my taxes. They're not too hard, basically copy what I had the year before with a few exceptions, mostly because I wasn't in Japan for the entire 2006 year, so I had to do math.

But anyhoo, the point is that I had to look up and find out how much taxable interest I earned on my savings accounts. I am pleased to tell you all that since opening a bank account with Wells Fargo in August, I proudly earned USD$0.15 interest.

I thought it was kind of funny, anyway.

Although depending on where you are, you can purchase quite a few things with 15 cents. In Bangkok, a train ride from the train station to Don Muang airport only cost me 3 baht, or roughly 8 cents. So I quite possibly could do round-trip.

So perhaps instead of booking the cruise, I should look into booking myself passage to Bangkok, where I can use my $.15. Although I don't know how much it costs to go to the new airport in Bangkok, and I've also heard that there are some issues with the place already. Then again, if it were a perfectly done setup, it wouldn't be quintessentially Southeast Asian, would it?

I sometimes miss the passive 'whatever' attitude one naturally adopts when traveling or living in Asia. Forgot to give the driver your ticket? Whatever. Need to call the airline company to change your ticket, but forgot? Whatever. Couldn't be bothered to turn up at 10 to meet the travel agent? Whatever. Planning to catch the 10.45 ferry, but started watching a movie in the pub next to the ferry port and missed it? Whatever.

If you do the 'whatever' thing here, some people really freak.

Anyway.

Environmentally-friendly grocery store

To follow up with my post today about no stores wanting to reuse bags, I must humbly retract what I said.

I took my nice paper shopping bags back to Trader Joe's (http://www.traderjoes.com) to do some shopping, and in the words of one of my favorite movies Capote (excellent flick, wonderful with red wine so you feel all falsely classy and gourmet), they were quite pleased that I brought my shopping bags back. In fact, they are so pleased with those who bring shopping bags that they give raffle tickets to the conformists. Once a month 3 tickets are drawn, and the lucky Golden Ticket holders each get a $35 gift certificate.

Kudos!

That's an awful lot of La Boca. La Boca is this middle-class wine offered at plonk prices. Unlike the other plonk wines, which come only in various colors, La Boca comes in different flavours. Just like what rich people drink.

I know, isn't it incredible?

Ha ha, speaking of plonk, there was this real whack job in the shop today. First she drove the poor worker crazy with her inability to locate items from the flyer in a 4-aisle store, despite the fact that they are clearly marked with 'frequent flyer' thingies next to the price. (Truthfully, I think her inability could be translated as yodakii, which is Oita dialect for 'can't be bothered' or 'too lazy', because the store is only 4 aisles and easily navigated) Then she couldn't comprehend why things in the sales flyer weren't on sale, despite the man's cheerful explanation that Trader Joe's doesn't have sales, but those items are merely featured items. Then she told the man that they really should put which aisle each item is located on, so people don't have so much trouble finding things.

You just can't help some people.

Actually, I started laughing hysterically. I was reading a pizza box. A woman came up to me and asked what was funny on the pizza box. So I told her in a low voice about this whole interaction, and the woman, bless her she was my hero, said 'Well, the winter tends to bring more of them out around here...'

My day out in Tucson.

The spinach pizza was wonderful, although the crust was a little tough, and ingredients a little sparse. But what can you ask for on a frozen gourmet pizza. No preservatives though, that was good.

Environment Conservation Statement

This morning I received a memory card for my new digital camera from Costco. Costco has always evoked positive images of low-cost shopping, quality name-brand and store-brand products, good customer service, and the $1.50 hot dog/soda deal. However, today I lament in saying that the home shopping service has now presented itself as a wasteful, environmentally-ignorant group of greedy and thoughtless individuals who only care about quick fix job completion.

Take this memory card.

Memory cards are packaged securely in plastic containers, protecting them from low-impact abuse such as dropping or smashing with another light-weight object.

However, a card of this thickness:

Required a box of this depth:

And this much paper:

to ship.

The point of all this is that the amount of packing material used to ship a fairly securely-packaged item was excessive and lacked any thought of the resources available to us. I shouldn't single out Costco, as I have also received wastefully-packaged items from Amazon. Without exception, anything I have ordered from e-bogu.com has arrived in a compact form, lacking fluffy preparation.

I worked for United Van Lines as a packer. There, we learned methods to prepare items for shipping using minimal materials. Understanding how items can work to cushion one another, as well as pressure-withstanding points on glassware were concepts I began studying immediately upon being hired. These concepts have served me well in the real world, and are not hard to learn.

In this case, a padded envelope would have been sufficient for shipping this card--which I could have carefully opened and reused myself. Or a regular envelope, with two pieces of cardboard inserted. Either could have been stamped 'fragile', or 'hand-cancel', as Costco probably takes care of its own mail preparation. Even a piece of styrofoam paper wrapped around the card would have sufficed.

Libraries ship items to one another all the time, either using canvas mailing bags or padded envelopes, which get reused until they are falling apart and can't be salvaged.

In unwrapping that ball of paper, I estimate that 5 or 6 meters was torn off a huge roll, wadded up, and thrown in the box. There are more compact ways, which are every bit as fast, to use smaller amounts to pad a box. This method is not hard to learn.

Environmental issues are, once again, becoming a prominent conversation topic. While I cannot quote direct sources, I have been told that the United States uses something around 85-90% of the available resources in the world on any given day. At first, I found this hard to believe, but then I started paying attention to the area around me.

The amount of one-time resource consumption at the University of Arizona is jaw-dropping. As there is no cafeteria-style eatery on campus, lunch-goers rely upon takeaway-style fast-food restaurants. Almost everything served on campus is in a disposable container. If one approaches the Student Union after the lunch rush, and discovers that facilities maintenance hasn't been able to keep up with emptying the trash barrels, one will find bins overflowing with throwaway paper, plastic, and styrofoam products. Never mind the amount of food which isn't consumed and disposed of, and the number of local homeless people it could feed--the containers themselves are also a concern.

In Asia, an arguably poorer world region, food bought from local vendors comes on plastic plates. These plates are reused. One can see they are clean, because the huge washtubs filled with boiling hot water are clearly visible to all. In India, drinks are served in reusable cups, or people can carry their own.

A diver working in Thailand once remarked that since they don't have the Home Depot nearby, people reuse what's laying around. In other words, they get creative. Oil barrels and gas cans, as they float, apparantly make good dive buoys.

I think more about living in Japan, and the number of waribashi/throwaway chopsticks, which are used and thrown into moerugomi/burnable garbage. While Japan makes a bigger country-wide effort to control resource consumption and recycling through recycling laws, there are still flaws in the system.

Due to hygenic concerns, restaurants will not allow you to bring your own container for drinks or food. Nor will they allow you to reuse materials previously gotten from their establishment. I do not accept waribashi, but instead bring my own chopsticks or use the ones I have at home.

Taking bags back to grocery stores for reuse yields eye raising and provokes thoughts of being mental from bored and underpaid checkout clerks, who find the little bit of extra effort to reuse bags too troublesome because they are not already conveniently placed on the metal bars for filling.

In comparison, supermarket shoppers in Germany and Australia rely upon reusable canvas bags to carry their food home. When I visited a grocery store in Singapore, I had to pay a small price to receive shopping bags to carry back (it wasn't much, only SGD$ 0.25, or roughly USD $0.05 a bag).

I want to reuse containers I receive from restaurants on the rare occasion that I get takeaway. Does anyone have any ideas to help me?

I found this site today on the Internet:

http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=7

The depletion of the World's resources is causing me a bit of concern, as I think about ways we can all cut down on the products we use. Recycling is a good effort, and I recycle everything I can. Do you?

Yes, I will reuse all that paper I received. Probably when I move. As the box is a bit small, I will have to recycle it. Fortunately, there is a recycle bin available.

If we don't start thinking about this now, there may be a big problem in 100 years, when there is no more land to bury garbage under, or patches of trees (alive or dead) to cut.

Chinese Takeout Dive Shop

So I'm taking my Rescue Diver course in April, and I ordered the Rescue Diver crew pak so I could get the reading done beforehand. I open the box, only to discover an unexpected surprise in the corner.

Yes, a fortune cookie.

I didn't eat the cookie because it smelled like wood glue.

The fortune said "The instructional team at scuba.com wishes you a wonderful 2007."

Kinda cute advertising.

At least it didn't say something like "Make safety stop to avoid misfortune", or "He who plays with stingrays will suffer tragedy".

The things we see each day.