Recipes for disaster: our oil and plastic dependency

What happens when you go on an oil diet? I'm not referring to the olive or coconut variety, but the other one, the one you have to drill to find.

A guy decided to try the drilled-oil diet and film the experience. He "invited" his family (wife and two cute boys) to join in the fun. They did, a bit reluctantly, but ended up enjoying some of the changes more than the dad himself.

Getting rid of all plastics in modern life and trying to do without oil takes some planning and lots of behavioral changes. Specially if you're in Finland and you have to walk to the bus stop and then wait for the bus for a long time in below zero temperatures. The movie definitely reminded me of some of our initial struggles when we started to cut down on consumption.

I got to see the film during the 7 Dockanema -documentary festival in Maputo- this past September. In Portuguese it is titled "Receitas para o desastre" and it's a fun mix of English, Finnish and Portuguese subtitles. Couldn't help but think that for the majority of Mozambicans it would be quite a stretch to relate to the concerns of that suburban middle class European family. Yet, as development rolls over Mozambique (or at least Maputo) like a bulldozer, it'll become soon a concern here too.

More about the film here.

Or read it directly from the words of director John Webster here.

Check the trailer:

Or see the whole film in Vimeo here.

Now, what are you going to do? Do without the plastic bags at the supermarket? Buy un-packaged? Stick to the same computer / phone / whatever-plastic-encased gadget  for a few years longer than the sellers would like? Get rid of the car or switch to an alternative-powered vehicle? Take the long, slow route over a flight? Help clean a park or a beach (or two)? Check some other examples of what can be done, here and here.

Tell us what action (big or small) are you taking to stop using, or reusing, or recycling or in any other way curve your consumption of plastics and oil. We would love to hear about them, plus we're always up to adopt other changes in our lives. We might actually enjoy them.

¡Ay! ¡Qué calor!

Yes, it's been hot ... like 30°C plus, hot! Just like it was back in the Middle East. Except the dry spells end every two weeks or so with a great big thunderstorm - a lovely show of the raw awesome power of nature.

Back in Jordan, we knew that if the temperatures rose above 25°C in May, then for sure the temperatures in August would be greater than 40°C. A good reason to call August "آب الهاب" - fiery August. This usually happens ahead of the "khamasini" storms which are great big huge sand storms that rise from the "Empty Quarter," the desert of the Arabian peninsula. Temperatures will rise to these levels, and with the same affect as when it snows in Amman: everything stops. No one knows what to do, even though they've seen this before. No one dares to go out, to work ... nothing, I mean, absolutely nothing, except to crawl into some cool hole seeking relief from the heat.

Relief does come after a few days when the sand storm passes. Of course, it's great to watch from the safety of the indoors. But if it does rain, then it rains mud ... Ugggh! Just as an ugly an experience as brushing off of your car the 5 cm of snow that just fell. Except, not quite as often as every day for 4 months, and in far agreeable weather!

I'd say all this is good preparation for heading out Mozambique. Speaking of which, the plans are in motion, and we have passed - at least I think we have - the point of no return.

Y ... ¿qué tal Uruguay? / And ... how do you find Uruguay?

Por supuesto, la respuesta educada es "Sí, todo está bien ... es relindo". Sí, es lindo, si no prestás atención a los regalitos en las veredas, o las luchas entre los conductores en las calles truncadas. O las pesadas políticas de servicio de clientes ... pará, mentira ... ¡eso es verdad en el mundo!

Pero, ¡en serio! Es un lindo país, con buena gente y comunidades fuertes. Seguro que hay problemas pero la cosa más fundamental es que hay una comunidad de gente que en su mayoría creen en un mejor país, por su razones, pero, ta.

¿Puedes vivir acá? Sí, puedo. Todavía tengo que aprender más español uruguayo. Por suerte tengo buena familia con sus amigos que me aceptan. Sin duda, es una cosa que hace todo la diferencia para disfrutar y entender Uruguay.

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Of course, the polite answer is "Yup, it's all good and great!" It is great if you ignore the little bombs on the sidewalks, or the shouting matches between the drivers in the street. Or the silly bureaucratic customer service ... wait, my bad ... that's universal!

But seriously, it's a great country and not everything is rosy. It's got it's fair share of problems like anywhere else. But there's also a great deal of the population that seems to want a better country for themselves, of course, for their own reasons. But it's something when you notice a great deal of Uruguayan expats repatriating to live in their homeland ... Things must be better, or it maybe seriously ugly where they are now!

Would I live here? Yes, I've got the hot blood to deal with the weather and the various degrees of bureaucracy you come across. Of course, I have to vastly improve my Spanish to the level of grasping subtleties of the language. But I can always fall back to the "stupid tourist" routine if all fails! I've been really lucky in having a very welcoming community of friends and family. Without a doubt, the most singularly important fact!

Why does the title of the blog keep on changing?

The title of our blog, as you might have noticed, keeps on changing. Leaving a trace of the changes reflects the changes in direction, obviously, but also shows how the overarching goal of our trip becomes clearer as we move along.

You would think we would know what we were doing when we decided to sell everything and leave. Well, kind of. We love Vancouver and it's probably the best place in the whole world for us to live, but we felt it was time for a change. A next step.

Fadi blames that feeling of restlessness on his Third Culture Kid (TCK) status and his last name, which in Arabic means "bird." I can't do the same: my last name means"earth" or "soil" in Latin; you probably can't get more rooted than that. In my case it probably has to do with my ancestors, who kept on moving from country to country. If the records are correct, the different branches did some major moving: Netherlands, Portugal, Brazil, Switzerland, France, Italy, Argentina. And ending up in Uruguay didn't help. Either the condition of "pueblo transplantado" (transplanted people, according to Brazilian anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro) of its people, or its open, barrier-less and windblown landscape makes it too easy to want to go out and explore.

But I digress. Regardless of reasons, our moving was just the next step from a change that began more than 10 years ago when we decided to make quality of life a priority. Since then, we have been trying to live our lives so that they match more closely our values and beliefs (more about that later here and here).

As we move along, we seek (or, as it turns out, we run into) people that help us learn more about alternative ways of living, sustainable transport and energy, bio-construction, organic and urban farming, garbage and recycling, and other issues that we care about, and we also get a chance to give these alternatives a try.  

Not a bad way to learn and grow. And not a bad way to end the year. Plus an appropriate posting for the end of the year.

Our New Year Resolution? Be greener :)

Happy 2012 everyone!

 

(For those in Vancouver, if you want to start the year on a green note and let Canadian government know that we want Canadian behavior to match Canadian image, join the rally on January 1st by the Art Gallery downtown. Ahhh. I miss Vancouver).

Musings on the simple, nomadic life

Scaling down in a consumerist society is not a simple, fast or in any way easy  process. I'm still trying to figure out this working-living-traveling thing and I'm feeling a bit confused. The living out of a backpack gets harder with age. Right now I just want a place of mine where I can leave my stuff. Can you believe I still have stuff?

Missing my office

The getting rid of everything was positive in one very specific way: you get to see what you really miss. So far: rice cooker, electric kettle & thermos.

Close second: yoga mat-second big computer screen-ergonomic keyboard-mouse combo. My hands + back + neck are suffering the lack of a proper office setting (hence the delay in posting).

In short, you miss what makes your everyday life easy and smooth,  food- and work-wise. I also realized most objects I owned were so irrelevant that I couldn't remember what they were even a few hours after I gave them up.

Working on the go

Enviando artículos desde una biblioteca.
Silencio bueno para trabajar
pero olvidate de conferencias en Skype.

El sueño del pibe: trabajar para uno, sin tener que rendirle cuentas a ningún jefe, estando en contacto sólo con gente que a uno le gusta y desde cualquier lugar del mundo. Fantástico. En teoría. En la práctica, no tan fácil.

En los últimos años hemos estado preparando el terreno para hacer exactamente eso. Desde las oficinas en Vancouver, lo de trabajar de forma independiente funcionaba estupendamente. Con conexión inalámbrica a Internet y muy buen ancho de banda, dos oficinas completas montadas en la casa (celulares, fax, impresora, escáner, biblioteca de consulta, archivo, documentos de apoyo), todos los servicios a dos cuadras (biblioteca pública, banco, correo, cafés) la consultoría de Fadi y mi empresa de servicios de textos e idiomas marchaban sobre ruedas.

Washington and beyond

So, we flew, walked, car-pooled, sailed, cycled, bus-ed, train-ed, hitch-hiked, metro-ed, taxi-ed, ferry-ed, electric-car-ed, rowed, and walked some more on our way south.

But eventually it was time to take a big leap and we had to fly again. To get to the airport, we had to car-pool for half an hour, take a commuter train for another hour, jump into a metro for a couple of stops, wait a shuttle bus for an hour and take the bus for another hour. Ouch! One would expect better connection to the airport in Washington D.C.

NY, NY. Third Take: The (Mostly) Good

If there's something to say about NY is that it cramps a lot of different forms of life in a small space.

And, as always, it was the people who were the highlight. Not the high-end stores, the fancy restaurants. Certainly not the beauty (among the big US cities I know, I would pick Chicago or SFO anytime). The city didn't live to its reputation of having a bunch of pushy, rude dwellers who don't care about their fellow human beings. On the contrary, they were nice, open, helpful, caring, trusting and friendly. Partial proof of that were the places we stayed.

Great art pieces everywhere in Tami's place.

Thanks to AirBnB we stayed in the apartments of two born-again NYorkers. One a Jamaican, the other a Portland (OR) transplant. Both artists (Tami, a jewelry designer, and Debbie, a clothing and accessories designer) with very interesting homes. Super flexible with our last-minute, scrambling-to-get-accommodation needs, and they left their apartments basically to ourselves. Debbie's was by far the cleanliest and delightfully decorated place we stayed on our whole trip.

New York, New York!

Ahoy maties!

We've been in New York city for a number of days having arrived on Monday. We'll be here till Friday when we head down to Baltimore to visit some friends. And we have yet to take a day to sit and relax in one spot: we've been walking all over the place to see as much as we can of New York.

Hull: The Little Town That Could

If there's something you have to thank CouchSurfing for, is that it takes you to the most unexpected places and puts you in contact with amazing people you would have never met otherwise. And that's how we ended up in Hull, Massachusetts, a little town on a peninsula across from Boston, at the house of Michael and Judeth.

Touristing around Portland, Maine: happy feet

Luckily, Portland is a lovely place! Lots of history, lots of character, and very hospitable people... a great place to be tourists - something we haven't done much so far.

So, what have we done in the last couple of days? Well ... we walked and walked and walked... to the point  that we have worn out the heels of our shoes!

Walking around Halifax

Halifax is an interesting place. We had lots of running around to do: getting some logistics squared away (read dealing with Fido), got my foul weather gear and we walked a bit between the North End and downtown Halifax. 

We've been having great weather out here ... apparently they've had the same kind of weather as back in Vancouver: rain and lots of it!

Lucía is already with the pirate look!

View to the left of the pirate in downtown Halifax

Indeed there were places protected by pirates and strange incarnations of kid's cartoon characters ...

So ya, day one of our trip and we're finally starting to feel it. I imagine once we're on the boat tomorrow there would be more comments to come!

Finalmente Halifax

Un par de días en Halifax disfrutando de la hospitalidad de Ray y conociendo la ciudad desde dentro gracias a CouchSurfing.

Ya nos están llegando avisos de amigos, preocupados por algún huracán que parece estar embromando en el sur. Nosotros preferimos enfocarnos en el día soleado que nos tocó -estupendo para combinar las vueltas de último momento con un recorrido por la ciudad- y que todo viene saliendo redondito.

Mañana Michelle nos viene a buscar y ya embarcamos. Crucemos los dedos para que todo siga rodando como hasta ahora...

And... done!

Creí que no llegaba pero gracias a un montón de gente que ayudó (¡gracias todos!), logré terminar de vaciar la casa. Increíble lo que uno logra acumular en unos pocos años. Con dos mochilas cada uno como todo equipaje, estamos prontos para salir.

We scanned, shredded, recycled, sold, packed, cut, threw away, gave away, distributed... feeling so much lighter afterwards. At the end we each have one small backpack (frontpack?) that is our office-on-the-go, and a medium backpack for all the rest.* Not bad, eh?

* Gracias a Paula por guardarnos las dos cajas con papeles (¡no nos dejan tirarlos!) y Mel, Mariana y David por guardarme el bolso con ropa de invierno en caso de necesitar una vuelta de apuro.