Why is it that people of my generation seem to take so long to get their shit together - me included

Here is something from Indecision by Benjamin Kunkel a great book and one that I realised when posting the link above has been described already as "generation defining". Which is great for him, but sadly I realise I wasn't the first to divine this from his novel.

The following is a passage where the protagonist is receiving what we in Australia would call psychiatric counseling from his sister:

...."Its alright we have enough for now. Think about the Cold War - as I was saying. Remember that during certain would-be formative years you and I both imagined that full-scale Armageddon might not be far off, And therefore that..."
"But not me, I never thought it would happen. I think I thought people might not be very nice, but still, a nuclear war? I think I figured even the Russians don't suck that much. Or then again if a few of them maybe drank too much vodka one night, down in one of those silos..."
"Right. So you acknowledge there was a serious question of whether we'd live to see twenty-five. Remember adults would ask us about what we wanted to be when we grew up? And didn't you always feel like humouring them, no matter what you said? And then," Alice went on, "how it came as a shock to discover midway through prep school, with the Wall coming down, then there really was something to prepare for after all. Yet you had no plans for adult life - none. We could never imagine growing up because the future could always be cancelled at any time. So beyond a certain narrow time frame our desires ran into a kind of horizon and had to stop. There was no such thing as the long term."....

I turned 25 in 2000 and before 2000 I didn't really have a plan , hadn't even planned on having a plan. Sure marriage and kids seem like they are far off when your 17, 18, 19, 20. But I just didn't really worry about it so much, in fact to be honest I've only recently figured that I needed to think about the future. Perhaps it is because I grew up during that whole Cold War thing. Who really knows.

Mr Kunkel- if you ever, perchance, read my little blog I'd like to make the movie of your book. Perhaps a little snippet of Stings - Russians love their Children playing in that scene above and let's face it filming a movie in New York and Ecuador (where the book is based) would be great. I've never been to Ecuador but Quito used to be my "dream location" in stories that I told to people at parties - 2000ms above sea level and on the equator, permanently 25C. And evidently the cheapest place to learn Spanish...with the birthplace of evolution the Galapagos Islands just off the coast.... Yes I must get their one day.

We are what we do

Just a litte plug for my friend Eliza who runs we are what we do Australia. These were the guys who wrote the Change the World for a fiver book first in the UK. Its now in Canada and Germany as well. They want your help to write their new book Change the World 9 to 5 - click the link on the title of this post to go to their website - they want your suggestions on changing your workplace.....I'm guessing my suggestion of bitch-slapping the boss may not make the cut....

Mr Inconvenience sells out in Melbourne

I just spent an hour this morning trying to get tickets to Al Gore's talk at Hamer Hall in November. (Well actually I didn't my friend did, but I did ask her to book me a couple of tickets) Sure it was free but the lines were blocked up and now its a sell out. I heard a rumour that he is doing another show. If not there is always the film, again.
Last time I saw the film was on the plane home. Which was slightly ironic because the emissions of aircraft at altitude have a worse greenhouse effect than carbon emitted at sea level. So I will have to buy some carbon offsets for the 10 tonnes of C02 emissions that is estimated came from my trip to Afghanistan and Europe. Luckily I now sell these carbon offsets - so for $100 I can offset my trip with the equivalent amount of carbon from our Landfill gas plant at Weribee. We capture the methane and turn it into electricity. This serves another purposes, it also reduces some of the odours, as anyone who has ever driven windows down from Melbourne down the Geelong road to the coast will know are pretty bad.

But it seems that the Climate Change Train is about to leave the station, as some people would know - I've been on it for a while. But I think now most of the seats are taken - I wonder if our government will try to get on board at the last minute. 6 years of drought say they probably will.

Photo

This is a photo of me taken by my photographer friend. I want a medium format camera. Every photo is so full.

See my photos

I've started one of these flickr accounts, next stop youtube to post some of the video from my trip....I seem to be waiting for these small companies to get taken over in large buyouts - in some way justifying these enormous valuations. I wish I at least had a garage to start a business in.

Back in Australia

Its funny how time can fly when your back in the place your life revolves around. But here I am back home in Melbourne. Its funny Bruce our erstwhile Afghan colleague has been on 3AW - Mitchell's program no less giving his thoughts about his time there. People really can't believe that we had a pretty nice and ordinary time. Although I read that 2 Germans were killed on the road to Bamiyan on Sunday - very sad news - although camping out in the middle of nowhere is not a good idea is most of Central Asia I dare say...

On the way out of Kabul we had an interesting run-in with a South African ex-military man, one of J's drinking buddies. He is working in Aghanistan for one of the many private security firms that seem to be popping up in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places where the US operates. His main task is poppy eradication. Last year he and his team burnt about 2700 hectares of opium. Which in his estimation is "f*ck all". This does accord with the figures that show that the 2006 Afghan opium crop is the largest of all time. And the eradication business seems like a hard task. His team sometimes spend weeks scoping out valleys, doing air and land reconnaisence before moving in to "neutralize" the farmers and burn their crops. And obviously the farmers or local militia who are set to lose from the burning of these crops are not too happy about the arrival of our ex-military friend. Though his comment that he has "..never been paid more money to kill less people.." could mean that he gets paid a lot or that he doesn't kill many opium growers and traffickers. But I do understand that private secuirty firms pay a fair bit. Pretty hard to imagine anyone doing that kind of work for peanuts. Especially when in one case they had spent two weeks scoping out one particularly valley in Southern Afghanistan and had choppers ready and were about to move in when there US bosses insisted they "stand down". Evidently the valley belonged to the Karzai family.

When our South African friend met us at the airport he insisted that we bribe the Afghan airport security so we could sit in the VIP area. So 20 euros later and our passports stamped we made our way to the VIP lounge - which was a few plastic chairs outside the terminal in the garden. A little spartan but very comfortable in the afternoon sun. As we sat there many a heavy set Marine or a 4wd full of seemingly connected Afghans shuffled past. In the garden we sat amongst military people and diplomats. When our plane arrived 2 hours after scheduled departure we tried to make our way through to the plan. Two boys made it through but Jez and I were stopped for not carrying a Diplomatic passport in the VIP lounge. As was our South African friend. He kicked up an almighty fuss but the guard stood firm (and wouldn't take a further bribe much to our mans chagrin). So we were made to go back through the main terminal. 3 x-ray machines and 5 secuirty checks later we were the last 3 people on the plane. I thought for a moment I might have been stuck in Kabul. But alas it was not to be.