Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

(By the way, today is grief awareness day ...)

Case 666

Even in the Grief Club (our motto: Welcome to the club of which *nobody* wants to be a member!) I am considered a "case."  Are they still afraid of vulnerability, or am I *really* the most pathetic loser on the planet?

1 John 4:7,8

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.  Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

Imaginary friends

My imaginary friends are disturbed by your lack of faith ...

Jeremiah 35:15

Time and time again I have sent you all My servants the prophets, proclaiming:  Turn, each one from his evil way of life, and correct your actions.  Stop following other gods to serve them.  ...  But you would not pay attention or obey Me.

Bespoke Advanced Terraform Training

Initially, I assumed this was spam.  I have more than a passing interest in all things scientific, so I have always had a vague interest in the concept of terraforming.  I now know enough about it to know that a) it's going to be a while before we get to try it on another planet, and b) it's probably a *really* bad idea to try and use our current understanding of it to fix some of the problems we have on *this* planet.

But I have a professional interest in spam anyway, so I figured that I'd have a look at the message because it was an oddity, and might demonstrate some new developments in spam.

It isn't and wasn't spam.

I have facilitated the CISSP seminar for a number of companies, and this was one.  I taught one of their CISSP seminars.  Once.  And, ever since, I have been receiving, sporadically but fairly often, requests to teach *other* courses for them.  Of late, the seminars they are trying to get me to teach have somewhat diverged from the security mainstream.

This isn't entirely surprising.  Thirty-five years ago, when I started teaching technical seminars, those who were doing them tended to have experience in the field that they were teaching.  However, even then, there were a lot of companies with "professional" teachers, who could teach *anything*!  Whether they understood it, or not.  And, over the years, I have taught with a number of them, and I have also noticed that they are, now, very much the majority.  Those of us who know what we are teaching (or even talking) about have been crowded to the margins.

I must say that I'm tempted to take the gig.  I can do the professional teaching thing.  I can stand up in front of a group and speak confidently.  And I'm pretty sure that, whatever material they have thrown into this course, I have built up enough background to warn people against the worst excesses.  I might even do some good.  (I doubt that they would actually hire me: they'd have to pay travel, and I remember these guys as pretty cheap.)

But it's rather sad to see what "teaching" has come to.  I am a teacher, and I tend to agree with Asimov that knowledge isn't just power, but also happiness, and therefore being taught is the intellectual analogue of being loved.  Pooling ignorance isn't teaching.

MGG - 5.38 - HWYD - the famous sleep deprivation experiment

I never slept well when I was out doing the seminars. Partly it might have been the fact that I really enjoy teaching, and this was a very intense teaching experience, as well as being a very intense seminar for the students, and I was generally running on adrenaline for the entire week. But, I suspect that I also didn't sleep well, away from Gloria.

In any case, when I was out doing the seminars, I would often sleep only two hours per night. There were many nights that I did not sleep at all between teaching days. I do remember one seminar where I got a grand total of two hours sleep during the entire course of the week. It wasn't quite that bad in Nigeria, but I did not sleep well. And I didn't sleep at all on Thursday night.

That wouldn't have been a particular problem except for what happened on Friday. James always had the radio blaring when he drove me to and from the office. On the way to the office that Friday morning, on one of the news reports, I heard mention of a fire at the international airport. When I got to the office, I asked one of the candidates, who I knew was an employee of the host company, to check out this issue, and see if it would have any effect on my flight that evening. At lunch time she told me that they had checked and that there was absolutely no problem. I don't know whether they were lying to me or somebody else was lying to them.

At the end of the Friday, the last day of the seminar, the candidate from the seminar who had been acting as host, during the week, accompanied me, as James drove me to the airport. My flight was to be fairly late in the evening, so we did not have to rush, as far as we were concerned. This is good, because traffic in Nigeria is truly a wonder. During the course of the two seminars that I taught in Nigeria, I noted that every single car had dents and scratches on the body work of the vehicle. Cars that were used commercially, very often had massive lateral scrapes attesting to numerous collisions and crunches in heavy traffic. Lane markings on Nigerian roads are, at best, suggestions, and, for the most part, have been rubbed into invisibility by the fact that nobody pays attention to them. The entire time that I spent in Nigeria, I saw a grand total of three cars that did not have massive damage to the body work: two of these were on lottery displays in the airport, and one of them I actually can't fully attest to, because although I saw it under careful guard under an awning and obviously it was a big status symbol for whoever owned it, I only did see one side of it. Traffic in Nigeria can get very busy, and very clogged, and you wonder how any movement is made at all.

However, we did make it to the airport. Which was completely dark. There was not a single light showing in the entire place. We went inside anyway. Eventually the host found out that yes, the international airport was shut down: no, no flights were departing from the international airport that night; yes, some plates would parting that evening, but we were being held handled through the municipal airport.

In Lagos, the municipal airport is adjacent to the international airport. However the runways and taxiways of the municipal airport cannot handle the weight of jumbo jets that are used on the international flights. Eventually we were to find that a system had been decided where passengers would be checked in, via the facilities at the municipal airport, then held in a room at the municipal airport, until we could be bused down the contiguous taxiways and runways to the international airport, where we finally were able to board our flight..

I did, later, find out what had happened at the international airport. There had been a fire. A fire had started in the electrical panel because they turned the electricity on. The they had to turn the electricity on, because the electricity had been shut off by the power company. The power company had shut off power to the international airport, because the international airport had not paid its power bill in six months.

We eventually got to the municipal airport. Obviously, an awful lot of other people had gotten to the municipal airport as well. We joined a crowd numbering possibly a few thousand, all standing around in a parking lot at the municipal airport. The host, I am very thankful, stayed with me. At one point, he left to see if he could find anything to eat or drink. He came back sometime later with a bottle of some orange looking liquid, and a bit of an apology: this was something that he had been able to find for himself, he said, but likely it wouldn't have been safe for me to drink.

After a couple of hours of this, and an occasional mass movement by the mob when rumors suggested that we should move to one building or another in order to start the boarding process, it was determined that, yes, two flights would be going out that night, and mine would be one of them. By this time, it was also obvious that I was going to miss my connecting flight in London. When we had determined that, yes, my flight would be leaving, and yes, we identified the building that I was to go to in order to start the boarding process, the host provided me with a call on his cell phone, I called the travel office, which, because of the time difference, was still open on Friday afternoon in Florida. I outlined the situation, asked that my connecting flight in London be rebooked, and asked the travel agent to call and let Gloria know. My flight didn't leave until four in the morning, but it did eventually leave.

I don't sleep well on airplanes, either. This is kind of strange: I sleep just fine on trains, and on boats. But not on airplanes. So, despite the fact that I had had no sleep Thursday night, I didn't sleep at all on the flight from Lagos to London, and I didn't sleep at all on the flight from London to Vancouver. I had been doing the seminars for a while, by this point, so Gloria and I had worked out a fairly consistent system. Gloria would come to the arrivals area, and usually be in the car, waiting at curbside, so that she didn't have to park. I'd come out of the arrivals area, walk up and down areas where cars could wait for a bit, and find her. When I got to Vancouver, I followed this practice. I came out of the international arrivals area, and walked up and down the areas where I knew that Gloria would have been able to wait in the car. I couldn't find her anywhere. I waited and watched as the cars drove around, long enough for Gloria to have made a circuit, if she hadn't been able to find a place to park on the first time around. No Gloria. I went back into the airport, found a payphone, and phoned home. Gloria answered the phone, and, as soon as I said hello, burst into tears. Apparently, the airline would not tell her what flight I was on, or even what country I was in. I said I'd take a cab home.

By the time I got home that night, I had been up for fifty-seven hours straight.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/08/mgg-537-hwyd-nigerian-culture.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/09/mgg-539-hwyd-regina-and-winterpeg.html

Exodus 15:11

Who among the gods is like you, Lord?  Who is like you—-majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders?

Psalm 38:21

Lord, do not abandon me; my God, do not be far from me.

Imaginary friends

My imaginary fiends are disturbed that your continued insistence on your own existence is possible evidence of deep-seated emotional problems.

Review of "Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice from Dear Sugar" by Cheryl Strayed

I must admit that it took me a long time to read and review this.  It came up in a search of books about grief.  I mean, an advice column?  I've never read advice columns, even when they were a staple in the daily paper.  My attitude to advice columns is that if you can tell good advice from bad advice you don't need advice.

Some quotes from the introductions to the book:

"I've long believed that literature's greatest superpower is how it makes us feel less alone."

"Dear Sugar has always been quite simply about one person writing a letter to another.  In pain and courage and confusion and clarity.  In love and fear and faith.  Dear Sugar has always been about connecting.  It has always been about believing that when we dare to tell the truth about who we are and what we want and how exactly we're afraid or sad or lost or uncertain that transformation is possible, that light can be found, that courage and compassion can be mustered."

"I happen to believe that America is dying of loneliness, that we, as a people, have bought into the full stream of convenience, and turned away from a deep engagement with our internal lives--those fountains of inconvenient feeling--and toward the frantic enticements of what our friends in the business call the free market."

"The internet can be many things, of course.  Too often it's successful of distraction, a place where we indulge in the modern sport of snark and schadenfreude, building the case for our own bigotries, where we mock and thereby dismiss the suffering of others."

"The lurking dream of all of us online lurkers is that we might someday confess to our own suffering, that we might find someone who will listen to us, who will not turn away in the face of our ugliest revelations."

So.  I don't know if this is good advice or bad advice.  But ...

All of you should read "Tiny Beautiful Things."  Every single one of you.  If you read it, it will make you a better person, it will make you a better manager, it will make you a better parent, it will make you a better family member, it will make you a better Church congregant, it will make you a better person.  (Yes, I realise I said it twice.)  It will make you a better research assistant.  It will make you a better special effects technician.

If you read it.  But you won't.

Oh, some, very few, of you will start.  You will start to read it, and then you will realize that it is about bad things.  And, maybe you will just stop reading, and put the book aside.  Or throw the book aside, because it's about bad things, and who needs to read about bad things?  Some of you will continue to read.  Even after you get to the third essay.  If, indeed, these pieces can be called essays.  And you will skim the text.  Or you will read, carefully not letting anything impinge upon your mind, until you get to the happy ending.  And you will continue "reading" the book that way until you get to the end, and then you will say that this book is profound.  And you will return it to the library, or put it on your shelf, and forget about it.

I have reviewed a lot of books in my time.  I have, in fact, reviewed thousands of books.  Most of them were technical literature.  Technical literature, for the most part, is not profound.

I had not finished reading "Tiny Beautiful Things" as I started writing this review.  I had only barely scratched the surface.  But I knew I was going to read it.  And I know that it would be valuable.  It may not help me.  It probably won't.  (I am not diagnosed with treatment resistant depression for nothing.)  But it will be valuable to read.  And to have read.  And I could tell that with pages of the book still unturned, and unskimmed.

I have just read a piece about someone who is deeply grieving.  Dear Sugar/Cheryl Strayed did not reply something about this terrible ordeal you are going through will make you a better person.  I know it.  Dear Sugar knows it too.  But the person who is still very deeply grieving doesn't know it yet.  Nor would it help them to be told this.  Not right now.  Not necessarily in the midst of the grieving.  I am a teacher.  I know that some lessons have to be learned, before you can suggest that they should be learned, or why they might be valuable to learn.  That's just the way learning works.  That's the way our minds, and psyches, and our being, works.  It seems illogical, but it's true.

I don't know yet how much value "Tiny Beautiful Things" will be to those actually grieving.  But, I strongly suspect that there is material in here that will be both of comfort, and of help.  And I use that order very deliberately.  Those in trouble, those in grief, those in distress, those in trauma need the comfort first.  In another book, "The Good Life," one of the authors makes the statement that we default to trying to fix a problem for another person, when we should be trying to face it with them.  Face it, don't fix it, should be the mantra for anyone dealing with a person in distress.  Very often we think we can fix it, but we actually can't.  By proposing, particularly that the person in distress to do something to fix it, we are, in fact, saying that the person who is in distress is also an idiot, because anything that we can come up with, on the spot, to fix the problem, they have undoubtedly already thought about.  The trauma is probably not fixable.  They need comfort, and the comfort comes from someone who will face the distress, the trouble, with them.  Not lecture them about what they need to do.

I'm not sure why this came up this book came up when I searched under grief.  There is more about sex than there is about grief.  (Those looking for the prurient bits will, however, be sadly disappointed.)  Although the author does talk, quite openly, about the fact that her mother died at a relatively young age.

And there is, rather late in the book, an extremely beautiful piece: "The strange and painful truth is that I'm a better person because I lost my mom young.  When you say you experience my writing as sacred, what you are touching is the divine place within me that is my mother.  Sugar is the temple I built in my obliterated place.  I'd give it all back in a snap, but the fact is, my grief taught me things.  It showed me shades and hues I couldn't have otherwise seen.  It required me to suffer.  It compelled me to teach."

And, eventually, we come to the tiny beautiful things.  I had been waiting for the tiny beautiful things.  I mean, the title is a bit of a giveaway.  And I have not been looking forward to the tiny beautiful things, because I have had the tiny beautiful things concept pushed on me for my entire life.  And, I was wrong.  It's not earthshaking, but it's sweet.

(By the way, as pure random chance would have it, this is my 1,000th blog posting ...)

Dream

I had a dream last night.  Which is odd.  I mean, I assume that I dream as much as anybody else, but I almost never remember any of my dreams.

My dreams are usually very weird.  This one was oddly normal.

I had a job in a grocery store.  The Christmas order had come in, and, for some reason, I was told to move it to the kitchen area.  As is often the case in dreams, the architecture was somewhat flexible, so I was wandering the store, trying to find the best way to get the stuff from where it was to the kitchen area.  The staff were OK people, but consumed with their own problems, so not much help.

Like I say.  Pretty normal.

A couple of days ago I read the story of Joseph, and all the dream interpretation that that entails.  The interpretation of this dream is not that hard.  My life is over.  I'm in a new situation.  (I've worked exactly three days, in my entire life, in a grocery store.)  I'm not so much trying to rebuild my life, as build a completely new life, from scratch.  I'm trying to help.  I'm not getting any help in trying to help.  (That's not the fault of Port Alberni or Delta: I'm pretty sure it would be the same even if I was still in North Van.)

I don't recall being upset in the dream, and I'm not particularly upset in my life.  I'm just tired.

And wish I were dead.

Revelation 9:6

During those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them.

Speed watch

I'm pretty sure that most people don't understand what we, in Community Policing, do on speed watch.

We don't give out tickets.  We aren't allowed to.  We aren't peace officers, and we aren't trained in the ticketing system.  Which, in our province, has just undergone a change anyway.

We give people lots of leeway; lots of margin in terms of what the speed limit actually is, and when we take note of their particular license plate number (and vehicle details, which probably is used as a check on whether we got the licence number right), and note it down.  Even when we record it, we don't do anything in particular with it.  It gets passed along to someone else, and that someone (who might be in the police detachment, or who might be our boss in Community Policing, or who might be some clerk at ICBC) then sends a letter to the registered owner of the vehicle, noting that the vehicle was observed doing excessive speed, and probably giving the date and time and place.

I should also note that the margins that we give people are set by our boss.  But that's just for us.  The actual police officers, when doing their own speed traps, have their own standards.  So, when I say that we allow you to go twenty kilometres an hour over the speed limit, if it's a regular speed limit, say fifty kilometres per hour within city limits, that doesn't mean that you are safe from actual police officers if you go sixty-nine kilometres per hour or less.  (We also don't give you as much margin if you are speeding in a school zone.  In a school zone, which is generally thirty kilometres an hour, we only give you a ten kilometres per hour margin.  Again, that's for us, and actual police officers may use different numbers.)  So don't base how fast you can legally speed on what I say here.  Legally, if you go fifty-one kilometres per hour in a fifty kilometres per hour speed zone, you are breaking the law.

Because we are mere Community Policing volunteers, and therefore nobodies, and do not actually issue tickets ourselves, a lot of people just simply ignore us.  Some of them ignore us very deliberately, obviously, and even provocatively.  There are those who will drive, at reasonably close to the posted speed, right up to the rear bumper of our Community Policing van, which is where our speed watch display board is mounted.  As soon as they get to the rear bumper, you can hear that they have stopped on the gas, and revved up the engine, and are taking off at quite excessive speed.  Obviously, these people are of the opinion that only be display board matters.  Unfortunately (for them), the speeds that we use for determining when we collect license plate numbers we take from handheld, very accurate, laser range and speed devices.  These, being handheld, are not mounted on the van.  All we have to do is stand up, turn around, and get your speed.  And we can clock you more than half a kilometre away.  Even when you have tromped on the gas pedal, from a start approximately at fifty kilometres per hour, you are not going to be out of range before we can get two, or even three, readings of your excessive speed.

Of course, by that time, you are, so you think, too far away for us to read your license plates for the number.  Unfortunately for you, we actually do have spotting scopes, and, even when you are speeding at more than eighty kilometres per hour, we still have time to read your license plate, very clearly, before you can get out of range.

Even when we are not doing speed watch, but just doing our regular crime watch, going around and checking for troubles, it always astounds me when I encounter people who try to hassle and intimidate us.  Bear in mind that I am riding in a van which, on front, back, and both sides, is clearly labeled as Community Policing.  So, some drivers will pull up beside us, and will then step on the gas and roar loudly away, at high speed.  Some people will tailgate us, and then, when they think it will annoy us the most, will tromp on the gas, and pull out and around us, cutting back very closely in front of us, and roaring away.  As I say, I find this behavior astounding.  Why would you do that to a vehicle which is clearly marked as being occupied by Community Policing volunteers, when you know (or should know) that someone in that vehicle has a device with which they can look up your license plate number, in order to determine whether that vehicle is, in fact, stolen.

There are other oddities, as well.  There are certain motorcyclists, who, knowing that they only have license plates on the back of their vehicles, and that their license plates are much smaller than normal license plates, assume that we cannot read their license plate as they roar by at eighty kilometres per hour (in a fifty zone).  Yes, it is going to be difficult to read that license plate in that situation.  But, if you have a highly identifiable motorcycle, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that someone will, say, when your motorcycle is parked somewhere, read and memorize the license plate number, so that the next time you fly by at eighty kilometres per hour, the volunteer can simply note down the known license plate number.

As I say, people do a lot of these things, obviously thinking that it will annoy us, and that we will get upset.  It would probably disturb them to know that we have more important things to think about.  We check on people whose health may be compromised, and report them and their location to other people who may need to come and assess whether they are truly at medical risk.  We have stolen vehicles to report.  We have friends and neighbors who have reported illegal activities, which we then have to document, and, once again, report to other authorities who have more powers than we have to address those activities.  We are too busy to get bent out of shape by someone who thinks that merely pulling up alongside us and then stamping on the gas pedal is going to be a major issue in our days.

But, yes, it is slightly annoying.  It is somewhat irksome to be so obviously, and blatantly, ignored.  But today went some way to mitigating any such annoyance.  While we were out on speed watch, an actual police officer stopped to chat with us.  It was nice of him to do so, and it made our rather boring day of gathering statistics on the actual level of speed, and speeding, on this particular stretch of road, more bearable.  We had a delightful conversation.  He was, in fact, trained on the type of laser speed measuring devices that we have.  He was very impressed at our newer speed gun.  He obviously enjoyed trying it out, and even caught a couple of speeders who were in excess of even our speed margin.  And then there were a couple of times when I noted a speeder.  And stood up to get a better look at the license plate, the better, and more accurately, to note it down on our report form.  And it was blatantly obvious that this speeder intended to ignore us, as well, since we were just Community Policing volunteer nobodies.  And was intending to just blow right by us, until the actual police officer, standing behind us, stepped out into the road and flagged him down.

Yes, it was a very satisfying day, in terms of righteous indignation, and just a touch of justification.

MGG - 5.37 - HWYD - Nigerian culture

It was a really interesting teaching experience. The students were enthusiastic and very amicable. There was a water cooler in the teaching room, as well as coffee, and sandwiches that were laid on by the host company for the course. I quickly learned not to eat the sandwiches.  they use the same type of fish and meat paste, in Nigeria, as they do in Britain. These pastes are rather infamous in terms of their lack of flavor, and the fact that, regardless of what they are supposed to be made out of, you really can't tell any difference between any of them.

The water cooler was the usual type with a five gallon bottle mounted upside down on top of it. But, remembering the warnings about making sure that the bottled water was in fact bottled and not refilled, I noted that this particular bottle had no label on it, and was severely scuffed and bashed around. More than one of the students in this particular seminar was from the company that was hosting the seminar. One particular fellow was acting as a kind of host, and I asked him if this particular bottled water was safe for me to drink. He looked at me, rather doubtfully, and said well, it should be okay. I replied, bearing in mind that they asked five other instructors before they ask me, and none of them would come, and if I get sick they're not going to send anybody else. He said I'll get you some bottled water. He was very good about it, and brought multiple bottles of water for me each day for the rest of the course. At the end of the day, I must admit that I took a bottle home with me in order to use, the next morning, to brush my teeth.

The host company, as well as providing the refreshments in the classroom, had laid on a lunch for the candidates. Mondays, when teaching the seminars, I had an awful lot of administrative work that needed to be done, and so generally I didn't eat lunch. However, at a little before noon, on the Monday, I noted to the students that the company had kindly provided lunch for them all, and dismissed the class. The candidate acting as host led them to the room where the lunch was provided. I stayed behind, starting on some of the administration. Shortly the host came back into the room and asked if I was coming for lunch. I explained about the administration, and he replied I think you better come. Okay, I thought, this is a cultural thing: I am the instructor, and therefore I must eat first. So, I went with him to the lunch room, noted that there was mushroom soup available, fill the bowl for myself and sat down. Everyone else, who had just been standing around, dove for the buffet table. Some of them, of course, sad at the table where I was sitting. I apologized for not understanding I now realized that it was a cultural thing and because I was the instructor I was supposed to eat first. No no, one of them replied. It's not because you're the instructor. Is because you're the oldest person in the room.

Is this a great country, or what?

I mean, coming from youth obsessed North America, it was just a little refreshing be in a culture where age and experience are, in fact, valued.

Not all the experiences were particularly enjoyable. On Wednesday afternoon, while we were covering physical security, which, of course, involves the necessity of the provision of reliable power supplies, the power went out. Also on Wednesday, that evening, as James was starting to drive me back to the hotel, we were stopped by a man with an automatic rifle standing in the middle of the street. James pulled up to him and started yelling out the window at him. I felt that this was possibly a bit foolish, seeing as how it was the guy outside who had the automatic rifle. I didn't realize at the time, but this was an example of what are known as bullion cars. Bullion cars are the armored cars of Nigeria, and transfer some of cash between the many many banks in Nigeria. The bullion cars are generally Toyota pickup trucks, with heavily armored steel box campers mounted in the bed, generally accompanied by chase cars, and also supported, where they make their pickup, and where they make their delivery, by armed guards. Shortly after James started yelling at the fellow with the automatic rifle, one of these bullion cars came roaring out of a side street, followed by its chase car, and sped off down the road.  As soon as this happened James stepped on the gas and drove away from the fellow with the automatic rifle, who, not pleased at being so dismissed, fired off two rounds in the air.  (At least, I hope they were in the air.)  As we drove away, James turned to me with a big smile. "Don't worry," he said, "Mr Robert! Those guys, they're all crazy!" Somehow this was not reassuring.

One of the cultural points that I missed, at the beginning of the course, was the issue of business cards. I am a beard. I am a techie. I consider business cards to be a tool of the devil, the devil being defined as marketing. So, although I had business cards, I generally just put a stack of them down on a corner of the table, pointed out to the students that they were there, and allowed them to take one if they wanted one. However, Nigeria, in common with a number of Asian countries, considers business cards, and the presentation of business cards, as a sign of status and respect. So, learning this, I then had to take my stack of business cards and go around and present one to each of the candidates in the seminar.

I ran into another cultural problem, or a couple of cultural problems, while we were doing telecommunications. We were covering the topic of onion routing. I was explaining that onion routing had been, if not invented, at least posited, by the US Navy. I pointed out that the Tor browser and system, despite the fact that Tor is not spelled in capitals, is, in fact, and acronym, simply standing for "the onion router." I explained about the layering of encryption and described some of the activity in terms of an onion routing Network, but the students seem to be having a very difficult time understanding the concept. Finally, someone asked, can you write that on the board, so I did.  As soon as I wrote down onion routing, all the women in the class immediately said oh, on-neon routing! And nodded knowingly. 

First cultural problem: I was pronouncing it wrong. At least for them.

The guys were all still sitting there with blank faces. Finally, one of the men asked, why do you call it onion routing? Well I started to explain, haven't you ever noticed the layers when you cut through an onion?  All the guys in the class recoiled in horror!  Second cultural problem: apparently, in Nigeria, you don't cook if you're a guy. If you are male, your mother cooks for you, your sister cooks for you, your wife cooks for you, or you eating a restaurant, or you starve to death. But guys don't cook. So, I struggled through an explanation, once again describing the layers of encryption that surrounded a packet, added by each node in the onion routing network. I think I finally got the concept across, but it would have been a lot easier with an onion.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/08/mgg-536-hwyd-lagos.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/08/mgg-538-hwyd-famous-sleep-deprivation.html

Garden Daily Vacation Bible School/GDVBS

GDVBS

Garden Daily Vacation Bible School/DVBS - Garden themed Daily Vacation Bible School

(This is a first, and rough, draft of a proposal.)

There is a need for children's activities, summer camps, and possibly daycare, within Port Alberni.  Currently this appears to be addressed solely by the purchase of prepared materials (mostly from American publishers).  This means that multiple churches are producing the same, single week, program, and there is no variation or longer term activity available for children and families.

Proposal:

A summer camp, probably involving multiple churches.

This could involve a longer period of time than just one week.

(This gives parents more consistency in terms of day care, but also provides a longer term for "campers" to see plants/garden developing.)

Possibly this might be a morning only camp, taking advantage of cooler morning temperatures. 

Options:

Mornings only for the entire summer

Mornings only every second week for the entire summer. 

Multiple churches taking on snacks and supplies over the longer period. 

Allowing for the kids to see the effects of gardening as various plants grow over the period.

Different lessons from the garden. The various sermons from the garden. Sermons and devotionals for the summer camp, DVBS staff as well from the sermons and devotionals. 

Lesson ideas:

Kids like to plant corn.  Object lesson: corn will grow in isolation, but it doesn't produce anything.  It needs to be planted in blocks in order to produce corn.  We need to be in fellowship to be productive Christians.

Kids love gardens more when they have been involved in creating them.  God loves us because He created us.

Intercropping - different members of one body

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/01/sermon-2-broad-beans.html

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/01/sermon-3-blackberries.html

Wheat and tares

Transplanting

Plastic

Possible involvement with Shelter Farm, AVFSS, local farms and markets, CMHA garden

Currently:

Most activities are short-term and sports oriented.  The daily vacation Bible schools that are provided by the churches tend to be canned programs developed out of the United States.  Those churches that do run Daily Vacation Bible Schools, use the same programs, so that children, even if they go to multiple Daily Vacation, Bible School programs during the summer, are seeing the same programs, repeated.

Using the garden and garden camp as a theme provides a longer stretch, providing longer and broader camping experience for the children attending, and providing more daycare, and extended time for parents seeking summer activities for their children.

This would be a large task for any single church to support individually.  It would be best if as many churches as possible can be involved, in order to reduce the demand and drain on resources for any single church.

Socially Engineering Facebook

I find it, both personally, and, especially, professionally, terribly embarrassing that nobody in Port Alberni seems to know that there is any Internet *outside* of Facebook.  Facebook, is, of course, one of the least secure systems on the planet.  First off, the entire business model of Facebook is antithetical to confidentiality and privacy.  They make money by selling your information.  And, because of that, when people started to complain about the lack of security on Facebook, Facebook's response (predictably) was to throw a bunch of security functions at people, which, being added after the fact, were a) ineffective, and b) so fragmentary and piecemeal that it is really impossible to say, when you have tried to adjust privacy and security settings on Facebook, whether anything actually is secure.  (One of our Big Names in security, at one point tried to use Facebook as a platform to post various public comments and information about security.  He just wanted to set all these postings to "world readable."  It turned out that even *he* couldn't ensure that something that simple was consistently set properly on Facebook.)  So none of us in the security community want to have anything to do with Facebook.

I have to admit that within a few *hours* of starting to use Facebook (when it was first made available to the general public), I disliked it.  I figured it was going to divide the Internet.  And so it has turned out.  But, if I want to say or do anything to do with Port Alberni, I have to do or say it on Fakebook.  So, I have to use Fakebook https://www.facebook.com/rslade/ .  As embarrassing as it is to admit that.

Social media, these days, is possibly somewhat antisocial.  A number of the social media platforms are swinging their weight around.  Most famously, these days, Elon Musk is using the Twitter platform, which he bought, and then renamed X, for his own political or philosophical purposes.  He has changed the community standards, in terms of what can and cannot be said on Twitter, and is using the technology and the platform itself to broadcast and amplify his own particular brand of political thought.

That's one example.  But there are certainly others.  One is that Facebook is used to pretty much having its own way with regard to content.  Any content available, in any way, on the Internet is available to Facebook as Facebook content.  As a matter of fact, an awful lot of people who use Facebook do not realise that there *is* any Internet aside from Facebook.

Facebook has, in particular, been used to, essentially, scraping news stories from media sources and using that material as Facebook content; presenting it as news stories from Facebook.

Various news media companies have approached this in various ways, with some retreating behind paywalls, and otherwise making the content less available to the Internet at large.

A couple of countries have attempted to use legislation to compel Facebook to pay the news services for their information, or for the use of their information.  In the case of Australia, Facebook decided it wasn't worth trouble to do anything except to pay.  And so it has.  In the case of Canada, however (possibly since it is closer to home: Facebook being based in the United States), Facebook has decided to draw a line in the sand.  Canada has created legislation requiring online services that use stories from news media to contribute financially to a fund for those news media companies.  Facebook has dug in its heels.  Basically, if you live in Canada and you use Facebook, you cannot post a link to any news stories, or to news sites.  Even if you are talking about a specific news entity or a company, you cannot put a URL reference to that company into a Facebook posting.

(I very strongly suspect that Facebook is completely inconsistent in regard to this restriction.  With the current interest in, and pursuit of, LLM/generative artificial intelligence, and the need for massive quantities of content to train the systems [and, in particular, the outright theft of "high quality" content for that training], I am quite sure that Facebook grabs *every* link submitted, and uses the content for its own Meta AI purposes.)

Those of us in Canada, who use Facebook (believe me, as a security professional, I am *well* aware of the embarrassment of having to admit to being forced to use Facebook) have tried various means to get around this restriction.  For a little while it was possible to break a URL into various component pieces, so that even if it wasn't a link that people could click through directly they would Be able to create a link and connect to the news story.  However, Facebook's restrictive technology has been improving in regard to finding and preventing these types of tricks.  And Facebook is getting better at preventing anyone from referring to any news story from a Canadian source at all.

The thing is, I am a security expert.  I have been, for many years, studying the tricks that people have been using to fool both people and systems, in order to be able to attack computers and systems.  So I have a little bit more experience, and background, with this situation than other people might.

Today, I found a very incisive, comprehensive, detailed, and important article in the Guardian newspaper.  The Guardian, published in the UK, has not retreated behind a paywall.  It is one of the relatively few news sources that makes extremely high quality news and opinion pieces available without charge.  (The Guardian does add a mention to most of its news stories that they would really like you to subscribe or to donate, in some way, to support the important work that the Guardian does.  But they do not require it, and do not deny you access to their content if you do not have a subscription to their services.)

As I say, I found this article, a lengthy and important piece, and felt that it needed wider circulation.  (Or, that more people needed to know about it.)  I started posting it on various social media platforms, simply by posting the URL.  Of course, when I got to Facebook, Facebook baulked, and would not allow the posting.

However, I have, as I say, a fair amount of experience with this.  I realised that other social media platforms are something that Facebook would have a serious aversion to banning.  So, I took the URL from one of the other social media postings that I had made, linking to the story, and used that as a link on Facebook.  Those, on Facebook, who are interested now have access to the story.

If Facebook tries to get around this, it is going to have to take a more complicated approach.  Either Facebook will have to forbid posting from or to a variety of other social media sites, or Facebook will have to increase the depth of analysis that they make in terms of examining links that are posted on Facebook itself.  Facebook will not only have to look at the target of the link, but will then have to download and look at the content obtained from that link.  And do further analysis to see if it links to a news site.  Increasing this depth of analysis would make examination of all postings on Facebook more compute resource intensive.  It would be costly for Facebook to do it.  It would also slow and delay the posting of any and all postings made by Facebook users.

It's possible that Facebook may come to the decision that fighting this battle is worth it, and that it is acceptable to slow down the operations of anyone who posts anything on Facebook.  On the other hand, Facebook may decide that it simply isn't worth it, and let it go.  Of course, if Facebook decides to go further and do deeper analysis and slow down their own system, I do have more tricks up my sleeve.  A lot more.  I can play this game for a long time.  It doesn't particularly cost me anything.  As a matter of fact, you might say, it's my job.

I am, after all a security expert.  At my time of life, and in my stage of my career, it doesn't particularly matter if somebody is paying me to do a particular type of research.  At my stage of my career, I am more of a resource for the security community in general.  So I can do things like this.  Pick on the giants, find out what they are doing.  Find out how far they are willing to go in inconveniencing their own customers, clients, and users in order to get their own way.

As a security expert I am quite well aware that security doesn't matter to most people.  So, for the most part, I am simply talking to my colleagues in the security field rather than the general public.  But my colleagues will be aware of what I find out.

This is kind of an odd situation to be in. 

Many years ago, there was a false idea that was spread abroad that we, in security, and particularly in the malware analysis field where I got my start, were, in fact, the ones responsible for creating computer viruses and malware.  The false story said that we were responsible For the creation of the malware because it gave us job security.  In reality, nothing could have been further from the truth.  We always had, and always will, have job security because there are so many ways that computers and information systems can be attacked.  Those of who felt that we needed to study malware and devise protections against it, also knew that there were an awful lot of other things (usually more interesting things) that we could have been doing instead.

So, we never had any time for those people who created malware.  We had no fellow feeling for them.  We thought that they were a bunch of idiots, usually uncreative and unimaginative idiots, who were writing graffiti on the walls lining the information superhighway, trying to pretend that they were important.  Their only importance, of course, was that they disappeared.  And we tried to make sure that they, and, so far as possible, their creations, disappeared.

But we learned a bunch of things along the way.  So all of the tricks, all of the traps, all of the social engineering (which is simply a fancy way of saying "lying") that attackers and intruders created and explored over the years, well, they have given quite a number of us an education.  It's now rather ironic that I can use the things that I learned from spotty and isolated individuals living in their mother's basements to take on the giants of the information technology world who are trying to throw their weight around.

Psalm 50:21

You did all these things, and I said nothing.  So you thought that I was as bad as you are.

Fixing gardens?

I went back to the Canadian Mental Health Association office, and did some more work on the garden.  It was satisfying, if not joyful.  Why is this so?

The garden is a mess.  It has been neglected.  The further you look, the more plants are there, including, for example, a blueberry plant and a boysenberry plant.  There are sunflowers, a grape arbor, and various raised beds.  There is a thriving rosemary plant, and some moribund strawberries.  There might be a potato plant in one area: I'll have to keep an eye on it.

There are a great many problems.  Most of these are not intractable problems.  Some of them are.  There is one large raised bed, with a retaining wall, that is no longer retaining.  It is not yet a danger, but it is definitely not something that can simply be left, nor can it be mitigated.  It will be expensive to replace and refit.  A number of the raised beds are coming to bits.  They are old, and the wood planking is rotting.

But, for the moment, much of the garden is usable.  The grape arbor, having had a severe trimming about two years ago, is absolutely thriving.  I have done some research, and, half a year from now, in this coming winter, I strongly suspect that I will be able to take cuttings, and, because there is a cheap and sloppy, but feasible, greenhouse, I should be able to propagate cuttings, and start propagating plants.  Possibly to other gardens.  The greenhouse will also allow me to start germinating seeds for plants like peppers, tomatoes, squash, and a variety of other plants, to be ready as soon as there is a remote possibility of the plants surviving in the open.

So, there are problems, but they have fairly simple solutions, of work and time.  The Canadian Mental Health Association site has the tools, such as the greenhouse, some planting tables, and a shed with gardening tools.  There are actually quite a variety of gardening tools in the shed, once I went in there and did some cleaning up.

So there are problems, the problems are not intractable, and there are tools appropriate to solving the problems.  No one is tending the garden, but, at the moment, no one is objecting to me dealing with the problem.  So there is nothing to frustrate my attempts to solve the problem and address the problem.  Problems.

Of course, that may change.  The senior person seems to be on holiday, and may object to my activities when she gets back.  There is no compost heap, so I have dug out one end of one of the raised bed gardens, to act as a compost pit.  It's possible that some people may object to this non-standard approach.  I can already hear the discussions of the possibility of rats.  But, for now, nobody is opposing me, and I am addressing the various problems, as I am able, and as I have the time.  I am undoubtedly making mistakes, since I am definitely not an experienced gardener.  But I am already improving the gardens situation, and appearance.  At the moment, I can look forward to learning more about the organization, and the facilities of the organization, and the resources of the organization, and improving this unused and neglected, well, one can hardly call it a garden at the moment, it's more just a piece of waste ground.  But it definitely has potential to be a garden.

(The boss was back from holiday, today.  I don't think she is going to mind with what I'm doing in the garden.  I was talking about what I had planted, and the fact that I had excess kale plants in the community garden, and she wondered if she could get a kale plant.  Then she wondered if she could get three kale plants.  So I went down to the community garden, and got six kale plants, intending to let her choose three, and then put the remainder into the CMHA garden.  She took all six.)

I'm sort of moving back to the Delta model.  In Delta, for the extremely brief time that I was there, I was taking care of five gardens.  At the moment, I'm taking care of three.  I am enjoying the gardening.  I still have *no* idea *why* I'm gardening.

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-dangers-of-gardening.html

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2022/04/four-and-counting.html

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2022/05/faith.html

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2022/04/death-to-squirrels.html

  In some senses, the volunteer work does not allow me the time, that I would like, to deal with some of the garden issues.  I can always think of more things that I could, and possibly should, be doing to improve the three gardens under my care.  However, for the most part, I don't see the volunteer work as a problem: what I tend to see as more of a problem is my own lack of energy, and the fact that, basically, by early afternoon, I am finished in terms of productive work, and the regular household work, and life administration, that I find so annoying.  It is necessary to keep me alive, and in the situation that I am in.  But I find it very annoying, and the weak enjoyment that I get out of things like tending the gardens does not seem to be worth the annoyance and hassle of keeping myself alive.

On balance, I still wish I was dead.

Psalm 61:2

From the ends of the earth I call to You when my heart is faint; Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.

Situational Awareness

Port Alberni has the worst drivers in the entire world.  Other places may have more aggressive drivers, but Port Alberni drivers 1) are not situationally aware of traffic situations around them, and 2) don't seem to realise that there *are* other drivers, let alone pedestrians, on the road.  And they are getting worse.

I am seeing increasing numbers of Port Alberni drivers who are not willing to stop for pedestrians.  At all.  I am not only the only actual pedestrian in Port Alberni, but I notice, when crossing a street with other Port Alberni residents (who are temporarily out of their cars) that I am the most *aggressive* pedestrian, and the *only* pedestrian who is not afraid of the traffic.  Most of the pedestrians, or, rather, the people in Port Alberni who are temporarily not in their cars, and walking across the street, will try and pick a very large gap in the traffic, and won't even *attempt* to cross the street if there is any traffic on the road.

I tend to walk *right* down the road (mostly because the sidewalks, in the condition they are in, are dangerous), but I do try to avoid impeding traffic.  So I will, if there is any traffic nearby, walk on the side of the road, out of the travelled lanes.  If I am crossing the street in the middle of a block I will try to pick a time when there is no traffic, or at least no traffic nearby.  But if I am crossing the street at an intersection, I figure that there is no point in waiting for the traffic to actually stop.  For one thing, it never *will* stop.  At the intersection I have the right of way, whether there is a marked crosswalk or not.  So I will cross, even if I am impeding the traffic in order to do so.  I'm not stupid about it.  Most times PA drivers are not travelling fast enough to actually kill me outright if they hit me.  And I don't necessarily want to be in a situation where I (they) break my leg, and am unable to walk for a number of months.  So I will not cross the street when a driver shows absolutely no intention of slowing down.

A little while back, out on Beaver Creek Road, taking out broom, I was crossing this street with a pile of Scotch Broom in my hands.  At an intersection there was a whole line of drivers who obviously had no intention of even slowing down, despite the fact that they were passing within less than a metre of me.  On another occasion, again not in dark clothing, not at night, dressed in highly visible clothes, and in an actual marked crosswalk, I again had a situation where a driver obviously had no intention of even slowing down, let alone stopping.

So, as I say, Port Alberni drivers are getting even worse than they have been.  It's not that they didn't notice me in either situation.  They definitely saw me.  I had eye contact with the drivers in all cases, and they obviously had no intention of stopping.

And, recently, I found out something else.  I had been labouring under the misapprehension that it was only pedestrians that Port Alberni drivers are trying to kill.  But, no!  It's other drivers, as well!  I was turning left, onto Redford, from Anderson, and someone on Redford was turning left onto Anderson.  And that driver motioned to me to pull out and turn left.  This would have been kind, were it not for the fact that there were *four* cars barrelling down on the intersection from the east, along Redford.  The guy motioning me to pull out *must* have seen them!  He was *facing* them!  (It was rather difficult for *me* to see that they were there, because of cars parked along Redford, and the extremely wide sidewalks at that location.)  If I had taken his advice/instruction, there would have been quite an unholy traffic mess.

Yup, Port Alberni's bad drivers are getting even worse.

I missed a perfectly good opportunity to die today.  Well, perhaps not perfectly good.  By the time she finally swerved, less than twenty feet from me, she was already slowing down, so I probably wouldn't have died.  Just been badly maimed, making my already wretched life even worse.

There was no other traffic on the road, which is possibly fortunate for her.  No, it was a clear road, with her speeding through the Dip, and me crossing 10th.  In a marked crosswalk.  In broad daylight.  Wearing a gray t-shirt, but with a large pink emblem on it, and bold white lettering on it.  And, of course, wearing my feathers.

I saw her, of course, at least two blocks away.  As I was crossing 10th, I realized, from the sound, that she was not slowing down.  At all.  So, eventually, I turned to pay attention to the car.  She finally decided to serve, about twenty feet away.  And she did stop.  About another seventy feet beyond the crosswalk, and walked back, to where I still watching this whole performance, to apologize.  I'm sure the apology was heartfelt, although I'm not quite sure what good it was supposed to do.

I don't hope that she has a bad day.  She obviously has a job where she is helping people.  I hope that she is able to help people properly today.  But I hope that she considers the possibility of killing someone the next time she gets behind the wheel of the car.

There is a concept; known to the military, law enforcement, and security people: situational awareness.  This is being aware of your situation.  For the most part, we think of it in terms of being aware of dangers and risks to oneself.  But, for drivers, and particular for the drivers of Port Alberni, situational awareness is probably very important, and certainly in short supply.  In the case of the drivers of Port Alberni, it might more profitably be turned to the idea of being aware of the situation through which you are driving.  Are there other cars on the road?  Are there pedestrians on the road?  Is there anything else in the area where you are driving that you, driving a two ton, black (or possibly dark blue), Mitsubishi SUV, could do damage to?

Job 19:7

I cry, "Violence!";

I am not heard: I ask help;

there is no justice.

MGG - 5.36 - HWYD - Lagos

Once upon a time, (ISC)^2 sent me to Nigeria.  (Actually, they sent me twice.  I think they were trying to kill me.)  (And, believe me, I have never yet heard the end of all the jokes about knowing some prince in in Nigeria ...)

First of all, I had to get about $600 worth of vaccinations. Actually, yellow fever was the only one that was specifically required, but I got a bunch of others anyways. The malaria prophylactic was one that upset your stomach, because they figured that the one that made you crazy might have been ill-suited to me. I was definitely crazy enough already. I can't remember how many shots I had. I do remember that the preventative for dysentery was something that I had to start taking about a week in advance.

I also got lots of advice in terms of what I was going to encounter. One person, whose company had had a lot of dealings with West Africa, told me that things would definitely go wrong. Their company had a code word that was used whenever something went seriously wrong: the person who needed assistance would just tell them WAWA, which stood for West Africa Wins Again.

I was also told that, under no circumstance, was I to drink water from taps. Bottled water only, and even check the seal on the bottled water. Don't let anybody open it for you. Make sure that the seal is in fact the seal, and not just a spot of crazy glue.

This was possibly overkill.  But, then again, maybe not.  I was checked into what was either the best or the second best hotel in Lagos, and, even at that, there was no way that I was drinking what came out of those taps.  It was a color that was closer to weak coffee than that of tea, and I didn't even really want to *shower* in it. Although that was not a choice. Come to think of it possibly it was. The last night I could not sleep, and was wandering around the hotel. I passed the swimming pool. It was clear and pristine. I kind of wondered why I hadn't found it earlier, and gone down there with a bar of soap every night.

Then there was the trip itself. Nine hour flight to London, then a six hour flight from London to Lagos. Ah, but first there was getting on the airplane.

You know how they do the boarding by row number to get on to jumbo jets?  Well, they tried that. That was the instruction. They were going to be boarding by seat numbers, and the first section was row so and so does such and such.  That was a futile effort.  As soon as they announced they were going to be boarding by row numbers, everybody in the entire gate area got up and jammed the door. And, of course, they had their carry-on baggage. The definition of carry-on seems to be slightly different in Nigeria. I saw one gentleman with a luggage trolley that was loaded with three suitcases, each of which was larger than any suitcase I have ever seen. That was his carry-on baggage.

On my second trip to Nigeria, the boarding process was pretty much the same as the first.  The gate agents, managing this latter flight, tried to emphasize the need to board by row numbers.  It didn't help.  There was the same mad crush for the gate, with absolutely everyone trying to be first on the aircraft, even though they all had assigned seating, and therefore all had seats.

Well, there was one other person who wasn't rushing for the gate.  This was a young mother, who had about seven different bags, but likely all in support of the infant she had with her.  There was the usual diaper bag, as well as a bag containing bottles of white liquid, and additional bags obviously containing baby support equipment and supplies.  She was frantically trying to repack these bags.  I'm not quite sure to what end: it obviously wasn't going to make the bags, or the contents, any smaller.  But she was repacking the bags, and taking things out, and examining them, and putting them back, sometimes in the same bag, and sometimes in another bag.  And, of course, while she was doing this, the baby was fussing.

So, I was trying to do my bit, by making faces at the baby to keep the baby entertained.  And, at one point, the mother, noticing this, just picked up the baby, and handed her to me.  So, I was carrying the baby, jogging the baby, rocking the baby, talking to the baby, trying to keep her entertained.  And at some point, one of the gate agents came over to me, and asked if I wanted pre-boarding.  I didn't want to take undue advantage of this situation, but I did ask the mother, and she shook her head indicating a lack of interest in the pre-boarding offer.

But I thought it was kind of interesting.  I am Caucasian.  Doesn't particularly matter what kind but I'm obviously white.  It was a very interesting situation, for once in my life, definitely being in the minority in this regard.  The baby was as black as the ace of spades.  I don't want to indicate that there could not be some marital situation where I had taken over parentage of a child that I had not made any attempts to create.  But I did think it somewhat odd that anyone could consider that I had made any genetic contribution to this child.  Cute though she undoubtedly was.  (As a matter of fact, the fact that she was cute would, again, count against me making any genetic contribution to her makeup.)

The flight itself was unremarkable. So unremarkable that, at one point, I realized that we have been flying over the Sahara desert for two hours. And that I should probably at least look out the window and see what it looked like.

The Sahara desert looks kind of like what you see when you are flying over the Colorado River in the United States. Only a lot bigger. And it takes longer to fly over it.

On the first trip, when we landed in Lagos, there was a similar mad dash to be first off the plane, and get to arrivals, pick up your luggage, and get through customs.  I didn't particularly try to be part of that mad dash, but I did I was still affected by it, as I got to the last leg of the journey before we hit the luggage carousel, which was an escalator, heading down.  The escalator didn't seem to be a particular problem, until, as I was nearing the bottom, I realized that I wasn't going to be able to get off, since there were a number of people who couldn't get off the escalator because of the crush of people in front of them.  I stepped over the side.

So, I arrived in the airport in Lagos. Now, I knew, I had been told, that someone would be coming for me to pick me up at the airport. I had, in fact, been given his passport number and the number on his Nigerian identity card so that there would be no possibility of someone picking me up. I felt that this might have been a bit of overkill. But not when I got through customs, and outside.

Outside was complete chaos. There was a huge crowd. There was no signage, there was no organization, there was no possible way to identify a waiting area, or any indication of who I was to see. I went back inside the terminal. 

I realized why the people in the company that was putting on the course had made such a big deal about identifying the person who was going to come and pick me up.  An awful lot of people were offering taxi service, or hire cars, in a huge crush immediately outside the arrivals door.  I didn't take anybody up on it, and eventually found the people who were supposed to pick me up, who did pick me up, and take me to my hotel.  I eventually found out why it was a very good thing that I hadn't taken anyone up on the offer of transport when I couldn't immediately find the people who were supposed to come and get me.  There was a great deal of signage, at the airport, outlining the fact that no, there was no taxi service in Nigeria and that if anyone offered you a taxi, they were probably trying to kidnap and rob you.  Unfortunately, all of this signage I later discovered--in the departures lounge, not the arrivals area.

As noted, in Nigeria there are no taxis. There are "hire cars." It's a car and a driver and the driver takes you where you want to go. It's not a metered situation, and it's usually set up in advance, and it may, in fact, be a long-term arrangement. For the week that I was teaching there in Nigeria, James picked me up at the hotel every morning, and then and drove me to the office. At the end of the teaching day, James would pick me up at the office, and drive me back to the hotel.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/08/mgg-535-hwyd-you-do-you.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/08/mgg-537-hwyd-nigerian-culture.html

Feathers

As previously noted, although I looked, I couldn't find any suitable safety reflectors at *any* stores.  I finally found these feather ones as giveaways at a table at a sort of "all possible activities in Port Alberni" event one time, staffed by people from Parks and Recreation.  Then, when I went to get some more, nobody at Parks and Rec knew anything about them!  So it was *another* search around civic offices, trying to find out who knew what they were and where they were from!  I *finally* found some at the Public Safety Building/office.  Then, noting the ICBC source, tried other locations.  They are sometimes available at the ICBC claims centre, *never* at the ICBC office at Service BC, never at any of the insurance offices in town (who mostly survive on ICBC renewals), and sometimes, in limited amounts, at the RCMP detachment.  (ICBC used to have square ones with the little silver bead keychain type chains.  The feathers seem to have been around for about three years, now, and First Nations groups and individuals are keen on them.)

Mostly they are white, both sides, and even the coloured ones are white on the back.  I have built up a stock of the various colours: orange, blue (which everyone else calls purple), and, briefly, rainbow.  I managed to find some pink, which I am kind of hoarding, because of Gloria.  (The Filipino guys *love* the pink.)  The ICBC public safety/info rep on the Island, says we should have some yellow and blue, soon.

My contact with ICBC, now, is mostly through Community Policing.  ICBC does a lot of support for Community Policing, due to speed watch, distracted driving, and other traffic safety related stuff.  Community Policing operates out of the Public Safety Building, and they usually have a stock of the reflectors.  Even more so, now, since the ICBC public safety/info rep knows that I give them away, around town, so she makes sure she brings a box whenever she comes.  (At the last all-Island ICBC/police volunteer groups meeting, I met a couple from Nanaimo who are "the feather people" there.)  Apparently I am known, around town, as much for being "the feather guy" as "the walkin' dude," and one of the other Community Policing volunteers insists that I have a First Nations name: he always refers to me as "Glowing Feather."  I wear at least one on pretty much any outfit I have on, and usually have a small stock in a pocket or in my pack, and, whenever someone comments "I like your feathers!" I generally immediately ask if they want one.

The feathers are good because they are *not* on the jacket or clothing.  You clip them on to something, and they flop around and move.  Having a shiny object moving makes it even more noticeable.

Isaiah 24:16

We hear songs of praise for God from every place on earth.  They praise the God who does what is right.  But I say, I am finished, I am dying, I have had enough, there is no hope for me; I am pining and wasting away.  What I see is terrible.  Evil still prevails, evil people are deceiving their friends, hurting and betraying people more and more; treachery is everywhere!

Review of "The Art of Grieving" by Preston Zeller

This is a film about one artist's art project over the grief of his brother's death, along with some speculations on art therapy.  The art project is a mosaic or collage consisting of a painting done each day over the course of a year.

There is nothing particularly novel or interesting about the project or the art therapy material, although it may prompt some to undertake some kind of grief project of their own.

Sermon 36 - An Imperfect Sermon

Sermon 36 - Perfect

Romans 5:3-4

Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces endurance/perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope.

Romans 8:18

I believe that the present suffering is nothing compared to the coming glory that is going to be revealed to us.

I am watching a lot of Hallmark movies.  No, this is not simply a guilty pleasure.  In fact, I find an awful lot of them extremely annoying.  However, I'm watching a lot of them, and I'm not entirely sure why.  It may be simply because my wife is dead, and I am needing to watch romances.  At least watching Hallmark movies consumes less time than if I were reading Harlequin romances.  They also aren't interested in the current preference for profanity and dark themes that seems to pervade most of the available movies these days.  Hallmark movies are undemanding.  They are not great art.  I must say that, out of the possibly hundreds that I have now watched, I have found at least two that are, surprisingly, worth watching again.  Possibly even three.  And, given that about every third movie plot seems to involve a partner who has died, at some point in the past, maybe it's just pure random chance, but I have even found one rather profound statement on grief in one of the Hallmark movies.

Putting all of that to one side, though, an awful lot of Hallmark movies involve plots centered around, or at least touching on, somebody else's wedding.  It's generally not the central character's wedding: it's usually a friend for whom they are being the maid of honor, or best man.  And, of course, the brides are always claiming that the wedding must be perfect.  Hallmark does not many opportunities to accuse the bride of being a bridezilla, but rather encourages this idea of the perfect wedding.  There is no dispute.  Everyone always agrees that the wedding must be perfect.

Gloria took on the role of wedding hostess for one of the churches she attended for quite a while.  Of course, those weddings were a lot closer to perfect then they would have been without Gloria's assistance.  But Gloria would encourage them away from this idea.  Gloria always had a piece of advice for any couple who said that they wanted their wedding to be perfect.  She always said that you didn't want the wedding to be perfect.  She would tell them that twenty years from now nobody would remember the perfection of the wedding.  Indeed, if the wedding was perfect, nobody would remember it at all.  Forty years from now, when you were looking back on your wedding, you were not going to remember the perfection.  No, the stories that would get told, over and over again, were always of the disasters.  The mistakes.  The things that went wrong.

This is absolutely true.  Disasters.  Errors.  Imperfections.  That's what we remember.

It was true in our own wedding.  I really can't tell you an awful lot about that day.  I do remember that my father, who had agreed to act as wedding photographer for the wedding, at the very last minute; at the rehearsal dinner, in fact; informed me that he was not going to do so.  We had to scramble to try and make up this shortfall, making up a checklist of specific photographs, and specific family members, to get pictures of and with, at the last minute.  We dragged in my little brother, as something of a stand-in for candid shots, and, basically, I was the photographer for our wedding, getting people posed, and then jumping in at the last minute while somebody else clicked the shutter.  In the course of all of this, we managed not to get any pictures of Gloria's grandmother.  That's what we remember about the photographs for our wedding.

Oh, that's not the *only* disaster.  The very first name in our guest book for the wedding was a signature of a person who neither of us knew.  This was (and possibly is) a street person, who came in to score free food.  We even know that Gloria's mother talked to her, catching her scarfing sandwiches off a tray, and Sulla handed her the tray and told her to share it around the room.  We even have a picture of her, in one of the candid shots, a woman, dressed in a man's suit, beaming smile, front and center.

Off the top of my head, I would struggle to recall, of the 350 people who were invited to our wedding, who came.  Although I can recall one family.  They had the radio antenna broken off their car, and the radio antenna was then twisted into a hook, and used to break into their car, so that somebody could steal the wedding presents that they had brought to the wedding.

Like I said, it's not the perfection you remember.  It's the disasters. 

Gloria arranged her parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary, as well.  And so, Gloria being Gloria, it was as close to perfect as you could possibly get.  I don't really remember anything from that event, either.  Well, I do remember that, delivering the thank yous and acknowledgments at the end of the evening, I was interrupted by a yell from Number One Daughter, who called out, "What time is it, Rob?"  I didn't understand this, until I looked at my watch, and realized that it was precisely ten PM, which was the time that we had slated for the event to end.  So I guess that is not exactly a disaster, but it's the exception that proved the rule, since that comment was definitely *not* in our plans.  But the only *other* thing that I really remember from the fiftieth anniversary celebration, was that Number One Daughter had been dragooned to play the part of her grandmother, and to wear her grandmother's wedding dress.  However, her grandmother, at roughly the same age that she was, seems to have been a little slimmer than Number One Daughter.  While we had taken care, and Gloria had done amazing work at ensuring that the dress was repaired and ready, it was so tight that Number One Daughter could hardly breathe as she was walking through the event.  Maybe not quite a disaster, but, again, about the only thing you remember.  That's the story that gets told, and retold.

I am sure that you can recall, fairly easily and quickly, similar stories from your own wedding.  Or anniversaries, or other major family events.  It's the disasters we remember.  Not the perfection.

I remember a professor at UBC, who made the argument that Heaven was inherently illogical and impossible.  His point was that Heaven lasted for eternity.  Therefore he asserted, we would eventually get bored.  Even if heaven was perfect, we would eventually get bored with it.

I don't think he allowed for the fact that, when we are perfect in Heaven, we are going to be different than we are now, sinful creatures that we are.  And Heaven is not going to be like here on earth, fallen world that it is.  And so I very much doubt that we will be bored in Heaven.  But I do see his point.  Here on earth, perfection gets boring after a while.

What, after all, do we want out of the world.  How perfect do we run the world to be?  How much imperfection will we accept?  When we put it that way, "Do we want the world to be perfect?" we will generally admit that of, course we don't expect perfection.  This is a fallen world.

But how much imperfection are we willing to tolerate?

The answer to that, very often, seems to be, not very much.

And this leads us to something that, initially, will seem far distant from weddings, and perfect weddings, and bridezillas, and so forth.  And that is the problem of pain.

The thing is, when we complain, "Why has God allowed this?"  Well, yes, sometimes we are talking about major disasters.  Sometimes we are talking about the loss of someone close and important in our lives.  But often we aren't.  Often we are complaining about minor issues.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in his book "The Gulag Archipelago," makes this point.  I've got to admit that I have my own story of imperfection, on my part, concerning "The Gulag Archipelago."  I knew that it was important literature, and so I bought it.  All three volumes.  Yes, I know that there are three volumes.  I have seen, over the years, many, many copies of volume one on people's bookshelves.  And I know that that proves that they haven't read it.  Volume one is the only one that doesn't have the volume number on the spine of the book.  Volume two says two, and volume three says three.  But volume one just has the title, The Gulag Archipelago.  And so, a lot of people bought volume one, put it on their bookshelves proudly, displaying the fact that they're erudite and sophisticated.  And not realising that the existence of this single volume proves that they haven't read it, and don't realise that they haven't got the whole thing.

But that's not the imperfection that I need to stress.  I *did* buy the whole thing.  But I struggled to read it.  It took me two years to get seventy-five pages in.  It wasn't until two years later, and seventy-five pages read in bits and pieces over the ensuing two years, that it finally grabbed ahold of me.  And I read the rest of the 1700 pages in two weeks.  Solzhenitsyn is a genius, and The Gulag Archipelago is a work of genius, and very, very worthwhile reading.  And I'll give you one story from it, for those of you who, even though you may have it on your bookshelves, have never read it.  The work, of course, is about the gulags.  The prison system in the Soviet Union.  He talks about the fact that this was kept secret even from Russian citizens.  Therefore prisoners, when transferred from one prison situation, from one gulag, to another, were not transported by armed and uniformed prison guards.  No.  There would be the prisoner, there would be two guards, all three of whom were in civilian clothes.  And they would be travelling on public transport.

It sort of needs to be said that there would still be a separation between you and the people around you.  Not enforced by the guards, who couldn't, after all, admit that you were, in fact, a prisoner.  And so you could talk to those around you.  But there was a separation of understanding.  You, as a prisoner, had the same understanding as those of us who are bereaved.  The fact that anything and everything can be taken away from you in an instant.  Which rearranges your values of what is important.

It isn't important that your daughter-in-law doesn't give you sufficient attention or respect.  It isn't the important that your neighbour uses too much of a common resource.  It isn't important that you didn't get the promotion that you thought you deserved, and therefore don't have your name on the door.  These are minor issues in comparison to the ability to contact, at will, those whom we love and with whom we have close relationships.  With those we care for, and who care for us.

So when we complain, "Why does God allow this?" often we are complaining about a minor issue, a lost opportunity, a lost promotion, a lost purchase opportunity.  These aren't things that matter.

But that's only *one* problem with our understanding of the problem of pain.

Yes, there are losses in this world, and the losses hurt.  But after all, what is our real situation?  Look at somebody else, and see that they are worse off than we are.

I tell people that my life is terrible.  I am a grieving widower.  In addition, I am a depressive.  I have just been diagnosed with degenerative disc disease.  I was previously diagnosed with arthritis.  I can't see as well as I used to.  Old age is not for wimps.

Viewed objectively, though, my life is good.  As only one example, I live in Canada.  Nobody is dropping bombs on my house.  What do I have to complain about?  What right do I have to complain about anything?  Just because I have a chemical imbalance in my brain, or the wrong mix of bacteria in my gut, or a brain chemical imbalance *because* of the wrong mix of gut bacteria, that means that I can't appreciate what I have and feel terrible all the time, is that a real problem?  A lot of people would like to have my life.  (As far as I'm concerned, they can have it.)

So Is that a real problem? 

So, do we have real problems or not?  Are we complaining about real problems?  Or not?

I am a teacher.  No, I am not changing the subject.  I am pointing out a *second* problem with our understanding of the problem of pain.  And that is the fact that sometimes, when you are teaching people something, you have to teach them before they can understand why they need to learn this lesson.  This seems, ultimately, to be one of the major lessons of the book of Job.  When God finally answers Job, His answer is, basically, I'm not going to tell you.  You wouldn't understand the answer anyway.  I am God.  I created all this.  I know how this works.  And you don't.  So you don't know why you are going through this, because you can't.

Yet *another* problem with our understanding of the problem of pain is that we may be asking the wrong question.

We are asking the question, "Why did God let this happen?" and thinking, "Why didn't God prevent this bad thing from happening?"  But possibly, the answer may be, "What are you going to do to help?"

God could do everything for himself.  God could do all the things that God is asking us to do.  And God could probably do a better job of it.  So, why is it that God gives us tasks?  Gives us purposes.  Gives us opportunities to work for His kingdom.

I'll tell you the answer: I don't know.

But He does.  So it must be something for our benefit, not for God's.

And that means, when a disaster happens, it may be another opportunity to help.

I read a short story, many years ago, called "Chance After Chance."  In it, a priest has had something of a crisis of faith, and sees God as simply testing us, and giving us trials.  Trial after trial.  To test us, and see if we are worthy.

But then he's given an opportunity to give the last rites to someone who is dying.  And in presenting comfort to this person, tells him that in our life we are not presented with trial after trial, but chance after chance to do the right thing.  And somehow saying that, convinces the priest himself of the truth of this.  That God does not test us, time and time again, but gives us chance after chance, and opportunity after opportunity, to do the right thing.  To help.  To protect.  To do what God wants.

So, has God allowed this to happen as a trial?  Or is it a chance?  Is it an opportunity for us to help?

OK, it's not a perfect opportunity.  This world is not perfect.

But then again, that's our fault, isn't it?  We sinned and messed it up.

This wasn't what God originally intended.

Sermons - https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/09/sermons.html

Imaginary friends

Look, my imaginary friends don't find any evidence of *your* existence, either!

2 Corinthians 2:7

Now it is time to rather turn to comfort him, otherwise otherwise such a person might be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow and may become so bitter and discouraged that he won’t be able to recover.

Jeremiah 16:5

For thus says the Lord: Do not enter the house of mourning, or go to lament or grieve for them, for I have taken away my peace from this people, my steadfast love and mercy, declares the Lord.

MGG - 5.35 - HWYD - You do you

Later in my career as an instructor and course designer for (ISC)^2 (and I have instructed, and produced materials, as I did for (ISC)^2, for other companies as well) I was sent to situations that were problematic.  Very often they didn't tell me what the problem was.  On one occasion, I was being sent to Germany, and got on the phone with the person who was running the local venue.  I had a very terse conversation with him, in which he sounded quite cold.  I got on the plane, and, apparently, while I was on the plane, this person looked me up on the Internet.  When I landed in Germany, and got to the venue, I was greeted with quite a different reaction.  He was very pleased to see me, having researched me, and seen the amount of work that I had both published, and published on the Internet itself.  Apparently the training office had sent a completely unqualified instructor previous to sending me.

I was also sent, on occasion, to co-teach with instructors who were, themselves, on probation.  In one case, apparently they were about to terminate this one particular instructor.  He and I got along great.  We would talk about his experiences, which were extensive, in law enforcement, and he had a fund of stories to tell, and a great deal of experience that was very valuable.

But in front of a class, I could understand why he was on probation.  You know the old joke about how do you tell if you're talking to an extroverted programmer?  He's the one who looks at *your* feet when he's talking to you.  Yes, this person could have been the origin of that joke.  He looked at his feet when he talked to you, he mumbled, he was unsure of himself, in front of a crowd.  It got to the point where a number of the candidates from the seminar were coming to me and saying they wanted me to teach everything, and they didn't want him to teach anything anymore.  I told them that he had a great deal of experience that was very valuable to them, and that they should try and extract as much of his knowledge as they could.

And then we had a talk, ourselves.  And I told him that I knew he had always been told that you had to make eye contact with the people in the seminar, that you had to speak up, that you had to project a forceful presence, in order to deliver material in this type of seminar.

I told him to forget all of that.

I told him that the next day he was going to deliver the domain about law and investigations.  This was his field, and he knew it cold.  And not to worry about how he looked, or how he sounded, or making eye contact.  Just talk.

So, the next day, he did.  He mumbled, he looked at his shoes, and the seminar candidates were absolutely riveted.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/07/mgg-534-hwyd-teaching-styles.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/08/mgg-536-hwyd-lagos.html

Certificate of Enlightenment

This is to certify that Robert Michael Slade has attained enlightenment.  We use the word "attained," because fewer people understand what it means.  Unlike the word reach "reached," which means that you have grasped something, or come to the end of a path or process, or the word obtained, which means that you have now possess it.  So, we use the word attained, because people don't understand what it means, and therefore can't dispute it.  I mean, let's be realistic.  You don't even know what enlightenment means, do you?  Go ahead.  Try to define enlightenment.  We'll wait.

Can't do it, can you? 

This certificate is issued by the universe.  Yes, that's right, the *universe.*  The sum totality of all things.  What, you think a certificate from some guru, or some organization of people who claim to be enlightened, can really certify enlightenment?  Don't be ridiculous.  Enlightenment is huge.  So, you can't just have somebody, or a small group of somebodies, certify that you're enlightened.  You've got to have the universe.  Only the universe is big enough.