Before and After

Drawn in the airport in Thailand on the way to Nepal in August, 2010

Snapped at my farewell momo party about two weeks before I actually left Nepal, in July 2011.

Old Style, New Style

A Hot Dog in Kathmandu

"What does a hot dog look like in Kathmandu?" You've been wondering, I know, so I thought I'd save you the pain of asking. You can thank me by taking me out for a dog when I'm back (in twoish weeks...whoa.)

Cool As Ice

This excellent new wall art near New Road in Kathmandu reminded me of myself, so I figured I'd better post it ;-)

Also, BOOM:

The Winners

You guys!

It has taken way longer than I anticipated to announce the winners of The Chase Gaze doodling contest.
This is mostly on account of I didn't feel like bloggin' fer a little bit.


The judge's pick winner was:

This awesome drawing is by Beth Glick, who sells her other fantastic artwork on Etsy. She's going to get a cool prize!

And the winner of the "Sidelongest gaze award" was:

Michael Neumann drew this. He also makes great webcomics and videogames. He is also getting a great prize.

Many thanks and props to all eight of you who submitted drawings. You are the real heros. And by that I mean you are all great doodlers and you should make sure never to lose that skill.

Also, here's an honorable mention that didn't get entered into the actual contest because it isn't actually a drawing. David Bontrager submitted this hilarious thing though:

I assume this is some stone-cold fox from a sitcom in the mid nineties that I didn't watch because my attention was occupied by Sister,Sister and The Nanny reruns, But hey, he's giving a sidelong glance, to be sure. Nice submission Bon Bon :-)

So, go back to the original post to submit your votes for "people's choice award." You can vote for your own drawing, and if only one person votes, then whoever they vote for will win!

Yayyyy contests.

<3

The Chase Gaze: A Doodling Contest

"People who do great things look at the same world everyone else does, but notice some odd detail that's compellingly mysterious."

--Paul Graham

eh...?

My Denver buddy Jesse D. made a great sketch of my Facebook profile pic recently, in which I am giving a sidelong glance to a stuffed cat (right). This prompted me to doodle myself giving a sidelong glance to whom else but the scrutineer of my doodle (above).
Do I not look great giving sidelong glances!?
So here's what's happening: A Drawing Contest!

The  Contest

Submit the best possible drawing of me making a sidelong glance that you can doodle in five minutes or less. Use your imagination. Or photographic evidence of my existence (if you can find any). If you're real lucky you can get me to pose live! (As if I could sit still for five minutes.)

The drawings will be judged by someone who is impartial (to your drawings) but very very partial to my actual studly looks and sidelong glances.

Submit your drawings in the comments thread of this post, or email/facebook message me if you want to submit them some other way. I'll upload all the submissions into this post without the names of their artists so we can have a people's choice vote via the comments.

The judged winner and peoples' choice winner will each get Some Nifty Thing that I'll bring back from Nepal and mail to you when I return in about (gasp!) six weeks.

Pencils ready....

GO!

Update: The submissions are rolling in. Here they are in order of submission:

To vote, make a comment on this post and include the # of your favorite Chase Gaze doodle.

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

#8

Development Agencies and the Bold Filter

Some weeks ago I read a piece of advice for tech startups that struck me as also being great advice for development organizations.

The suggestion was that any startup should have a goal that all other goals are subordinate to; a filter that all company actions must be able to pass through to be deemed worthwhile. It should be something simple to express. Something you can print in giant bold letters and stick on the wall of the office so that when people get lost in the world of spreadsheets and memos and way too many emails they can look up at the sign and ask themselves: "Is what I'm doing right now serving that goal? Can I draw an unbroken line from what I'm doing now to the ultimate objective of this organization?"

Even for profit making organizations, this final filter in bold print should never be "Make Money." Everybody wants that. Reminding yourself of it won't help you do better work.  For Facebook the sign might say "Connect People." For the New York Times it might be "Educate and Inform."

According to Kathy Sierra's guest post on Hugh MacLeod's blog, the final filter for many companies should be "MAKE USERS AWESOME." She argues that all marketing jujitsu is doomed to fail if the product (term used loosely) you're selling doesn't help its users be better in a way that they want to be better.

 J., of Tales From The Hood, touched this idea in a recent blog post, when he wrote of humanitarian aid products:

"...the main point is that if the people we say we want to help don’t want the thing, then it doesn’t work."

For humanitarian aid and development organizations, the ultimate filter should be "Help People." But everyone in the aid/development sector wants that. It isn't specific enough. NGOs should carefully examine Why They're In Business, and figure out what makes their organization helpful to people, exactly. Are you trying to empower people financially? Provide food security/sovereignty? Promote sanitation? Reunite families that have been separated by political/military conflict?

Whatever the organization's ultimate goal, they should know it well, and the workers should regularly double check whether what they're doing at the moment is aligned with that raison d'etre.

Having visible reminders of your crucial, simple goal can help keep people in touch with each other and with the real importance of what they're doing.
Everybody likes to be reminded that what they're doing is important.

Workers are happier, and do better work, when they know what they're working towards.

Customers, whether social network users, newspaper readers, or recipients of humanitarian aid, are happier when the organizations they work with help them be awesome.

The Lisfranc Injury Blog

The pale vertical line on my left foot isthe scar. The last vestige.

Two years ago I sustained a totally sucky injury to my left foot! I chronicled the whole ordeal, including several gory surgeries (photos!), and 6 months of wearing a cyborg boot and walking with crutches on another blog. A bunch of other people with the same (relatively rare) injury commented on the blog, asked for advice and general support.

Its been about a year since my final surgery, and I am living a totally rad life, in spite of all the dire predictions I made when I was in a depressed stupor about having to use crutches for six months.

I just wrote my final post on the Lisfranc Injury Blog, which you can read here, and if you can stomach it, check out the gory surgery photos here.

<3 Chasews

Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like

You guys! I guest posted over at Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like, the hilariousest blog that has ever confronted Expat Aid Workers about their own baloney. Establish some Field Cred by clicking the following link and checking out my post about Local Business Relationships:

http://stuffexpataidworkerslike.com/2011/06/03/61-having-a-guy-for-that/

Chase

Nina and Hager: Best Burger in Kathmandu

Would you guys feel a little bit guilty about eating a hamburger in a Hindu country? I did.
But hey, this one is available, and it is insanely great.

I had been seriously craving blue cheese for a little while, and I asked whether Nina and Hager had it. They did! I got some on this "Big Daddy Burger" that I ordered.

As an added plus, the meat is "processed under German technology."
....?

Nina and Hager's "Big Daddy Burger" is definitely the best burger in Kathmandu, and is probably in the running for the best burger I've ever eaten at a restaurant.

Hindenburg's Uncertainty Principle

Lads on a Rope

Remember that picture of a giant wooden chariot that I posted a few posts ago?
I learned what it is called: Macchindranath Rath.  Emily and I also went to the party in the street when it first started getting pulled around on its tour of the city. Here's a picture of how the Chariot gets around.

A bunch of rambunctious dudes line up on a rope and pull,  The chariot moves several kilometers over a few days.

Cute Baby Elephant and Paragliding Pictures

You guys! I did some serious tourism recently and saw this really cute baby elephant!

...and also went paragliding! That's Emily in the glider ahead of and below me, and the city over yonder is Pokhara, Nepal's number one destination for...uh...paragliding, and other cool stuff.

Mothers

Nepal's Mother's Day just passed, and America's is on the way. The top picture is of my mother reading a newspaper by the light of this super bright sun-lamp thing we have in our kitchen. The bottom picture is the mother of my host household in Nepal, chopping veggies by the light of a 48 bulb LED lantern that we use when the electricity is out (which is 14 hours daily). 

Moms and their kitchen lamps...am I right?

Happy Mother's Day(s)!

Monsoon Cycling

These dudes looked like they were having a blast, biking through a flooded street that was waist deep at some points. They hit a pothole once while our taxi was beside them and the back guy almost flew off. They laughed riotously.

Kathmandu's Epic Chariot Towing Celebration

Check out this huge chariot being built in Kathmandu! I don't really know what the celebration is, but apparently this will get towed around town by Strong Men With Ropes for a week or so.
Yes, those wheels are as tall as people and yes the whole thing is made out of wood.
Supposedly if the tower breaks during the towing, the king will be deposed. But there's no king anymore. The chariot must have broken really badly, and they had to dismantle monarchy entirely. 

Famous Magnates Cartoon

I looked at the past six months worth of Toothpaste for Dinner comics on the day that I made this, so a hat tip for Drew (who makes TFD) and another for Hugh MacLeod, the awesomeness of whose cartoons regularly makes me want to make cartoons.

How are Bricks Made?

How many bricks is that?

Bricks in Nepal start out as mud in a valley floor which is dug out by a man, woman or child using a hand tool. The use of use of child labor, poor working conditions and low wages in Nepal's brick making industry are being challenged by the Brick Clean Network.

 The mud gets packed into a wooden mold with a brand name in it, and then slapped out as a brick and dried in the sun in a row or stack. One person can mold around 1,000 bricks per day. If he/she's paid 50 paisa (half a rupee) per brick, he/she makes 500 rupees per day, or about seven US dollars.

After the bricks get cooked in those kilns with the big smokestacks featured in some of the above photos, they're trucked all over the country, and then carried in woven basket backpacks to their final destinations, where masons build houses and courtyard walls out of them.

...and some bricks just languish in piles until they return to the dust whence they came.

Click here to read a news story I wrote about bricks and other building materials being recycled by a building demolition company in Indiana.

World of Warcraft Grunt Labor is Humanitarian Gold...maybe?

This buddha really has nothing to do with the
whole Warcraft thing. Except he's made of GOLD!
Well, its just gold paint, actually.
But seriously you guys...
...some people are trying to meditate.

Some countries promote microfinance and small businesses to help lift people out of poverty.

Some countries sell piles of videogame gold.
 
It is common practice in the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft to buy "gold" that has been "farmed" by workers in China. Now, one report is suggesting that NGOs should help poor folks get jobs manufacturing virtual money for the virtual market.

Jon Stokes wrote for Ars Technica that, according to a new study, "the market for virtual goods and services represents a growth opportunity for developing countries, and that NGOs should consider getting involved in connecting poorer, mostly rural residents with opportunities to help meet the demand for farmed gold, high-level player characters, crafted in-game items, and the like."

It is reprehensible that some people can afford to pay real money for play money, when others can't afford to eat. But virtual products sell. If we'll buy "fair trade" coffee and chocolate, and decorate our houses with international gew-gaws, why not furnish our videogame lairs with virtual "gold" made by paid workers in China?

Would you support an NGO whose goal was to get poor people jobs where they produce virtual money for which wealthier people will then pay actual money?

Transparency

Some politicians have more important things
 to deal with than crushing leakers.

The Obama administration is laying the smackdown on whistleblowers in the most X-treme manner seen in 40 years. 

New York Times executive editor Bill Keller is patiently suggesting that the government do a better job of keeping its secrets so the NYT can stop bumming the gov't out by reporting on them. 

USAID suspended a giant international development contract, causing a multinational NGO to implode, with almost no explanation of why.

Is transparency a pipe dream?

Positively speaking, though, with the amount of TV I'm watching to distract myself from the above stated horrors, my brain should be devoid of nutrition in a matter of weeks, leaving me invulnerable to 2012's impending zombie apocalypse.

;-)

The Sum of my Curiosities, or Why Social Q&A is Awesome.

Lots of people mostly like to talk about subjects they know a lot about. I do too. Who doesn't? It's comfy to stay within our own realms of knowledge.
And also dull. You might teach someone else something by talking about things you know. But what will you learn?

I want my conversations, and therefore my relationships, to be based on what I want to know, not what I know already. I am much more excited about the questions that I have than the answers that I have.

According to a recent study I did by looking at the internet for five seconds, there are a jillion question and answer websites. Many, many people are trying to commingle Q&A style interaction with social networking technology. My two favorite such sites, Kommons and Quora, are doing a great job of making shared curiosity a basis for relationships in social media spaces like Twitter and Facebook.

Myspace and Facebook were/are all about molding an online identity. You curate the events of your life in pictures and text, so that you can show people who you were, are, and are becoming. Whether you portray yourself accurately, or carefully redact parts of your life to present a tamer self for your online audience is (mostly) up to you. Either way, most of what you post is about the past.

Question based social networking is much more forward looking, and therefore thrilling, in my eyes. Kommons allows you to "follow" questions that have been posted by other users, thereby grouping you with those users solely on the basis of a shared curiosity. By choosing questions to follow, you curate an identity for yourself, not based on what has been, but what you want to be. You and someone else have the same question. You're trying to grow your knowledge in the same direction.

Quora (whose budget, it must be mentioned, is tens of thousands of times that of Kommons) goes a step further and lets you follow people and topics as well as questions. This is one more step towards making mutual curiosity the basis for deeper relationships.



Discourse based on experience will always be valuable in its own way, and mutual curiosity has always been a basis for relationships. I am excited about online explorations of how to make all of it easier.

People often define themselves by the sum of their experiences.
I'd rather be defined by the sum of my curiosities.
Not what I do know, but what I will know. Not what I have been, but what I will be.

Find the Buddha

Scroll down if you don't like "fun" 'where's waldo?' type games.

Found him.

Tools Matter

My Macbook Pro quit its job this week, and during the few days between when it stopped working and when I took it to the repair place, I felt a surprising sense of relief...that the computer was out of my life for a while.

When I first got this computer, it was shipped to my dad's office so it wouldn't be stolen off our porch or something. I remember feeling euphoric and breathy when I finally got my hands on it, and rode the elevator back down to the office block's main floor thinking of all the projects I was going to do with it. I could make music with it. Electronic music. (I had failed to master an instrument.) I could make music videos and web sites. I could finally learn to animate. Now that I could compute anywhere I'd basically be living my creative dream during every waking hour.

Fast forward almost five years, to last week, the day before my computer stopped working. I watched six episodes of Gossip Girl on DVD that day, on my laptop. The endless creative possibilities offered by my laptop had been overruled by some horrible, sexified Stepford teens on teevee. When my computer broke, the weight of all that "creative potential," (and all that teevee that needed watchin',) was magically lifted. I was able to look around and ponder what I should really do, with what I had, where I was.

New creative tools always give me goose bumps.

"With this, I'll make something awesome!" I always tell myself.

...and then, whatever-unit-of-time later...I find myself staggering under the guilt of not having actually done as much as I had imagined I would.

I have misconceived the relationship between tools and creativity. Tools can't make me create. By being creative, I make space in my life for tools.

Inevitably, after pretending for too long that I'll become a productive, creative genius if I buy the right...markers...sketchpad...software...computer...I have to dig myself out from under my pile of tools and their weighty potentials and decide, without the help of inanimate objects, what I should actually do.

The above cartoon's caption comes from a Twitter exchange I had with Hugh MacLeod. I was gushing about these pens that I really want (which he draws his cartoons with), and I said "Tools Matter."

He said, "Yeah... Until they don't."

Creative processes get easier with tools. But the real creative spirit can use any raw material to make something great.

I am constantly forgetting and relearning this.

Do my powers of link-forwarding make me dumber...or just less thoughtful?

How much of what is in your mind do you know the origin of? How many of the things you say can you also describe why you are saying them, and why you thought of them in the first place?

Ah yes, punks. "Rock the nation." That'll tell 'em.

I am of two minds about this Nepali 10 rupee bill. On one hand, I feel more at home in a country where disaffected youth like to vandalize currency. On the other hand, the slogans these vandals used are clearly lukewarm refries of old "revolutionary" propaganda.
The vandals received signals about change, about uprising and revolution, and instead of taking those signals to heart, flipped them. Perhaps these money scribblers were working on a bigger movement, an evil plan of their own...but I doubt it. Likely, the evanescent thrill of writing "The F Word" was good enough... This is the danger of signal repetition. Sometimes it feels better to pass something on than it does to ponder whether the message is worth passing on at all.

In a wonderful scene from the movie Waking Life, a woman describes the "byzantine conduit" of experiences, memories and references a single word (like "love") must traverse in our brains for us to "understand" it. Our brains are labyrinthine networks, and though they work fast (200 calculations per second per active neuron), the signals we perceive are complex, and they take time to process. With accelerating modes of communication, we devote less time to processing signals. Ideas only have moments, and can only reach the nearest, most tread corridors of our minds before they're yanked back out and passed along, contemplated so little that they might as well just have bounced off the walls and echoed.

As we increasingly feel pressure to be fast at communication, we are transformed. Under increasing pressure the idealists, artists, contemplators, theorists...thinkers... are transformed into megaphones.

Marketing sensei/blogmaster Seth Godin recently wrote a post called "The Danger of Repeating Signals," in which he described a scene from The Count of Monte Cristo.  In the scene, a man characterizes himself as a machine, not to be blamed for what he says, for he is only passing on signals, and if he passes them on accurately, how can he be judged for the content?

I'm also guilty of mindless signal repetition. When I forward links, I hardly stop to think whether what I'm sending is trustable, or even worthwhile. I assume that by transmitting the information, I will be providing the same basic, sensorial reaction to it that I had, to the target of my forward. This is dangerous. When I do it, I stop thinking. I become a node in someone else's meme-distribution network. I am used by people who are consciously/unconsciously trying to propagate memes and "go viral" on the Internet.

There are times when most of my communication goes out in the form of links. I bookmark URLs prodigiously, and often I find it easier to 'curate' a list of links on a subject than to actually say what I think about it.

Eventually, maybe I'll become too lazy to even think what I think about it in the first place.

Then what...?