2013 Books Read

My annual list of books read, mostly kept by me because I’m curious of the trends across time (see books label).

Awards

Cold Dish: Fan Favorite
Inferno: Outperformed Expectations
Pilgrim's Progress: Classic all should read
Practice of the Presence of God: Most likely affected me

1. Poirot Loses a Client - Agatha Christie
2. When Cultures Collide - Richard Lewis
3. The Prize: the Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power: Daniel Yergin
4. My Brief History - Stephen Hawking
5. The Story of Australia - Robert Black
6. One Thousand Gifts - Ann Voskamp
7. The Valley of Fear - Arthur Conan Doyle
8. Kidnapped - Robert Louis Stevenson
9. Right Ho, Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse
10. Inferno - Dan Brown
11. Crunchy Cons - Rod Dreher
12. Master of Ballantree - Robert Louis Stevenson
13. The Heart and the Fist - Eric Greitens
14. Practice of the Presence of God - Brother Lawrence
15. Brimstone - Robert Parker
16. Pilgrim's Progress - John Bunyan
17. John Carter: A Princess of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
18. Live and Let Die - Ian Fleming
19. The Social Animal - David Brooks
20. Erasing Hell - Francis Chan
21. Casino Royale - Ian Fleming
22. Cold Dish - Craig Johnson

2013 Books Listened To

My annual list of books listened, mostly kept by me because I’m curious of the trends across time (see books label).

Awards

All things Bill Bryson, including Notes from a Big Country, At Home, Thunderbolt Kid: Can’t Help Myself
The Historian: Outperformed Expectations
In Defense of Food: Most likely affected me

1. Long Walk to Freedom: Autobiography of Nelson Mandela
2. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid - Bill Bryson
3. At Home: A Short History of Private Life - Bill Bryson
4. In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto - Michael Pollan
5. David Attenborough's Life Stories
6. Brother Cadfael's Penance - Ellis Peters
7. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold - John LeCarre
8. Born to Run - Christopher McDougall
9. Notes from a Big Country - Bill Bryson
10. Beyond Band of Brothers - Major Dick Winters
11. Death of an Expert Witness - P.D. James
12. A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance - William Manchester
13. Casino Royale - Ian Fleming
14. Unnatural Causes - P.D. James
15. American Front - Harry Turtledove
16. Hound of the Baskervilles - Arthur Conan Doyle
17. A House Reunited: How America Survived the Civil War - Jay Winik
18. How Few Remain - Harry Turtledove
19. The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova
20. Mornings on Horseback - David McCullough
21. All the Devils are Here: the Hidden History of the Financial Crisis - Bethany McLean
22. Curse of the Blue Tattoo: Being an Account of the Misadventures of Jacky Faber, Midshipman and Fine Lady - L.A. Meyer
23. Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power - Rachel Maddow
24. 1493 - Charles Mann

Not all Flakes are flakey

As a rookie, I had no idea the size of this venture, and it has taken me 10 days to get my mind around it. The Samaritan's Purse DART team I am with is composed of 30+ people working in various areas of need:

Shelter

Medical

Food

WASH (that'd be me)

NFI (non-food items)

To make the above work happen, you have very essential support staff:

Program Lead

Logistics

Security

Transportation

Human Resources

Inventory

Every time a new person arrives here, they seem to already know a handful of other folks, essentially from previous assignments. SP has a large group of people working in Haiti and South Sudan, among other places. While only a few people here are full-time SP employees, the majority have dropped their jobs and left home, be that:

Canada,

the States,

UK,

Australia,

Cambodia,

Niger,

Uganda,

Ethiopia,

Myanmar

Many of these young’uns here have spent the past 4+ years bouncing from assignment to assignment, spending a few months back home with the parents or bumming a couch at a friend’s place waiting for the next call. If they were in just about any other profession, I would likely label them as ‘flakes’ who need to find their place, whatever that means.

Here, after working alongside people who have traded their roaring 20s to live in tents and take bucket showers, I have learned that not all Flakes are flakey.  

Vehicular Vulnerability

Roads in the developing world are much more lively and interesting than back home:

• buildings are two feet off the edge of pavement; 
• if you want a drink, you stop, jump out, hold up traffic and make your purchase;
• it is acceptable to text and drive... your moped
• its the dogs' responsibility to move out of the way
• honking is a friendly form of communication, usually translated "scoot over, or this game of chicken is going to end badly for us both."

Our form of transportation mimics our economic status and subsequent vulnerability. In the States, we fret over side air bags and have evidence-less laws preventing our children from sitting in the front seat. We discuss safety mechanisms with an air of 'ethics', questioning the dangers we expose our family to in our car purchases.

For the vast majority of the world, the dangers are much more evident. Within this society, the roads are filled with Land Cruisers (for the UN, of course), Toyota trucks, Suzuki mini-vans (not to be confused with minivans), motorcycles, mopeds, bicycles and walking. Citizens of the same community, but of clearly different levels of susceptibility to the inherit dangers of the roadway. For the first world vehicles, a crash damages the exterior and causes a delay. For the father on the moped, flip flops, no helmet, and the family hugging on behind you, a minor accident can have a major physical and economic toll.
There's no pithy statement to wrap this up; it is just an observation made from a few days riding through this land. 

Dirty Santa Failure

Just finished a White Elephant gift exchange here in the Philippines with the DART team of ~30 people. The lack of planning for said event, as well as to a dearth of time and being in a recovery-stage town, limited the gift ideas.
We had ten packages of survival food: protein bars, pasta, Gatorade powder... passing unnecessary goods from one teammate to another. Coming here, we tended to pack for the worst case scenario, which has thankfully not materialized.
Battling for supremacy were ten almost identical #Tingdog Tacloban t-shirts ("rise up Tacloban"), which has become the unofficial city slogan in this season. Apparently, everyone individually discovered the secret t-shirt shop two blocks from here.
I bought a hammock, and wrapped it in anticipation of providing an original gift amongst the crowd. My anticipation continued through the full event and then some, being the one gift not claimed by anyone, with a motherly nurse in the crown putting in two gifts just in case someone forgot. Apparently, my wrapping job was utterly unappealing.
I received a handgun, including laser sight and 10 bullets. It's pretty accurate, and has helped me waive down a few taxis, so I'm good.

I returned to the gift box a couple of hours after we finished the Dirty Santa exchange, and my gift was missing. I'm looking out for a horizontally-lounging Westerner, and have my last bullet saved for him.

Texas Roadhouse, Tacloban Franchise

Samaritan's Purse is utilizing the property of the former Oriental Hotel (adjacent to MacArthur Landing Park) as a warehouse storage property. The current state of the property prevents its use for much else.
A few of the kinder-hearted ladies here among the volunteers set up dinner for everyone, along the beach, with carols and prayer.
Dinner was catered by Steve from go-big-or-go-home Houston, Texas, who runs the local Texas Roadhouse. Steve lost a part of his restaurant, all of his Expat customers, but seems to be confident that he'll make it through this intact.
Traditional Christmas dinner: burgers, corn dogs, cole slaw, cucumber salad, onion rings and chocolate cake. Don't forget the Coca Cola.

The Bowling Christmas Experiment

Christmas is aimed to be the most benevolently wonderful moment of the year, the point in time where God fully reached out to His creation to bring us into the fold.

I have been a Christian my entire adult life, but have never quite captured this sweet essence of Christmas; rather, I most honestly associate December with obligatory obligations, deadline stress, busy to the point of feeling unhealthy, eating to the point of being unhealthy, and the yoke of how.I’m.supposed.to.feel.

Maggie and I endeavor to develop a simple and pure relationship between our nuclear family, Christmas, and Jesus, the latter being the most difficult portion to include in the experience. It is neither easy nor fully implemented. At a minimum, I hope that our children more naturally associate this month with Jesus than I do.

I am away from home this Christmas (to be immortalized in my soon to be released Country song). The typical challenges of being away are magnified this week. For Maggie and me, this is our most service-oriented Christmas yet:

she where she is, and

I where I am.

I hope that our experiences help us embed the soul of Christmas in our reality.

I hope that my absence from home and my presence here will help deepen my shallow appreciation for this sacramental celebration.

He's earned the right to preach to me.

Sunday morning at a local church, 25% destroyed by the storm, but (seemingly) safe enough to meet in. The pastor, standing next to his backpacking tent, which he's living in because his house was destroyed: One of the most difficult parts of the Christian life is that being a Christian does not prevent life's tragedies. Surely if God loves us, He would not take away what we love, who we love.

He then opened the scriptures to 1 Peter, chapter 1, verses 6-7:

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith - of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire - may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

His response:   Therefore, as a believer, all trials and tribulations have for us a purpose:

To grow our faith...

To purify our character...

To encourage others with our testimony...

To rest in the knowledge that Jesus is Lord.

Our faith has value, endures through devastation. The pastor encouraged me with his testimony. 

Me and TC

Me and TC took the chopper from Cebu City to Tacloban. It was a bit short of fabulous. The only thing missing were some drug runners shooting handguns from 300 yards away and busting a hole through the window.

It was about an hour in the air, flying over a few islands and open water. On the eastern hillsides, trees were blown over like sticks, all in one direction. On the western slopes of Leyte Island, the trees were standing, with all of the palm branches permanently oriented westward like a compass.

This is my Faith

Because he loves me, I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.  He will call on me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him.
Psalm 91:14-15

Let us hope

Let us hope that I have already made the biggest mistake of my trip, which included leaving my laptop and cash-laden Carry-on bag in the taxi van from the hotel to the airport a few moments ago.
It doesn't much matter whether you realize 30 seconds or 30 minutes too late, when your newly issued local mobile doesn't yet have any minutes and you have no idea who drove you to the airport anyway (how often does one obtain the contact information of one's drivers? Not often enough, I will now always say).
I borrowed a phone from another volunteer, called the hotel, to plead my case to a very nice lady adept at the art of whispering. Excuse me, Cebu blind people who sing at the airport for our small change, let me go outside, dodge the honking horns, and wedge the mobile into my ear canal so that I could just make out that since the hotel did not schedule the taxi, it does not know who took me. Pretty sure I made her repeat this conclusion three times for good luck before finally hanging up in a lightly subdued panic.
Searched old emails and found the name and number for last night's driver, who I awoke (dropping us off at the hotel at 2:30am last night, he had the good sense to be asleep at 6:40am when I called for help). Taximan Pip said he'd call dispatch.
I wait.
Wait.
11 minutes, 13, 17.
I call Pip back, but the mobile network won't connect.
Try again: no network.
Again: no network.
Amidst some fervant prayer, where I commit one of my daughters to a convent, I try again: no network.
21 minutes after hanging up with Pip, 38 minutes after hanging up with the hotel, 41 minutes after realizing my mistake, the unnamed hero, Mr. Cebu Taxi 2013, calls out my name from across the parking lot, and we rush to each other with... Well, nevermind what happened next.
I have my bag, and now await my last flight.

First Generation

Maggie gave me a wonderful Christmas present a few years back: Portland General Store Whiskey Aftershave. It is truly lovely.

Being a full-time tweaker, I've ventured into the world of homemade aftershave, and am introducing sok’s Made in the USA, never tested on animals, GMO-free aftershave products. Introducing them, actually, on unsuspecting male family members and a few close friends this Christmas. My adoring wife Maggie has signed off on their quality; a sign of her affection for me or quite possibly her appreciation for their bouquet.

Introducing the following first generation products (with anticipated future changes in red):

The Shop, my attempt to capture the soul of a proper barber shop: 2 c vodka, 8 tsp dark rum, ½ tsp ground Allspice, 2 sticks cinnamon, 2 orange zests.

Open Field: 2 c vodka, 1 c witch hazel, ¼ c glycerin, 20 10 drops of peppermint, 20 drops of eucalyptus, 30 drops of lavender.  

Mint Tea: 1 ½ c white rum, ¾ c witch hazel, 3 tsp glycerin, 20 10 drops of peppermint, 30 drops of tea leaves.

Old Town: 6 tbl apple cider vinegar, 3 tbl witch havel, 1 tbl glycerin, 1 stick cinnamon, 6 whole allspice, 10 drops of orange essence. This went putrid towards the end, and was never bottled.

My muse, Whiskey Jack: ½ c Kentucky Whiskey, ¼ ½ c witch hazel, 1 tsp glycerin, 5 3 cloves, 5 3 whole allspice, 1 stick cinnamon, 10 5 drops of orange essence.

Mix in Mason jar, stirring daily for two weeks, while keeping in the dark. Not sure why in the dark; I think it has something to do with cutting off then end of the Christmas ham the way my grandma always did it.