JBlog

Maybe some of you have noticed that the changes to the blog have been reverted after my aborted overseas placement with EWB.  Life, on the other hand is still in transition.  

Since my last update a few things of note have happened.  I became gainfully and permanently (or indefinitely) employed as a National Program Coordinator for Engineers Without Borders (Canada).  My role is to drive and support EWB’s university curriculum program and vision, establish and maintain links with our faculty supporters and coach chapters and our National Conference organising team.  Counter-intuitively, between putting my last job with EWB on indefinite hold in June and accepting this new job with EWB in July, there was a full job search that yielded a few options.  Funny that it just so happened that the winner happened to be another job at EWB.  Job is going really well and I’m thoroughly enjoying it and learning from it!

Also, the Masters is done like dinner!  The degree has been awarded, but I have to wait until convocation at the end of October to actually get it.  My thesis was finalised, accepted and published, and if anyone’s interested it can be found here.

Other than that the family situation continues to be tense.  The only thing we can really do there is just roll with the punches while still hoping for the best.

But, one of my goals for my overseas placement was to work on my writing skills through this blog.  Even though I’m no longer going overseas just yet, there’s no reason why the goal has to be suspended too.  Thus I’m going to keep the posts up on this blog again.  It’s a little easier now with my BlackBerry since I can do some writing from anywhere.  So watch for updates every couple weeks or so.

Well, it was only about a week ago that I announced my new and exciting plans with Engineers Without Borders.  Sadly, I’ve got some bad news to tell you all. After a lot of thinking and discussions with EWB over this week, I’m sorry to say that I will be indefinitely postponing my overseas placement with EWB.

The reason for the decision is due to the situation with my family. Unfortunately, my Mom is not well and we’ve received some discouraging information this week regarding her condition.  Because of all this, I am no longer be able to have an uninterrupted, 13-month placement overseas with EWB.

As you can imagine, this has been a very difficult decision for me.  My whole reason for going overseas, was to try and do a kick-ass job for the community I worked in and the partner organization I was assigned to. I truly agree with EWB’s philosophy that in order to have impact on a placement you need to spend a consistent, long-term and uninterrupted time and effort overseas. Since I know now that the situation with my family precludes that from happening, I feel that it is the right decision to put my departure on indefinite postponement. Since my desire to make a difference in the world is something I truly believe in, I have promised both myself and EWB that once my personal situation improves, I will reapply for a placement.

Those of you who have already made donations to EWB on my behalf, thank you very much and I’m sorry I won’t be able to put your donation to use overseas.  I can assure you that you have helped support other dedicated and committed volunteers help bring about an end of global poverty.

Please feel free to get in contact with me by e-mail if you have any questions regarding my decision or what’s going on in my life.

One of my responsibilities as an overseas volunteer staff-member with EWB is to help with the organizations fundraising efforts.  EWB is a non-profit registered charity in Canada and all of its programs, both in-Canada and overseas, are made possible through the generous donations of our donors.  No donation is too large or too small, and all donations $20 or over are eligible for tax receipts.  For our overseas programs, donations go to cover the cost of flights, modest living stipends for our volunteers (pegged to the salary of a mid-level local bureaucrat in the host country), medical expenses for our volunteers and placement expenses.

If you feel willing to make a donation to EWB, you can do so securely online at http://www.ewb.ca/donate or by calling 1-866-481-3696.

If you decide to make a donation, please send me a note saying so and how much you donated to make our accounting processes go a little smoother if you feel comfortable doing so.  If not, that’s cool too, we’ll just have to do a little more work to allocate the donation accordingly.

Also, EWB likes to make connections to workplaces for sponsorship.  Workplace sponsorship can be a great way for a company to show support for corporate social responsibility and public relations.  EWB can also provide your workplace with special lunch-n-learn programs and presentations about our work.  If you think that this would be something that would be a good fit for your workplace, drop me a line and we can set something up with either myself or a local EWB chapter!

You may have noticed that things look a little different around here.  There’s a new banner (thanks to a great creative commons photo of Sara & Joachim on Flickr).  There’s this odd reference that I’m in Malawi on the title.  All the old posts are gone (well, they’re actually archived under the Old Post Archive category).Behind the scenes, I’ve upgraded to the latest WordPress version and added some new plug-ins.  And probably one of the most strking differeces is that I’m posting again!  So, what’s going on here?

Well, just like things are changing on this blog, things are changing in my life.  My masters degree is coming to an end (my thesis was submitted this past week), and I’m starting to turn my mind to the (near) future.  I’ve been thinking lately of what I want to accomplish in my life and of what opportunities I currently have available.  And through all think thinking, I’ve decided to accept a placement with Engineers Without Borders (Canada) to work as an Overseas Volunteer Staff-person.  Some of you who know me, know that I’ve been involved in EWB for a while at various levels, so this shouldn’t really come as a surprise.  But it is a serious life-change, since at the end of the summer I will be heading off the Malawi to start my new job and won’t be heading back to Canada for at least a year.  Consider this just a teaser, I’ll have more in a later post on why I’ve made this decision and what I’ll be doing in Malawi.

But all this means changes for this blog!  I know that my experiences working with EWB overseas is something that a lot of you would like to hear about.  I’ll be using this blog to post my thoughts about my work and updates in my personal and professional life while in Malawi.  So over the next few weeks, I’ll be making a few minor changes around here (and posting more), so stay tuned!

Those of you who know me know that I am interested in a whole lot of socially-related issues.  Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of ethical consumerism.  The Good people at Wikipedia define as ethical consumerism as buying things that are made in a socially responsible manner (like certified fairtrade, energy friendly, anti-sweatshop and etc.)

A bunch of associates and I are trying to see if we can make a go of creating a business that sells only ethical goods, online. But we need everyone’s help to decide whether this would be a useful service!  We’ve created a small survey to gauge people’s desires to be an ethical consumer and what they’d look for in ethical suppliers.  If you’ve got a minute, click the link below to take our survey and tell us what you think!

• Ethical Consumerism Survey 

Once again, I’m cutting it close to the wire this month. So with a few minutes remaining in October, I’m going to lay down my Band-o-Month pick for October.

The band that I’m picking for this month is really just the solo project of a frontman of another well respected indie Canadian band … well, really more of a massive collective. This is, of course, Kevin Drew, one of the founders and cornerstones of Broken Social Scene. Kevin released his debut solo CD, “Broken Social Scene Presents Kevin Drew - Spirit If…“, this past month. Now I have to admit, I was not looking forwards to this CD. Kevin’s got a bit of reputation for having a little bit of an ego and being somewhat musically pretentious. I mean, we all remember his rant at the 2006 Juno awards about Canadian idol winners (not that I disagreed with you Kevin, but there are other ways to express yourself that don’t make you look like a dick).

Needless to say, I didn’t really want to like “Spirit If…” (and it didn’t help with the pretentious aura that Kevin admitted that he improvised most of the lyrics during recording). But that album is actually pretty sweet. The music is very similar to a lot of the Broken Social Scene tracks, but slightly different by bringing a little more edge and melody than we’re used to hearing from BSS. The music still has that light experimental feel that we’re used to hearing from BSS, which shouldn’t be surprising since there a lot BSS members that help Kevin out on various tracks. The only real criticism you can make about this album is that some track sound a little to similar to the BSS style, which I guess is alright since no one could get enough of the last Broken Social Scene CD.

So if you like Broken Social Scene, go check out Kevin Drew’s Spirit If… album, and, like me, you’ll probably be presently surprised! Here are some links that may help you out.

• Kevin Drew’s Website
• Kevin Drew on MySpace
• Kevin Drew on New Music Canada
• Kevin Drew on Last.fm

For 5 out of my last 7 meals, I’ve been eating roasted vegetable lasagna that I made for a potluck dinner this past Sunday and that I have copious amounts of leftovers of. You may ask, why am I posting about this? Well, I haven’t updated the blog in a while and I’m sure some of you may have been wondering what I’ve been up to!

Well, September’s almost done. But before it goes, I have to squeak in my Band-o-Month pick before it’s too late!

This month’s band is Spy Machine 16, a band based out of Guelph, Ontario who before September I had never heard of before. It all started on the first Friday of the month, at the usual meeting of the Scotch Friday crew at the Grad House. The Grad House is a great place to see local bands in the Waterloo area and I was pretty pumped because the next Friday, Knock Knock Ginger, one of my favourite local bands, was coming to play a show. The only thing was that this band I’d never heard of, Spy Machine 16, was opening. Whatever, I planned on going anyways and didn’t give this random opening band much thought.

Fast forward a little later that week, I was at the Gym listening to the Zunior.com podcast for September and heard this track that really caught my attention at the end of the podcast. It was loud, rocking and had more hooks than an elementary school coat rack. I made a mental note that I had to find out who that band was and check them out after I was done at the Gym. Turns out the track was “I Lost My Edge Last Night” by Spy Machine 16. Bizzare? Maybe. But a pretty nice coincidence since I then downloaded all their track from their MySpace page and listened to them all week. I was now really pumped for the concert that Friday!

There’s something about dancing that I just don’t get. Maybe it’s because I really suck at it. Usually, I’m the guy at a show who’s hovering around the back with a beer listening to the music, not tearing it up the makeshift dance floors at the front of the stage. But listening to Spy Machine 16 do their thing, it’s next to impossible not get with the beat. After all, the band’s even got an in-house dance squad! Spy Machine 16’s latest album, How Things Come Apart, is chalk full of amazing pop-punk anthems (kind of like a Canadian Los Campesinos!). Songs that will cheer you up and energize you after you’ve had a crappy day! Plus some of the song have pretty progressive messages (the band describes themselves as “cute as a button, anti-imperialist as fuck”). It’s nice to hear some pop-punk that remains true to its punk music heritage.

So go check out Spy Machine 16 and I’m positive you will not be disappointed! Here are some links that might help you out.

• Spy Machine Sixteen at MySpace
• Spy Machine Sixteen at New Music Canada

I seem to be posting a lot this week, but I hope this doesn’t raise the expectations for all you readers. I’m sure that in a few week from now I’ll get lazy and go back to my semi-regular posting schedule.

After two disappointing rejections on academic research papers I’ve been shopping around to conferences in the past 4 months, I’ve finally secured my first acceptance! Yeah, it’s a dinky little workshop hosted in Waterloo, and yeah, it’s only a poster plus a three page extended abstract. But you know what, it was peer reviewed and counts as my first real formal grad school scholarly accomplishment so I’ll take what I can get! Plus I can use this momentum to write a kick-ass paper for ECIR and hopefully get a trip to Glasgow out of it!

Since posting has been few and far between in August, there’s some queued up update posts that need to be cleared off the post list. You know between moving, work, and whole lot of vacation, updating this blog regularly can be quite a challenge.

The first piece of news is that my radio show on CKMS has a new permanent name and timeslot! The shows called Soundcheck and you can now hear the DJ stylings of myself spin the latest and greatest in independent Canadian music on Tuesdays between 2pm-3pm (that’s Eastern time for all you out-of-townies) at CKMS 100.3 FM on terrestrial radio or new fangled Rogers Digital Cable on channel 946. Alternatively, you can always put your ear to one of those tubes on the Internets at CKMS live web feed.

And to round this post off, the ever famous Rick Theis has teamed up with the notoriously infamous me to produce a weekly Podcast for the Ontario General Election geared at University students in Waterloo. We’re trying to do for Election Ontario what the O’Fishbein Factor did for the FEDS election, but where the O’Fishbein Factor was more Colbert Report this show will be Daily Show-esque. Anyways, the shows called Public Disclosure and you can check it out from that link.

You should spread the buzz and tell all your friends, I’ll keep the hits coming!