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Cpt_Yossarian
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Name: wes
Country: Bolivia
Metro: La Paz
Birthday: 7/19/1981
Gender: Male
Interests: wisdom, justice, contemplation, people, reading
Expertise: none to speak of exactly. I do manage to put my foot in my mouth a surprising amount for the amount I speak. I guess it would be better to stay silent and look the fool, than open my mouth and remove all doubt. thats a proverb.
Occupation: Operations
Industry: Nonprofit
Message: message meEmail: email me
Member Since:
5/18/2005
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| It's time once again for my monthly entries that include not much of interest. It's like those free writes you had to do in high school. I always thought the teacher was either fruity or lazy. "You want me to write about anything i want to? But I don't want to write about anything." The duller teachers would say, "there must be something blah, blah, blah." The better teachers said, "then write about that." I used to be a real sucker for a challenge and i'd fill the front and the back of a steno page with a description of my not wanting to write and the reasons for my attitude and then maybe a couple jabs at the teacher and the whole free write idea. Genius.
Truth is though that things have been happening. Baker is getting the poder. which i won't bother explaining b/c it sounds better in spanish. We may get a landline (telephone) at the dropin center (whoo dee doo). And we paid our corporate earnings tax (non-profits do that in bolivia) and paid nothing. Big surprise, ministries ought to be pretty miserably operating businesses. They should be the model for a business going bankrupt. "Should" is the key word and why we still have to register with the government. Apparently, political parties start foundations for fund raising purposes and even (do i even need that) Christian ministries often operated quite nicely as businesses. The gov wants its cut. We paid nothing. I guess that makes us legit.
I just got over 3 days of stomach issues. Since i didn't take medicine, I'll mark the calendar to see if my friends come back to bother me in 6 weeks. John claims that's what they do. It was pretty bothersome because, well my stomach hurt,etc, i couldn't eat stuff, i didn't drink coffee, and it was cold (45 in side one morning). My internal temperture seems really connected to my consumption of food. Obviously.
Finally, i get requests for more pictures from time to time here and on Facebook (i have 48 friends...i don't know if i could even name 48 people!). My camera has a 16mb chip in it right now so thtat like 5 pics at a time which is worse than film. The camera i have thanks to Heather's (and mine) friend Amanda. THanks. The new mem chip will come to us thanks to Cara and Mark. The ensuing flood of pictures will come to you thanks to Wes. Thaaaaaanks Weeeees. (grade school inflection) Don't hold your breath. | | |
| I'm not exactly the most optimistic person in the world but i've gotten a couple (even a few) encouraging responses to my private search for better definition of community and other things. Things could definitely get better as they couldn't get a ton worse.
on the administrative front. I hate it. But we have some rather brilliant and nice people (not the govt people-not universally nice or brilliant or helpful) telling us all the things we've done wrong. It's amazing how you can keep track of all your money, treat employees fairly, do a decent job of serving people, pay taxes and be honest and still do a ton of things wrong from a legal and accounting standpoint. That makes me a libertarian?
May 4th is the date that Santa Cruz has set for their vote on autonomy. Being from El Alto puts me rather on the leftist side and against this measure but the new constitution could very well be injust towards the weathly and i guess justice is justice. Injustice met with injustice doesn't not create justice. The american revolution, french revolution, and russian revolution demonstrated this. We pretty much eliminated the original peoples from what we now call Amurica. The revolutionaries in france ended up chopping the heads of thousands and well, most amuricans don't need me to point out the injustice of the communist scandal (though i think the usual critique is mostly fear based and rather selfish.) I hope we're not a target here of any frustration the arises from the vote. We may sit it out at a friends house playing Wii. Who knows. | | |
| vacation in Arica, Chile was pretty great. I only had to get my feet wet in the ocean once (i don't like the beach that much) but i read about 3 chapters of "Exclusion and Embrace".
i'm not at all excited to be back, but such are vacations, i guess.
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| - killing in the name ofi just figured out that the program that i was trying to install for our accounting was the wrong one. I'd spent various hours over a couple days trying to get the thing to work. It was a bootleg disc (serves me right) but in my defense i went to no less than 3 (doing any three things--much less going to 3 places--is quite an accomplishment here) computer stores looking for a real copy. Each place i was scoffed at: huh, you can't buy real copies of that! And if you could it'd be really expensive to import. Go buy it on the street for (the equivalent of) $2. I gave up and did that. And then proceeded to try to install the wrong program (4.3). 4.5 was right there on the same cd and it was the one i actually needed.
I even went so far as to enlist the help of multiple people to get this program up and running. Then i noticed version 4.5 and it installed on the 2nd try without a hitch (relatively speaking). this admin thing just isn't going to smoothly.
The next step in this saga is to get an accountant here in the next 5 days to finish up sept, oct, nov, and dec of '07 in a manner that is legal and pleasing to the Bolivian govt so we can pay a 25% tax on our profits. We're a non-profit so with a bit of luck (and devine intervention) we won't have to pay. (We really don't make a profit, we're a black hole in economic terms really. A very, very small black hole.) All the red tape really makes me understand why there isn't a business here that has only one set of books. Well, we do. And i don't know that it really pays!
A self observation: I have a real phobia of talking on the phone about anything business related--in english or spanish. I put off the phone conversations and sweat when i actually have to make them. I really, really hate them. I wonder if they have VR google programs to deal with this phobia. I'm squimish just htinking about it.
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| alot of things have happened.
I did got riding a few weeks back. this time instead of launching my bike over a cliff (really happened and i have a scar on my palm to prove it) I only went down once really. We finished the same circuit as last time in about the same amount of time. I think we drove a bit slower on the fast parts, faster on the slow parts and slower at night because the quad lost its lights and my bike's lights were junk. so that was fun. but i don't think i'll be buying a bike soon. i guess xr400s (really good condition) run about $5500 while 600s actually run a bit less but still over $4K. hmmm.
in other news, we got up really early for an easter morning march. it was an experience, like last years. Bolivia's such a funny place and its evangelical Christians are even stranger.
i've been rather down lately. | | |
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