December's Work, in Pictures

Not the official way to join two pipes... but it does work

Two weeks ago I joined up with Mok and his team. Right away, I was given charge of designing a system to bring springwater up to a village. We also took trips to and stayed at a few other rural villages around Yunnan. For one, we investigated a water resource system needing replacing. At another, we evaluated the results of a past water project, and brought government officials along. Then at two others, we interviewed villagers to see if starting a biogas project would be suitable.

To write about it all that has happened on these trips would require thousands of words. I've been told that pictures are worth about that many, so today I'll use them to tell my story. The following pictures are in chronological order.

The Water Here - Part 3: In the City and In the Air

Water in the City

One Saturday morning, I walked to the edge of the village, flagged down a bus, and was smuggled into the city. I don’t think I have ever been ‘smuggled’ anywhere before. It is a law that every passenger has a seat on the bus in order to pass the city gates; otherwise heavy fines are given to the bus operators. When my fellow workers and I got on the already full bus, instead of refusing paying customers, the driver’s wife pulled out short stools and had us sit, packed in the aisle, all squatting. Our heads only came up to the seated passengers’ shoulders, and in this way we were secretly transported past security and into the city.

The Water Here - Part 2: At the Factory

My first two full weeks here were spent at the Ceramics Water Filter factory, in a small village about half an hour outside of Kunming City. This post describes the water situation there, and what I've learned.

Water at the Factory

 Our tap water comes from a neighboring village higher in elevation, at the foot of Xi Shan, or West Mountain. It is operated manually, so the hours are inconsistent and vary widely. I guess when we have water depends on projected usage, time of year, amount stored at present, and how much the pump operator had to drink the previous night. To mitigate this, we have a unique water system of our own design. 

The Water Here - Part 1: Green Paint

Having been here a few weeks, I can now start to paint you an accurate picture of the water situation... in green!

A Lake of Green Paint

The first encountered, most well known, unavoidable and shocking water feature here is Dianchi, the enormous lake downstream of Kunming City. It struck me as odd when I saw it on Google Maps before coming here, but I dismissed it, thinking it was just poor image processing. No way could the lake be that color. I was right – Google's sky pictures show a dull, hazy green; in reality, it is a vivid, sickly green. Seen from a satellite, neither the thick viscosity nor the odor is communicated. see pictures below

You Make Me Sick

You make me sick. Homesick that is… I know you lucky bums are getting excited about Thanksgiving right about now. You’re probably all ready to fatten yourself up for the coming winter. I can nearly hear you going turkey crazy, bragging about how much you eat every year, and how you fall asleep immediately after feasting HAHAHA. Some modern jackass will say it’s due to the trypto-whatever that makes you sleepy. How impressive. Another will say trypto-whatever’s in chicken too, so we eat it all the time, duh. Well you know what? The thought of you is making me homesick! And my writing this is making me hungry!

Made In China - Part 2

(cont. from Part 1)

Made In China - Part 1

Temporarily living the life of a Chinese factory worker, my first week in China has been one filled with hard, rewarding work that will directly give clean water to people. I have been happy to help solve some problems with practical engineering, and have also learned much. At the end of the week, I became ill and had no spirit to write. Now that I am alive again, and able to get around the Great Firewall of China using a VPN, here is my first post since leaving Taiwan.

End of Chapter 1

I awoke with a sense of surprise; this day had come too soon. I should have known - days like this have a tendency to come too soon. My things were packed, and I was up ahead of the sun as planned. I was well prepared, but didn’t feel ready to take on my final day in Hualien. I like my days to be full, but this full day was one to be taken on because it would require careful reflection of my time here and many goodbyes. The reflection I can handle; it’s the goodbyes that get me.

Safety First!

Following up that lengthy previous post with a brief(er) one about dangers and safety. Also included are some completely unrelated photos, for your viewing pleasure - finally got my camera fixed.

"安全第一!" (Safety first!) is something many people here have been saying to me. However, it seems they do not very well follow their own advice...

Friday Morning Dumplings

Do you like dumplings? Hope so – I’ve got some big fat ones for you. To cover a wide range of topics, I will serve it all up to you in the form of Friday Dumplings! (Like Mike Fisher’s Donuts over at dallasbasketball.com)  

Read on to hear about some overdue bad luck, another typhoon, some educational field trips, a new way of dealing with mosquitoes, identifying poisonous leaves using water, and more…

Yep, I could live here someday...

A few Sundays ago, with time to spare and the day to myself, my only objective was to make the three-hour coastal drive back up to Hualien, and hopefully catch some waves along the way. Little did I know that many factors would combine to deliver the best and heaviest day of surfing I’ve ever experienced.

I borrowed a beaten up 9 foot longboard with no leash from the nice folks in Taitung that Ruth is staying with, and it fit with an inch to spare into the car Fish lent me. I went to a hardware store, and for under $3, I bought some materials to fashion a leash. With no idea of where to go, and no information about current swell reports or tide heights, I headed north, periodically popping over on little paths to check the waves.

For the first half hour, all the paths led to duds – flat spots, dead ends, and private residences guarded by mean looking dogs. Finally, I found one with a few cars, and an American scanning the horizon for waves. His name was J.B. and was originally from Virginia; now living in Taiwan. At the time I didn’t know how lucky I was to have met him. I was just glad to find a guy to surf with - it’s safer that way.

Fishfood For Thought

In a previous post, I told you about my good fortune in meeting a guy I call Fish, who is now my neighbor. Along with solving all my logistical problems in one fell swoop, he has quickly become a good friend and mentor.
 
I don’t directly work with Fish, but we swim and eat together, so have plenty of time to talk. A lot of it revolves around the idea of people finding paths where they can achieve their goals (for production, profit, sanitation, etc.) while minimizing or eliminating harmful environmental impact. There are many names for the various forms of this, call it what you will: Recent buzzwords include “green building” and “sustainable development”; in my home state the slogan goes - “Don’t mess with Texas”; Growing up, “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” became popular; Mufasa’s ghost warns young Simba to rejoin “The Circle of Life”. You get my drift. They are all talking about the same thing - in everything we do and create, there is a right way, and a wrong way. Actually, I should say: there is one optimal solution amongst many (mostly bad) options. People will go after what they need and want. We need/want food, stuff, energy for our stuff, and happiness. So we need agriculture, factories, power plants, and for the Mavericks to win a championship. The last one is easy (Free Roddy B!), but the others require some intelligence. Fortunately we are considered “intelligent life forms” - supposedly even more so than dolphins and octopi! Let me give you some concrete examples that come from Fish’s experiences, after I tell you why I respect the guy so darn much.

What About Water?!

“Enough already! What about water?! You’ve barely even written about it. I thought this was supposed to be a hydrophilic mission, not just a phil mission!!”

Nobody has said that to me - it’s just the vibe I get from myself when I pretend to be you, reading my blog. So OK! I get it, sheesh. Let me hit you up with some knowledge.

Taipei, Typhoon, and an early Thanksgiving

Three things have kept me from working as much as I’ve wanted to last week, but it was full of excitement. Finally settled in Hualien, I had no time to relax as I made a return trip to the big city, experienced the worst typhoon in four years, and celebrated my favorite holiday, Taiwanese-style.

Last weekend, I traveled back to Taipei by train to meet up with Ruth and my family to host an engagement dinner for all my relatives here who won’t make the wedding, including grandparents and my 100 year old great great aunt. It was a formal but fun gathering, and the food was very good. The only thing I wasn’t too happy about: for this one occasion, I had to bring a suit, dress shoes, and nice clothes, which took up about a third of my packing space.

The two things people do in Taipei (and do in great abundance) are eating and shopping, so you are constantly surrounded by food vendors and shops. It really wore on me, and by the end of the weekend I was eager to get out of the city. But then the typhoon struck.

The Good Fortune of Meeting Mr. Fish

I started the week without a place to live and without any reliable form of transportation, and trusted that it would somehow work out. Drifting about was somewhat exciting at first, but the charm wore off quickly. I had many people helping me with the search, but after two days of looking, it became apparent that free university housing was not an option, and very few people wanted to rent for less than 6 months; much less 6 weeks.  Then something amazing happened on Tuesday.

Week 1: A beautiful country, a new old ukulele, and a fuzzy pet algae

In this post you can read about my first week of traveling, some initial fears, my arrival at Dong Hwa University in Hualien, what I am doing related to Deep Ocean Water research, the generosity of others, and how I am currently drifting about without a home.

A big Ni Hao to everybody out there!

Taipei, Taiwan

Today is my first day in the town of Hualien (pronounced Hua-Lien, not Hu-Alien), set between mountains and ocean, on the sparsely populated Eastern part of the island (there’s less than ½ a million people on this side of the mountains, and nearly 23 million on the other) and I am happy as a clam. I will be spending most of the next two months here, but don’t yet have a place to live or a reliable mode of transportation.

Intro Part 3: To Serve and Discover

You must admit, we've really got it good in the U.S. of A. My fellow countrymen can be proud that:

• We have clean, potable water, straight out of the tap, throughout the nation. [The Water Quality Act of 1965 and the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 ]

• We have "fishable and swimmable" bodies of water, almost completely free of pollution. [The Clean Water Act of 1972]

Impressive, no? Equally impressive, but not quite in the same way:

Intro Part 2: Breaking Away

     I've always felt uncomfortable when people would congratulate me for doing the things I was supposed to do. People of my generation, born in this great nation, into good middle class families with hard working parents, are supposed to go to school. We're supposed to take honors classes, graduate high school, score well on the SAT, and get into a decent college. In college, we're supposed to pick a major, avoid jail time, stay away from hard drugs, and get a degree. Then, we're supposed to find a paying job at a reputable company, and from there we're supposed to begin our steady climb of the corporate ladder.

And why were we supposed to do all this?

Intro Part 1: Hydrophilic - Is that even a word?!

Yes, actually it is a word, and not one I made up. See official-looking dictionary definition below:

Def. hydrophilic [hahy-druh-fil-ik] adj: Having a strong affinity for water.
Usually it is a word used by chemists to describe a "water loving" substance that absorbs, dissolves in, or is attracted to water. When in water, I neither absorb it nor do I dissolve (my fingers just get pruny), though I am attracted to it. In this introductory post, I'll share what makes me, my upcoming mission, and hopefully you, hydrophilic.