Because No One Can Do Everything, You Should Do Something

I recently received some pictures of a trip to Ghana last April from my good friend Ben. Ben and I went to Ghana along with 3 other students and a professor to work on a project that we hope will save the world. It is a merry go round that generates electricity as kids play on it at schools in rural Ghana. As I looked over these pictures, I couldn't help but feel like there was nothing I can do to help in the world. I felt like the poverty in Ghana alone is too large of a task for me to do anything. What I did over there--my 10 days--was not even a drop of water in the bucket that needs to be filled in order to douse the flames of poverty. Furthermore...what can you or I do now, thousands of miles away from these serious situations?

Before I left for this project, I participated in a "Hunger Banquet" held at BYU. After sharing a plate of rice and beans with 5 other people, and hearing several moving and informative talks, I had this same feeling of hopelessness and futility of anything I might do. Just before the banquet closed, the host eloquently dispelled those feelings.

The way she made me believe I could do something to eliminate poverty was by explaining that no one person can do everything by themselves to solve an issue this big--therefore more people need to do something. It doesn't matter as much what you do. Don't wait until you have the means or opportunity to do something really major. Do something...anything. By doing something, you may inspire others to do something and it will spread. Eventually little things will add up to big things. Big things will get thrown into the mix by those you inspire who have the means or are in the position to really make an impact. Its like starting a line of dominos that sets off a bowling ball down a hill.

There are so many opportunities to do something. One of my favorites is Kiva.org. Go to this site right now and put $25 in the hands of a hardworking group of women in Uganda that need a small amount of capital to break out of the vicious poverty cycle (or any one of the many microcredit businesses that need a little capital on the site). I've been paid back my $25 already and will be reinvesting shortly.

Here's a list of 88 ways to take action against poverty right now. I like #87 and 71 because they are so simple. One way to accomplish #87 (educate yourself) is to watch the extremely moving video below of a TED talk that is very inspiring to me.

Zimbabwe In Crisis

I'm not so naive to think that our species by ourselves will ever end corruption, world hunger, poverty by ourselves...but I am continually shocked when I read about the atrocities that are going on in the world.   I came across this slide show that clearly and simply shows what is happening right now under Robert Mugabe. 

Zimbabwe in Crisis

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: refugee hyperinflation)

6 Degrees of Seperation Confirmed?

I came across this study where Microsoft Research used technology to look at Stanley Milgram's 6 degrees of separation experiment. It used "anonymized data capturing a month of high-level communication activities within the whole of the Microsoft Messenger instant-messaging system."

The major take away of the study is that the average degree of separation is 6.6. I've always liked the idea that I would know everybody in the world through the connections of just 6 people. That means that I know you(1), you know him (2), he knows her (3), who knows her (4), who knows him (5), who knows Armando Guebuza, president of Mozambique.

I know this doesn't mean everybody in the world because it is only a sample of MSN users (240M people), but it's still pretty cool.

The results of the study also confirm what many of us already could guess about habits of IM-ers, including:

• people tend to communicate more with each other when they have similar age, language, and location,
• cross-gender conversations are both more frequent and of longer duration than conversations with the same gender.

Tagged

Well, looks like I get to update my blog today because I came across a comment that Dave left for me a couple weeks ago telling me I had been tagged. Sorry didn't see it till today.


Here's how the tagging works.
1. You link back to the person who tagged you
2. Post these rules on your blog
3. Share six unimportant things about yourself
4. Tag six random people at the end of your entry
5. Let the tagged people know by leaving a comment on their blogs
6. Enjoy the results!


Unimportant thing 1: I make that airbag warning sticker on your car visor that is impossible to get off. (well, almost impossible...just use a blow dryer or heat gun).
Unimportant thing 2: The new road bike I ride to work on is green.
Unimportant thing 3: I don't shower as much as I used to after backpacking Europe for 2 months showing a total of maybe 15 times. I really only need to shower if I smell bad...or worse than normal at least.

Unimportant thing 4: While spending time the bathroom for time out as a kid, I:

• Stuck my sisters metal hair barett in the outlet causing the lights to flicker. Dumb enough to stick metal in an outlet...but smart enough hold it with rubber balloons.
• Pulled the wall paper off and denied that it was me.
  
• Learned what those pink boxes on the top shelf were.
• Did push ups so that one day I could beat up my older brother who I felt deserved to be in there instead of me...like a prisoner prep-ing to repay his narc.
  

And finally,
Unimportant thing 5: I like eggs from my head down to my legs...but I keep forgetting to buy them at the store.


Now for the tagging of my own: Andrew, Jake, (well...almost 6 :D, all my blogging friends have been tagged)

The Dip--How to deal with set backs

Recently I read a book called The Dip by Seth Godin. Its a great model for how we should live life. I've seen the principles in this book in tons of aspects of my life. I highly recommend it to anyone (a short ~90 page book). Here's my summary of it and direct applications I've seen.

Main Ideas in the Book
Check out this graph first to get a basic idea:

I used to think that rewards were directly correlated to how much effort I put into a task. Not so. It may seem that way at first, but there are inevitably going to be setbacks in whatever endeavors I embark on. This is the Dip. The Dip is when things get hard and you feel like it is not going to get better. The Dip is the when you stand alone and you have the most opposition. The Dip is when you want to quit.




That is precisely the time you must not quit. Rewards that are worth it will all have a dip. Nothing worthwhile comes easy. Here is when you repeat to yourself all those famous idioms such as: -The nigh is darkest before the dawn -The light at the end of the tunnel -Every cloud has a silver liner...etc.

Scarcity creates value. Anyone that took Econ 101 knows that phrase. Those rewards are scarce because of the dip. If it were easy, those rewards would be ubiquitous and you wouldn't care about them. No one would. Because it is difficult to climb Mt Everest is a major accomplishment. Finishing a marathon results in great rewards because of the dip that comes after the first few times you go out and train for it when you want to quit.

Sometimes you should quit. Some things we work on are fruitless and not worth it or we may not be cut out for the task. It is critical that we quit the right things. Just as critical is that we quit at the right point. Some endeavors don't have those high rewards and the slope is like a straight, horizontal line with minimal rewards or a slight increase with an abrupt drop off. (ie: smoking, drugs, learning to play cricket, stealing the cable of an elevator you're on to sell for money).



Applications in my Life
I just started working in a new state, new job...new everything. At first it was great because I got a signing bonus, people were nice, the facility was nice, I found a nice apartment etc. I noticed a significant dip a week or two in where things got tough and I was working hard with no fruits of my labors. I stuck with it and things got much better; I know what I am doing at work and I'm able to do it decently well. I've noticed this in so many of my projects that I'm working on now as well.

There is a phenomenal difference between 90% effort and 100%. The difference in rewards is 10 fold. Think about this. I will be too.

Camping In Europe

If I had had (that looks weird) more time I would have blogged a lot during my excursion around Europe...it would have been fresh and I could write each exciting detail in real time. However, I can one up that: blog about the life altering experiences and lessons learned in a topical, easy to follow manner using my 20/20 hindsight. Today's topic: Camping!!

To Pay Or Not To Pay? (an easy question...usually)
I thought that we would be able to find a place just about anywhere to lay down our tent and sleep for 6 hours, but once we got out there and started looking for places to camp, I found it was a little more difficult. Our first spot took us a while to finally decide to camp in a public park in Bath and finding a place later on often proved to be just as tough. We then decided to try out the "campings" that so many cities in Europe offer. I felt ripped off often as we were charged up to 10 Euros a person for a 5' X 8' spot of ground for the night. We could use public bathrooms (thanks McDonalds :D) we didn't need a fire, and most of the time the showers were extra at the campings.

We decided to camp for free most of the time. It was great! We saved so much money and it was fun to find nice campsites. I have pictures for some of them and a description for each in order:

Bath, England
This was our first camping spot, behind that pine tree, just beyond the bench in Victoria Park. It turns out that there are quite a few people that run along this path in the morning :D

Amsterdam, Netherlands (Zeeburg)
We stayed at this camping because we were in a huge city with lots of pot and prostitution and figured it was safer than in the bushes near graffiti covered, skater hang outs. If I were to do it again, I think I would be ok with sleeping in the bushes though.


Paris, France
We got off the metro north west of the arc de triomph looking for a bus to take us to a camping. During our search for the bus, we decided we didn't want to pay for what we could get for free. It was dark when we set up camp and thought nobody would be in this part of the woods. When we woke up to some frenchy cleaning up trash saying something to us, we said, "Sacre blueh!! Je no par par frances!!" and left promply passing the trash on the ground that was telling of the type of crowd that visits these parts. We found out later that there is lots of prostitution that goes on there. We packed up and took the 20 min walk to the Arc.



Barcelona, Spain
We walked around Montijuc, a park on a hill to the west of the city, for a while before finnally settling on a spot right next to a cemetary wall...spooky!



Bern, Switzerland
This campsite is just behind the temple, which is just outside of Bern. There's a place for a campfire and plenty of wood. It was a cool place to camp, recomended to us by the French and Italians we met there :D Great spot!!

Interlaken, Switzerland
We had tons of fun talking to our new Swiss friends at this overlook where they were havinig a camp fire. They let us join them and we grilled brats on their coals. The guy at the bike shop that was really cool told us about the place. Great view!!

Pompeii, Italy (Camping Zeus)
An ok camping right next to the ruins of Pompeii. WiFi for a steep fee throughout the grounds.

Paestum, Italy
We ended up in this rural area with lots of farmers fields ready to camp at around midnight. We decided to throw down the tent in an empty grass parking lot/field instead of on top of an ancient wall.

Vienna, Austria
When we arrived at a stop near where a camping was supposed to be, we asked a Wiener (haha...someone from Wien is, of course, a wiener). She replied in a thick accent, "Look, avound...its all green. You can camp anyvere." So we found this nice spot by the Danue canal.



Fussen, Germany
After getting off the train, we headed for the hills and started to set up camp in a field when we saw two guys w/ packs on heading up the trail. We started talking to them and they invited us up to a clearing where we had a fire and enjoyed some amazing music by a couple talented guitarists. It was rad! This is where the tent was.


Weisbaden, Germany
We walked around for a while at like 11pm to find this crappy spot right around houses, just down the hill from a road.

Koblenz, Germany
We asked a younger guy about camping whereupon he looked around, quieted to a whisper, and gave us two place names. He instructed us to go to the first and ask about the second. We found a nice spot on the bank of the Rhine river.


Oslo, Norway
According to law in Norway, you can camp 150m from any building...anywhere. We weren't sure if that still applied in the country's capital, so we decided to hide ourselves in a frisbee golf course right behind the nude statues park. There were tons of people out in this huge park with about a hundred nude statues by this famous Norwegien sculpturist. People stayed out late too...probably because it didn't get dark until 11:30pm!!


If any of you plan to camp for free in Europe I definatly recomend it, but some countries you'll want to be outside of the city in order to hide yourself.

Southern Italy: The Amalfi Coast

The Bus Ride
The entire coastline from Sorento to Salerno (30 miles) is a jagged sheer cliff that shoots about 500 feet out of the Mediterrainian Sea with colorful houses crammed into the steep hills above the cliff. The road that connects the cramped little towns is an engineering feat. As the road snakes along the edge of the cliff we could peer out of the bus window to see only a foot or two between the bus wheel and the waves crashing against the rock wall. It was funny to hear the woman behind us complain to her husband about how crazy the driver was.

Real Italy
I went for a swim out to a big rock on a small beach near one of the cities on the coast. After the climb back up the cliff to the city, I got a real Italian lemon ice the hit the spot perfectly. Sitting on the ledge above the Bay of Naples I watched a docile Mt. Vesevius darken as the sun went down. To finish off the quintecential Italian experience Andrew and I had pizza from a brick oven heated with wood in the area that pizza was invented. It was in this area that cheese, tomato and oregeno (the colors on the Italian flag) were put on some dough and called pizza as it was served to someone named Magarieta.

Ruins
We visited Pompeii where in 79AD the busteling town was covered in ash preserving a snapshot into what life was like then. It was incredible. I will post a few pictures.
The Roman ruins in Pasteum were great as well and worth the train ride down.

Our Trip So Far
Andrew and I have visited 8 countries so far:

• England
• Republic of Ireland
• The Netherlands
• Belgium
• France
• Spain
• Switzerland
• Italy

We plan to visit the following 7 countries before our whirlwind Euro trip finishes:

• Austria
• Czech Repulic
• Germany
• Denmark
• Norway
• Sweden
• Finland

Tomorrow Andrew and I will meet Betsy and Maleah in Rome for 3 days. Then Betsy, Andrew and I will head up to Venice before leaving Italy.

The First Temple Outside N. America: Bern Switzerland

Temple Housing

We arrived in Bern last night and as we sat in the train station thinking of places we could lay our heads for the night, we decided to give the temple housing a call. Turned out we wouldnt have to hike around for hours looking for a place to camp where we wouldn't be found (by police or some dude more scragily than ourselves).

We got a nice place to stay and meet some cool people from Marseille and Italy. The Marseille family actually fed me because I was asking for directions to a place to eat after all the stores had closed in the little town that the temple is in. As luck would have it, we lost our beds because of miscommunication and had to sleep on the floor, but they gave us our money back, so we were happy about it. We turned around and lost close to the same amount when we dropped the 20 bones for temple clothing the next morning, though.

The Bern Temple

This place is rad! We all had a really good experience here. The temple is in a small town outside of Bern in the midst of small homes. Walking up to the ungated temple there were birds chriping, the sun was shining, and there was the smell of fresh bread cooking as we walked the 5 minutes to get there from the Zollikofen train stop.

We had some time before doing temple work, so the Temple president invited us into his office despite our unkept and shaggy appearance (only one tie between the three of us). He told us a lot of cool history behind the first temple outside North America. Also, it turned out that he was my stake president back in MI up until the early 90s and he knows my mom and dad...small world!

While thinking about how small the world is...I ran into a guy that took a couple Korean classes with me while entering the Picasso meuseum in Barcelona.

Climbing on things...and getting repremanded

So...I enjoy climbing on top of things much like goats like to do.

Here are a few pictures of me climbing on some things in Europe where I did not get scolded by some police officer.

Driving Like Jason Bourne to D-Day Beaches

We decided to rent a car from Caen, Fr to get to the beaches where D-Day happened on June 6, 1944. It was a somber and educational experience. We spent a couple hours walking along the beach, through cemetary and in the museum pondering the events of that important day when so many men lost their lives fighting for freedom, safety and peace. While there, I began imagining allied troops storming up the hill in the midst of gunfire as their friends fall next to them.

One of the perks of this trip was that we had to rent a car. It was a tiny little french car--and a good thing it was tiny because some of the towns we drove through left no room for error as they snaked in between stone homes 10 feet apart.

Here is a video of Andrew passing some slower traffic... using a bike path.

A Better Way to Get Around a City: Bikes

Eindhoven
We landed yesterday afternoon in a City in southern Holland called Eindhoven and one of the first things we noticed as we got off was the bikes and the transit layout. This town is really quiet and was easy to navigate, there were no traffic jams, and not many cars on the road...yet there were ~20 story buildings, and 750,000 people living there. How did they do it?

Everybody rides bikes to get around town. The city is layed out to allow for bikes everywhere very easily and conviently. There are seperate lanes for petestrians, bikes, cars and busses at some places. Tunnels and special bike traffic lights make it easy to cross intersections. All of Holland is like layed out similar to this.

I think it is rad! The results of this system:

• Less traffic
• More healthy people
• Less polution
• More people that can wheelie really well
• Faster for intermediate/short distances
• More biker gangs using their chain locks to terrorize the town
  
• Better mulit-tasking while biking
• More bike accidents
• Dumb tourists that don't know bike ediquette (we only got honked at once)
• A lot of people on one bike

Amsterdam
With a more bustleing city, it was way tough for us to get a handle (pun intended) on navigating a city on a bike. We never knew when it was ok to cross when the bike light was red; other people would go on the red light and be fine...then right when we try, the cars would start going.

Although difficult to navigate, it was fun. I think I would love it if I knew the town really well and could just cruise to where I was going.

A Sore Butt
We rode around 50 km today on a trip out to an old fishing village north of Amsterdam. Originally we thought the clunkers we rented would be nice b/c they had a big, cushoned seat. We were wrong.

Here is our journey on google maps.




View Larger Map

A 6' X 2' spot is all I need

Over the past few days Andrew and I have been sleeping anywhere and everywhere trying to save a little cash for the rest of our journey. Here is a list of a few places:

• Victoria Park, Bath, England (behind a couple trees so the joggers didn't see us)

• Mark's Hotel room floor, next to his pull out bed, London (The $500/night rooms only bed was a hide away)
• On floor underneath train seats, from S. Whales to Holyhead

• On floor by the stairs on an Irish Ferry from Holyhead to Dublin
• Ghetto hostel in Dublin, under the train tracks with illegal migrant workers
  
• On a nice couch in Holland
  

Europe Has Begun

Well...with ridiculously expensive internet fees over here, I haven't had much time to write about our adventures, but we definitely have had some.

We spent time in London, Bath, and Bristol and are now in Dublin. I'll write more about sleeping in a park in Bath, getting kicked out of the Tate modern and others later :D

Pictures will follow as well.

Cheers!

Saving the World

A few extra hours of light
Ghana is 5 degrees off from the cross hares that are made by the prime meridian and the equator and therefore there is almost exactly 12 hours of sun. That means that year round there is about 11 hours of darkness each day. If you are in one of the many African villages where it is prohibitively expensive to have wires run across the jungle/savanna/dessert what would you do during the 4 hours of darkness you spend awake each day?

In Ghana, village schools with out electricity don't have much light in the mud huts and often require learning by audible memorization. Especially during the rainy season, lighting inside schools is poor and adds another challenge in the learning process.

How can these issues be resolved? Energy is all around, it just needs to be transferred into usable electrical energy. Kids have lots of energy. Why not tap into that by bleeding off a little energy from a merry go round that they are pushing?

The BYU Manufacturing Engineering Technology Capstone Team
Empower Playgrounds Inc has given us the task of coming over here to Ghana, work in a job shop here with a team of of metal workers, carpenters etc to build the first merry go round that will light up a village that has no way to get electricity besides batteries. Tomorrow we will install the toy that we have spent 4 days working on in a small village school called Essam. I'm excited to see how the children react to the first playground equipment they have ever seen.

Not only will this provide light, but hopefully, as they see the engineering that goes into this, they will be inspired to learn more about renewable energy and have a better understanding of the way energy can be converted from food to mechanical to electrical energy.

Documenting the Project
Sunday night a BYU film crew and a photographer arrived here in Ghana to shoot a BYU commercial and news story. Yesterday they took lots of picture and film of fabricating the merry go round and today they went out to the village to shoot before installing the MGR. We will install it tomorrow. The commercial will be aired during televised sporting events and on KBYU. Pictures taken will be on BYU's homepage and there will be a audio slide show online as well (Like the football ones). All of this publicity for Empower Playgrounds Inc will help the not-for-profit get off the ground and will provide the means of getting power to a multitude of villages across rural Africa.

Evil men

On Saturday we hopped in an 11 person VW van and went 2 hours through
the Ghanaian country side to the old capital of Ghana, Cape Coast.
There we went to one of the largest and most important slave castles in
the Atlantic slave trade.
It was a sobering experience. Our guide started off the tour by taking
us to the women's quarters. We entered into the small chambers where 400
women were crammed in at one time. I could barely stand the smell for
3 minutes as we stood inside the place where they ate, slept and
relieved themselves. It must have been miserable! The governors
quarters were conveniently right above them with window and a trap door.
They would pick one they liked and rape them. If they became pregnant
they would send them elsewhere to have their child. The men had
similarly poor, dank living conditions. Those who did not cooperate
were put into a room with no lights and left there to die from
starvation.
Will all these atrocities and many more going on within the walls of
this evil place, they had a chapel in the middle of the courtyard. It
is unbelievable to me to see the hypocrisy these people practiced. The
castle was littered with signs saying how holy and just the leaders of
these castles were. These evil men wielding power pretended to be God
fearing, just men.

Different

Names

So we arrived in Ghana the other night after over a day of traveling.
As we walked off the tarmac into the Accra airport we notices a sign
for Ed Parker. It was almost the name of one of the guys in our group,
Ed PACKER...just a little different. After asking one that guy holding
the sign, and then another, we finally decided that it was close enough
and they took us throught the govenment official line for immigration.
It turns out that our friend Kweku (the engineer who runs the shop we
will be ago), has connections at the airport here and has like 5
airport employees helping us out, not including the other 10 guys
outside there to help us.
Before getting there we learned how people recieve names in Ghana, its
a little different; they have a name for each day of the week on which
you are born. I looked it up and it turns out I am a Friday baby, and
therefore I am either yoofi, fifi or kofi. I like kofi. Wouldn't that
be easier when deciding what to name your baby?


Temperature

The first night we got in, it was 100 degrees at 10 pm. This was quite
a bit different from the 25 and snowing we left in Utah. Refreshing at
first, but today I noticed that my fabric watch band is only dry at
night when I take it off. I am sweating the entire day except when in
our air conditioned bedroom that hits you like a wall when
entering...the Ghanaians can't believe how cold we like it.


Cuting costs

I'll have to post a video of them cutting metal. They have power tools
here, but becuase tools cost more than labor and waste more metal, they
prefer to use a hacksaw and hammer and chisel. It took around 2 hours
for Bubba Isa to cut a 2'x 2' plate from a 1/4" thick sheet of steel.



10 apples up on top
One of the coolest things we've done yet was when we went out to machinist market to buy material for our merry go round. I wish I could upload pictures...but on this connection, I can't even upload