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, includingNotes 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.