Hurry up and wait...other thoughts in preparation for the season...

For a little while there a nasty rumour was circulating that we might be doing a little bit of tree-planting before the season started. I was left to ponder, what had we done wrong. Had we offended the Brushing Gods without knowing it; not enough herbicide libations poured out last season. After a tense afternoon bracing myself for the first thing to go wrong this season, word came down - a shift and a half of manual brushing at Munro camp (Manual means without herbicide - nothing to carry in the backpack except gas - easy as pie). Grace and the Brushing Gods had clearly chosen to smile upon us.

The last few days have been uneventful. I did go with Justin to pick up a truck from the tree-planters camp early this morning. It was good to start to get a little experience in the trucks before the season starts. It increases the odd chance that I might end up driving one at one point (though there are other candidates around).

The crew has been busy with their herbicide course (for which I already have 5 years certification) so I have been bustling around PG preparing for the 6 or more weeks that are to be spent in Ospika camp. The non-smoking thing has been going just fine: 4 weeks today and I'm nearly done with the level 2 patches soon I'll be off them entirely. I made sure to bring to fully unread Adbusters magazines from Vancouver and I just picked up a Harpers today. Over long stints in the bush, good magazines are to me as clean, cool water is to the parched man. Comraderie can only take you so far. There is a great need to distance onself on occaision and escape into the verbal/visual world of good writers.

On that note, I've advanced leagues through 1421: The Year China Discovered the World. It's a fantastic book and accounts the explorations of a massive Chinese fleet throughout the new world in the aforementioned year. The book is a result of 15 years of research and reads like an account of the author's investigations. For that and other reasons it's quite an exciting read as he travels from one corner of the world to the next one always finding the shreds and clues he's looking for. His evidence is substantial and solid and the very idea turns European exploration on its head. I love the account of the one wing of the Chinese fleet (who had been sent by the emperor to gather tribute from the inhabitants of the unknown reaches of the world) coming into contact with the ancient Mayans in southern mexico and their flourishing empire.

It's also amazing just what a backwater Europe was at the time of the explorations. The so-called civilized world was composed of Arabia, India and China all of whom traded with each other. Nowadays, after writing my China paper for my class on development and underdevelopment, the time for the rise of China is already underway. Searching through news articles and other data I found that China has, in the last few years, established itself as the dominant economic force in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). It's power in that trading bloc is only slightly off-set by the emergence of another regional powerhouse: India. It has replaced America as the prime trading partners with Mercusor, the South American trading bloc that includes Brazil, Peru, Paraguay and Chile. China has also expanded into Africa, signing oil deals with Nigeria, Chad, Angola, Zimbabwe, Kenya as well as replacing Canadian company Talisman in the Sudanese oil conglomerate. China is rising to its formal imperial glory without the use of the sword (although, its sheer economic size is often enough to negotiate trading arrangement with other countries that sway heavily in favour of the Chinese. Where America is floundering in a war and dropping further and further into debt, China is flourishing without debt and remaining cool when America tries strange WWI triple-entente military alliances with Japan and India (trying to hem in China). China doesn't need to fight the Americans, they can sit back and let their competitors on the world stage for the title "superpower" slowly or quickly economically disentegrate.

Ahh, well, enough for now. Stay tuned to the blog for updates from Ospika when I get into camp. I'm sure keep this blog will be one of the many things I will use to keep my sanity in that place.