Best Brunch Evah.

To celebrate our mutual birthdays, and see our San Francisco posse before we head to Chicago in June, Kate and Jonathan invite you to our place...

Update: Thanks to everyone who stopped by. A good time was had.

Back in San Francisco

Much flying later, I'm back in SF. Currently wide awake due to jet lag and enjoying a nice pot of tea. Thinking about breaking in on the whiskey. Will keep you posted.

Kate and I departing for a mini-vaction in Chicago in 5 days. Whoosh.

Drinking kava in Vanuatu

"Traditionaly, we drink it fast. All in one go. I'll explain why later," said Harrington, proprietor of a delightful waterfront kava shack (and former ombudsman of Vanuatu). He handed us coconut shells full of slimy liquid and steered us to a corner of his deck -- for the spitting. We drank the kava. We gagged. We spit. We breathed heavily. We observed, in a purely clinical way, that our tongues were huge. Drink it fast. Right. We ordered more.

"Uuuuuuugh, that's awful stuff," said Harrington. He should know -- it was his kava. Kava is a mix of bathwater, pharmacological jungle roots and distilled liquid evil. And it makes your tongue go numb. Or, I should say, if maketh yor tun go nub. Delightful stuff.

According to wikipedia:

A moderately potent kava drink causes effects including mental clarity, patience, and an ease of acceptance. The effects of kava are most often compared to alcohol, marijuana, or a large dose of Valium.[1]

The sensations, in order of appearance, are slight tongue and lip numbing; mildly talkative and sociable behavior; clear thinking; anxiolytic (calming) effects; relaxed muscles; and a very euphoric sense of well-being. Sometimes this feeling has been mistaken for nausea.

Right then. Sounds good. We drank Harrington's kava. We patted his dog. We sat on his deck and watched the Port Vila lagoon turn from green to blue to black in the setting sun. Harrington skipped from group to group sitting in little circles of deck chairs, lighting candles, ensuring that all was well. His clientèle was a mix of ni-Vanuatu and foreign ministry officials, with the occasional ni-Vanuatu minister thrown in. He was quite proud of these official visits to his humble kava shack.

The night wore on, and a provincial governor arrives. We greet him and make small talk. Harrington beams. Our brush with local celebrity -- nice. With that all done, we prepared to shuffle on our way, when Harrington approaches, looking pained. There was someone we should like to meet. More dignitaries? Sure.

A man slides into a deck chair, a dark silhouette against the torches lighting the bar. His voice is deep and slow and clear. Harrington brings kava. We drink and spit and huff. N asks the man how many kava shells he has had. He says, "Six. Seven." A small shrug, as if such things are unknowable -- to count the kava would ruin the kava. Quantum kava.

N talks about the need for access to information in Vanuatu. N is remarkably smooth. The man nods slowly. I nibble on jungle greens soaked in salt and sauce. Harrington comes back, all apologies: he is out of kava. He switches from English to the local tongue -- or maybe French. I'm not following everything. No worries, he says, he can direct his guest to a nearby kava shack that is well stocked. We follow Harrington and his guest out to a battered pickup truck. The VIP is giving us a ride back to town. Of course. We ride, we talk, we arrive. I watch the streetlights with fixed attention. So quiet. So peaceful.

The man hands me his business card. It reads:
Director General, Government of the Republic of Vanuatu.

Right then. Of course.

Dili to Brisbane photos

Timor Workshop photos

I love that these images really captured the intense discussions in the small group discussions. It helps that Timorese tend to talk with their hands - it's hard to photograph a conversation.

Thanks to AusAID for the Orwell-sized mega-banner.

Brisbane

I think I've figured out Australia -- It's what America would be if every TV channel was owned by Fox. Aussie TV = grim. Not that I have a lot of time to watch it.

Current flight tally, by the end of today: SFO > Sydney > Darwin > Dili > Darwin > Brisbane > Sydney > Port Villa. Which is more or less the halfway point. I'm also feeling a little funky, probably from some tropical bacterium that's hopefully being devastated by the anti-biotics I'm on. Or maybe I'm feeling funky because of said antibiotics. Good times.

Dili was ridiculously interesting, and I'm tempted to just say, hey, let's go live on a tiny, barely function island on the Failed States Index! It'll be AWESOME! We can teach people how to use hole punchers (this is at times the level of technical assistance being given to the people running the government, businesses, churches, and civil society groups -- they're really totally starting from zero. Blank slate -- fascinating, fascinating moment in history).

But mostly, I just want some active culture yogurt and my cold to go away. At this point I'm like patient zero for an East Asian sniffles epidemic. Passport, boarding pass, virus -- check, check, check.