Kaulapi World

For a side project this summer I drove up to MD this past weekend to get an Earth Box, supposedly an idiot-proof planter system that has high yields for growing small scale fruits and vegetables. It came with some fertilizer, CaCO3 mix for growing tomatoes and supposedly set up with a reservoir system that makes it impossible for you to over or under water the plants. I started off with a celebrity tomato plant, some Thai basil for pho, Chinese parsley and Italian basil for pasta. I’m in the process of germinating some seeds to see if I grow some Okinawan goya as well although I don’t know if it’ll work.

I think it might be my mom’s influence as well who grows just about everything in her yard back home. Or part of it is from reading articles about citizens living on an isolated island giving up their domestic agricultural industries (AKA food?) based on the faith that the regular shipments of cargo won’t be affected by a spike in oil prices or geopolitical crisis. Maybe its this lingering concern that maybe one day the consumption bubble will burst and those who have skills in producing goods will be in a better position than those who just produce services.

Who knows, maybe trying to grow stuff, even on a micro-scale and mostly symbolic way may be the start of a personal struggle with this consumer identity that pretty much become a way of life. I recall reading lots of articles in grad school and around the web talking about the shift from manufacturing and agriculture to strictly service industry, and what are the potential implications of this in the long term economies of the world. While all economies require producers of goods and consumers of those goods, and that as economies become more service-based, they are more driven by consumption of goods produced in other countries. As things stand now the service-industry countries are the richer ones, more or less dictating the market prices while importing the hard goods that their respective companies no longer produce because it costs cheaper to buy it overseas.

Eventually we become a nation of service providers who produce nothing really other than our “expertise” which unfortunately can sometimes materialize in bureaucracy, pushing paper skills and a lot of bullshit. Irony, I think this service skill set describes me and pretty much everyone I know in terms of our formal education - although its true my day job is in the production of policy analysis, research, and reports, and eventually I’ll be providing legal services or producing legal work products, it would be nice to actually produce or create something down to earth once in a while. Also with this outsourcing there are very serious vulnerabilities to service industry-based economies as a result of this shift, we become more dependent on international political stability, free trade trade agreements, and of course cheap oil to transport the goods that we consume but do not produce. Everything is dependent on cheap energy for communications and transportation, otherwise the service-based industries would eventually starve.

One sign of becoming a yuppie is to do more grocery shopping at Whole Foods and be tempted by all of their latest promotions and organic goodies, and actually not be totally fazed out by the higher prices. I think for some produce and meats I definitely do taste a difference. I have begun to appreciate quality over quantity, with some exception of course. I remember talking to a friend about his refusal to buy anything organic on the basis that it is overpriced for the amount of food you actually get. This is someone who loves to shop at Walmart, and refuses to even consider the arguments presented in Fast Food Nation, or Super-Size me as having any merit at all.

I do agree that part of being an informed consumer, you have to remind yourself the misconceptions of organic food in general, especially lately how it has become more a marketing tactic. Maybe it always was, maybe not, who knows. In part I suppose we have to trust our own judgment and make our own decisions for what a particular good or service is worth. Again, everything is relative, overhearing a conversation at the the local farmer’s market gave another perspective as the person was bashing whole foods as an evil corporation.

Kind of ironic that I end up spending the day not at work, but instead at the Federal District Courthouse for jury duty. Again it was a trial that I probably would’ve been really interested in sitting in on, but for whatever reason I was not selected. This time I happened to be towards the end of the jury pool and didn’t even have to answer any questions by the attorneys before the clerk excused me for the day. The last time was similar situations in the sense that I was actually in the process of learning about the law and was probably one of the only people in the pool who was secretly hoping that he would get picked. The last time I did get selected, but the Judge declared a mistrial after the first 30 minutes of the trial.

It was nice to have some time off from work to take a breather from the hectic interview and drafting schedule to reflect, stop and look around. I found some interesting little parks and statues gardens a few blocks away from where I work. It has been so nose to the grindstone that I’m sorry to admit that I’ve become in part one of those District denizens rushing to and from work, not taking time to enjoy the more insignificant things in life. Since I didn’t have class tonight, today was probably one of the first days in a long time I can remember that I actually had an excuse to walk around with no place to go.

I used to wonder whether certain twists and turns that life seemed to throw at me were all part of a master plan. Part of me still believes, although by judging the mixed signals, sometimes it seems kind of strange what kind of path I’ve been drawn down by the universe. Maybe it is just as fitting that I spend my 3 year anniversary of federal service in a federal courthouse, albeit as a prospective juror - after all it was in another state court house back home that made me seriously think about heading out to the East coast, DC specifically, although if you asked me 6 years ago if I ever thought I’d be living in the district I’d tell you that you’re nuts.

The three years out have been good to me, very productive, eye-opening. I guess you could say that I’m older, wiser, not as naive in the ways of government systems and institutions. I’ve secured some benefits, non-competitive standing for certain positions, access credentials, and of course a steady stream of income which I’ve been able to afford a decent living standard and put away a bunch in IRA accounts and savings accounts. Filing taxes this year I was surprised with the prospect that my paid taxes were starting to sound like what I used to gross in a year.

I’ve applied and denied for a few promotions, won some battles with management, lost others. Gotten a better feel for the agency’s internal culture, strengths, weaknesses, insanities, inefficiencies and inequities. Haven’t drunk the kool-aid as some of my peers obviously have about a perfect agency that rewards its employees based on performance and no politics or favoritism, but honestly haven’t given up just yet. Time will tell.

On the extra-agency development, I am now a little bit more than half way to a J.D. from going to night school. Can’t say that law school has been everything that I expected, but I can say that I have been learning a lot more than I could’ve ever imagined, even though I have some work experience in the area nothing really substitutes actually going through the intellectual hazing that aspiring legal scholars have to go through. I understand why so many law school alum decide that they after all do not really want to practice law and find other professions.

Settled a few personal demons, while others still linger. Most importantly, I took the plunge and made a real commitment to Hana at the time that felt right, although as with everything else, it was very unconventional and maybe a little wild from an uninformed observer. Circles of influence and interest change gradually but significantly when you’ve found something worth fighting for and making a life commitment to. When people ask me how life is now I can’t say that it’s that much different in the day to day, but every so often I do notice.

All in all I think the past three years I’ve spent out here so far have definitely toughened me up a bit, made some sense on what to expect from people in general and in terms of professional and personal integrity, and limits of them. The locality of the district and all that goes on here has been a lesson in human nature all by itself. I’ve come to realize that there are some very insecure and screwed up people at any age and background. All in all I’ve still maintained for the most part my own personality and temperment - Meyer’s Briggs profile has been a solid ENTP/ENTJ.