Check It Out: Kiva

I added a link in the sidebar to kiva.org, a sort of microfinance aggregator/interface that puts small lending organizations in developing countries in contact with the people who have a bit of money to lend. Lots of you have probably heard of it before, and it's pretty cool. So far I've lent to a clothing vendor in Ghana and a small farmer in Peru. You don't get a tax receipt apart from the recommended 10% donation to Kiva's own operations (obviously, since you are getting the money back once the loan is repaid). But I think the idea of pumping a little capital into the economy of a country, while keeping it out of the potentially corrupt hands of the domestic governments, is much more valuable than a tax break on a straight donation. Loaning like this lets people exercise the agency to help themselves, which will probably have better long-term results for communities than aid alone.

So there you go. A brief weekend update: this weekend is kind of sucking hardcore. At about noon on Friday, I got a cold, and so now I am thoroughly disgusting and all of my fun plans for coffee and parties and such have been scuppered. My respiratory system is such a piece of junk sometimes. Friggin' Achilles lung.

Unintentionally Humourous Geomorphology Terms, Ed. 1

Dyke swarms.

Rocks Rock

Classes started this week for me (and for Boopsie!). The two I've had so far look pretty good. Saille and I have both of our geography classes together, which was a nice surprise, and other than that it's just international affairs for me. International affairs is going to be a depressing one, methinks: I haven't had the lecture yet, but the readings are all about sexual violence in conflict, terrorism, etc etc etc. It should be interesting, though. My geomorphology class looks somewhat terrifying; in the first class the prof blew through a whole bunch of terminology, seemingly assured that most of us knew all of it already. It was hyperventilation-worthy. Doing the readings so far, I do basically understand what's going on, but I'm going to have to be pretty careful to keep good notes.

It was a bit of a shock to come back to work and school after my Blissful Five-Day Weekend, during which I did as little as humanly possible. I cleaned the apartment, played a lot of capoeira in the park, and went to the movies. I went out to the Barley Mow on Friday night to see Jaime, back from England temporarily. Kristen and I helped Lauren move into her first apartment, which is adorable and in the fabulous Elgin Street area. Her parents very kindly took me and Kristen out for Vietnamese to thank us. Most importantly, I slept a lot (going to bed late and waking up even later is one of my favourite pastimes).

Friday night I went out with Saille and Rosina to Rooke's place - the Red Light Saints are in the Big Money Shot again (and won $5000 in the wild-card competition, which means they now get to go on to play for $40 000, which is intense). I didn't go to the show, though. Instead, I went out with a gang of assorted B.PAPMers to Pier 21 and danced the night away to the sounds of some good recorded music and a medium-bad band. Then I woke up to read about landforms.

One of the highlights of the weekend has been a good exchange I'm having with Emily. She's supporting McCain in the election, and said so in her Facebook status, so I e-mailed her to ask why she connects to his candidacy. On an emotional level as well as a policy level, McCain '08 doesn't work for me in the way it does for her. So now we're basically writing small essays back and forth on why we support one or the other. It's good to have exchanges like that; for me, it prevents me from just drawing a hideous cartoon of People Who Disagree With Me and yelling at it until I feel righteous. Writing also highlights to me the more paranoid and contradictory elements of my leftism (I may triage these into "for exorcism" and "for substantiation" at some later point).

A further highlight was talking with Katie and Boopsie on Skype. They were both online in the early evening on Saturday, so I basically ate dinner with them. It was pretty nice to catch up, and they both seem to be enjoying themselves at school. Boopsie and I discussed, among other things, the soon-to-be-completed epic Harry Potter fanfiction we are reading. Shut up it is awesome OMG.

I am not amused that the writ is going to be dropped so soon up here in Canadia, because the files I am working on all need to start going up the ladder pretty soon and nobody Important is going to be paying attention to them. SIGH.