Sunday, July 25, 2010

I remembered to put a title on this post!

I might as well continue on my streak of confession posts. I'm from rural Indiana and it runs in my blood. That isn't the confession, but it is pertinent. The confession is that I (and I think everyone else along with me) am a finicky and fickle person at times. The rural Indiana thing becomes important when thinking about what ways these traits play out in my life. For instance, I often find myself being very slow to warm up to new things (like my roommate's Swedish butter knife)and I often find myself with a very strong opinion about the most correct way to do something (for instance how toast is toasted). The two examples I listed are a source of much amusement to my roommates as they seem silly and trivial to them. Funny thing is though, if you pay attention you can catch other people in the act as well. For instance, my one roommate returned home recently and the first words out of his mouth were, "Well that's not where I would have put the table." I find this very humorous because I saw it coming. He has an artistic eye and is always seeking to satisfy that part of his nature. I on the other hand am much more concerned with pure functionality and find some of his rants amusing. My other roommate is incredibly consistent in how he approaches life as viewed through his values, except occasionally he strays from those (in minor ways, not in the "let's go binge drinking and hire prostitutes" sort of way). In one such instance recently I asked him why he did something seemingly unpractical and he replied, "I was curious." If curiosity isn't a fickle thing, then I don't know what is. That said, I'm still the one who made a big fuss over toast and butter knives which even I recognize is quite silly.

In other news, this week I went to Dhaka for a couple of days to do some quick computer work that needed faster internet than I have here in Bogra. I then proceeded to ride a bus for 15 hours in a 48 hour time span. I caught a bus back to Bogra on Tuesday afternoon. I then took a bus up to Dimla the next morning and returned from Dimla on Thursday morning. Needless to say, I'm a bit tired of buses now but my work all went really well. I started up a bit of research in Dimla. We're trying to determine if farmers will really make more of a profit if they feed better quality feed to their milk cows. That will be going one for the next month or two. I returned early enough on Thursday to go over to a friends house to watch the movie "Elf". Our rationalization for that was that we were celebrating Christmas in July. I guess that concept qualifies as a joke about American culture. Sometimes the little grasps of home have their value even if they are silly. I guess that's kind of like how our little fickle and finicky characteristics are our grasps at being ourselves which is beautiful even if it is silly.

2 comments:

Steven said...

Two things:

1. Can you post a picture of this Swedish butter knife? How is it different?

2. "I often find myself with a very strong opinion about the most correct way to do something." Like how to change a light bulb over a set of stairs!

Phil Birkey said...

http://www.lukemagee.com/blog/pics/butterknife.jpg

It looks very similar to this.