Top 10 reasons why a blizzard in Philadelphia rock!

1. The normally alluring sound of ambulances, cop cars, buses and street cars become just a quiet hum that lolls you to sleep since the snow has made it impossible for vehicles to drive down your street.


2. For about 5hrs the snow is actually white!


3. Snow is the perfect community revitalization program; for weeks after the snow the trash, broken glass and road kill is perfectly concealed under a blanket of white.


4. Your poorly heated apartment feels cozy compared to the 20 degree weather outside.


5. The stray animals find a cozy place inside instead of following you on the sidewalks.


6. The local cafe stays open until 8pm instead of 9pm...not really a plus, but if you brave the 2ft of snow for a peppermint hot chocolate your small order is upgraded to a large...on the house!


7. Instead of waiting for the bus alone a large group of angry commuters gathers together to heckle every bus that passes by until the correct bus finally arrives...30mins late.


8. The large amount of cars getting stuck in the middle of the road allows for creative gambling on which car will be totalled first!


9. You finally have time to watch every B rated movie you wouldn't allow yourself to spend money watching in the theater.


10. The next morning you can skate to work since none of the sidewalks have been cleaned.

The Last Shangrila

One of my many duties as a vista, besides doing all the things that no one else has the time to do, like scheduling meetings, taking notes and making annoying phone calls is to do background research. My hours and hours of research, plus more hours of composing readable text about said research will usually be referenced once within a day long multi partner meeting. I guess the fact that it might get sited at all is somewhat rewarding, but I can't help but feel that my work is somewhat fruitless...

What brought on this blog topic you might ask? My current assignment which I am "heading-up" is the background research to a program which may or may not be funded by a grant which we may or may not receive. It seems in the non-profit world ambiguity is the main theme. Either way it keeps one on their toes...or at least aware that something will probably not happen.

My current ambiguous task is to research the life style of the Bhutanese people. Up until last week I am not entirely sure that I knew the country of Bhutan existed and to my dismay! This country is an anthropologist dream. Bhutan, known to the Bhutanese as "The land of the Thunder dragon" also know to westerners as the literal The Last Shangrila, has been completely isolated from the western world up until about 10 years ago. How on this green earth did a country survive without roads, motor vehicles or the Internet and not fall victim to Darwinism is beyond my comprehension, but power to them! They respect the planet, build everything around the existing foliage, have hydro electric power from the rivers coming off the Himalayans and have limited trading with other countries. However, every gem has its flaw.

This country is crazy and not in the "crazy cool" way either. For centuries they have been ruled by a "benevolent" king who has instilled this edict of a "gross domestic happiness." Yep that is right, since they have no product or any large amount of currency Happiness is their focus. Schools teach reading, writing and the ancient practices of happiness and harmony, in fact something around 50% of the population are monks...including the women! The are totally a self sustaining, traditionally clothed, happy as a lark, zen masters that are...oh wait, ethnically cleansing their country.

So here comes the real reason why I have to research this country. It is not that I get to travel there for some awesome business trip (like that was ever going to happen ;-)) it is that over 100,000 "Bhutanese" are living in refugee camps for the past 20 years, simply because they are bringing the country down with their depression. Well, that might be over simplifying the issue, but to some extent it is true. These 100,000 people are not Buddhist, they are working class Hindus that grow the countries food, they cannot become monks and can no longer receive an educations since their citizenship has been revoked. This scenario seems to be dripping with irony. First off, to evict 100,000 people simply because they are the "grumpy" working class is totally off its rocker. Secondly, they have evicted the only group of people that GROW THE COUNTRY'S FOOD. I am not entirely sure if they thought this plan through, but it seems to me there are many flaws.

Besides the obvious contradictions of faith, essentially firing your only manual laborers and displacing 100,000 of people into the neighboring Nepal and Tibet, (as if they don't have enough to worry about) Bhutan has recently decided to allow the Internet to be installed. They might not have running water or highways, but by god they can stream dancing with the stars at 10mpbs per second. It seems as if this King's priorities are a little out of whack...but I should watch what I say, for all I know the King of Bhutan is ready my blog this very minute!

Nevertheless, I still kind of really want to go there and see if this crackerjack country really exists. I want to climb the mountains to the ethereal monastery, chant with the female monks and then watch the strongest men in the country in an archery competition, all while eating organically grown rice and chillies that have been fed pure mountain water for the tops of the Himalayans. Yes, it sounds fascinating, beautiful and dream like, but everything comes at a cost. For $200 I could travel through the entire country with a personal guide and come face to face or face to denial with the egregious human rights abuses happening in this wonderful country all in the name of happiness, but I guess that is the logic behind any war. I guess, nobody is perfect after all.

Limited Access

I have officially finished my seventh full VISTA work day. Upon racking up a week's "employment" status magical things start to happen. People start to remember your name, or at least part of it, you actually exist within the work e-mail/computer system, and you have an Identification Badge. The mere possession of said ID is suppose to magically grant you limitless access to all parts of TU's campus. However, in my case I have only been granted a "courtesy" ID do to the fact that I am neither being paid by TU or actually paying to attend class. Despite this seemingly lame subtext on my ID it still allows me all access to different parts of campus (not as if before this official "badging" I couldn't get into any building anyway). Either way, I am moving up in the world, well, at least at work. Within the social class system of the United States I have fallen quiet hard into "working class." I know we all kid ourselves into believing that we live in a "classless" society and that with the "American Dream" anyone can move up and down the social ladder, however, just spend a couple hours in the local public assistance office and see if you can we don't.
So, this is where my food stamp story continues. After a week long voicemail harassment on my part to get in contact with "Mr. C" I finally managed to break the silence. At quarter to 1pm on Monday, Mr. C finally answered the phone and in response to my name exclaimed, "OH! YOU!" I guess my harassment at least put a name to my application number in which I have been refereed to for the past month. With a little badgering on his part I had an appointment at noon the next day. I was to bring every form of identification that any legal citizen possesses, receipts that I do in fact pay my bills, have a job, only have one job and secretly do not work in two places at once. I was directed to go to the Liberty District public assistance office in a less than favorable part of North Philly where the excessive queuing rivaled that of the DMV, accept they were a lot less organized. However, since I managed to remember my caseworkers name and time of "appointment" (not to be confused with a meeting) I saw Mr. C within a few minuets. However, after an hour of "mathematical assessment" I was granted the elusive permission to obtain a "EBT" card. To those who do not know, an EBT card stands for Electronic Benefit Transfer which is an electronic system that allows a recipient to authorize transfer of their government benefits from a Federal account. This is not a credit card and can only be accepted at select locations (no such list of these locations seems to exist). However, that was the easy part, after waiting for 2 more hours in the massive waiting room, accompanied by screaming babies and angry people I became aware of just how underfunded this office has become. Apparently, pens are tantamount to that of gold in a public assistant office. My only pen helped fill out several applications since I seemed to be the only person in the entire 4 floor building with a spare writing utensil. In fact, the office workers do not give out pens, there are no cups of sharpened pencils and the constant buzz in the room is to where the only spare pen has gone. I made the mistake of flashing my pen out to take notes and no sooner was it deemed as some weird form of currency. If I played my cards right I could have probably gotten some gum or nice cookies out of the deal, however, this transaction would have to be done on the down lo since eating and drinking is prohibited within the office.
After what seemed like a lifetime of staring off into space I stared to fear for my own health after I had gone 3 hours without water and 5 hours without food. Fortunately, as the 3rd hour came to a close I was called into the secret EBT room where I was handed an "access" card, signed a form and was sent on my way with no other information but a hot line to call if I had any problems accessing my food stamps. I still am not aware of which stores accept these, how much money I can spend at a time, if the amount I have will be a standard amount each month, how I get more money on my card and if I can withdraw cash since it is also called a "debit" card. I have spent countless minutes searching for clear cut "rules and regulations" but all I can find is the generic "this is not a credit card."
I have to wait until tomorrow to use my EBT card since it takes 24hrs to generate that I exist in the system. However, I am excited. I feel that the government owes me some compensation for working for free for a year and oh yeah almost a decades of insane political policy that has led an office to be void of a budget to BUY PENS! But, I digress, after some review my all access pass seems to be quite limited.