A quick note to point out the new photo album I just created on the site: “A weekend in Half Moon Bay”. This past week I dropped down to somewhat warmish northern California for the supremely brilliant MySQL Users Conference. For the non-geek inclined, MySQL is the premier open source database engine which has been growing leaps and bounds ahead of the competition. In fact, this entire site and these blogs are all drawn from a MySQL database.

However, I convinced work to let me go a couple days early so I could try and wear out my welcome by staying with my close friends Jaap and Charlotte in pretty Half Moon Bay just outside San Francisco. The photos that I took are entirely from my few days there and include such diverse things as strange antique stores, towering redwoods above creepy crawlies, felines and flowers, and the unforgettable stretch of sandy beach overlooked by bluffs that Half Moon Bay derives its name from.

I hope these personal views give a sense of the beauty in that area. Thanks again to Jaap and Charlotte for hosting me; never fear I will be back, which means you have some time to figure out better locks to keep me out!

Imagine you are at a party. The wine is flowing and an undercurrent of music plays to a backdrop of buzzing conversation. A young woman comes forward aiming directly for you, her fingers tightly wrapped around the glass she is sipping, her eyes inquiring. She asks, “Hi, who are you?” and my question to you is what do you answer?

Naturally you will tell her your name, it would be rude not to. But what else, how will you explain your presence, what is the first thing by which you define yourself? “I work at Acme Corp.”, “I play with John on the squash team”, “I am in the army”, “I am John’s cousin”. At the very core, that initial reach into your mind to introduce yourself is how you have chosen to define yourself to someone else.

We spend most of our lives collecting labels. At first we are the son or the daughter, the child and the teenager, a boy or a girl, tall or short, thin or fat, later in life the labels become more complex but still just as sticky. People will look at you and label you as funny and smart, dour and boring, pretty and dumb, ugly and quick-witted. Out of these myriad of labels we choose the best (or sometimes the worst) to define ourselves with. It is how we choose to introduce ourselves. It is how we choose to act in others’ presences and it’s what gives us meaning in life. In other words, ambitions are derived from how we choose to define ourselves.

For example, a child who has defined themselves as an artist will try to become the best artist in whatever forum s/he is given play in. Similarly, the person who defines themselves as the epitome of a company and the carrier of company spirit chooses to rise to the position of CEO in the ranks of a company.

Naturally self-definitions don’t always have to deal with what we do. Some people define themselves by the family they are part of, the family they have, the partner they are in love with, the child they are raising. Some people choose to define themselves by their surroundings, their town and/or their country. Over the years, for example, many people have come and lived in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. Some are born in the province, some are CFAs (Come From Aways) but not everyone turns around years later and introduces themselves as “a Newfoundlander”. This is one of my definitions. I choose to define myself as a Newfoundlander; it is how I wish to be known, no matter the immediate label someone may want to place on me simply by my Indian appearance and my somewhat British accent.

More dangerously sometimes we define ourselves by how others have chosen to label us. Our physical definitions can almost always be seen as acquiescence to a label or our rebellion to a negative label. The person who is labeled as “fat” may attempt to re-define themselves against this label. They may choose to introduce themselves as being part of a gym, a running group or other “active” collection so that those they encounter will not immediately label in the way they feel they are perceived.

There is no doubt there is power in labels. Just like the rain that gets us wet, the mirror that is other people’s perceptions are crucial in how we function and our internal happiness. However, the labels that we endure have very little power compared to how we choose to define ourselves. Those critical first searches in our mind for how do I introduce myself to a stranger gives us clues as to what we hold important and dear in our lives in any given context. After all, that introduction gives the person context and the power with which to prejudge and label you.

So how do you choose to define yourself? What do you subconsciously consider yourself to be? To what do you hold allegiance, in whose lives do you feel a part? What hidden labels do you wish to get rid of by choosing positive definitions?

You ask about me, how do I define myself? Do you think I’m crazy enough to divulge my secrets on the Internet… really… what do you think I am?

Tonight I went to see Maher Arar speak. Canadians will probably recognize the name and may be quite familiar with his story. However, for those that came late, let me quickly catch you up on his extraordinary story. Others may choose to quickly skip ahead a paragraph.

Maher Arar and his wife, both Canadian citizens, were erroneously reported as Al-Qaeda members by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and placed on a US terrorist list shortly after 9/11. In September 2006, Maher Arar was stopped at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, interrogated, imprisoned and then sent to Syria where he was confined and tortured. During this time, the Canadian government did little to help and even encouraged his detention. His wife and a group of activists convinced both the Canadian people and our government to get him released and back to Canada. Recently the Arar Inquiry cleared Maher Arar of any illegal acts and the Prime Minister even apologized to him for his suffering and the breakdown of civil liberties.

So here we are now in April 2007 and Maher Arar was lecturing as the University of Alberta Political Science Distinguished Lecturer. And what a presentation it was. Arar was given a standing ovation on entrance and on exit; his speech was taken in by an obviously enraptured and attentive audience.

You would think, therefore, that this blog entry would be about the unjustifiable injustice that Arar suffered under the hands of his own government and the extreme violation of his civil liberties in the interest of supposed national interests. If you think that, you would be wrong.

Much of Arar’s lecture was a blow-by-blow account of what happened to him in September 2002 and then onwards into 2003 under the repressive and inhuman hands of Syrian torturers and interrogators. This is a cautionary tale of justice and legal systems gone wrong, of honesty and humanity being waylaid by an infatuation with either the letter of the law or the inability to perceive this man as being a fellow human being. As I sat there taking all this in I was constantly surprised that despite the seriousness of the lecture, of the subject matter, that we were all able to laugh at the small bits of humour that Arar was able to sprinkle into the speech. It was then that I started contemplating what this story meant to me.

I have a bad habit of introspection, perhaps we all have it. I guess I also choose to write about it. In some comical way we could probably imagine each of our selves as a billiard ball on a giant pool table. Some imaginary hand, some (not me) would call it God, took a pool cue and hit the balls into a constant state of disarray. Somewhat like Brownian motion, we randomly hurtle through time and space, each awareness and consciousness self-encompassed in this solid ball. Occasionally these islands of individuality hit others and we impart some of ourselves to another. But right to the end, we are simply individuals. You could argue that as spouses you know your partners, but honestly, in the end I would argue that in most cases you do not. Partners elect to subvert some part of their individuality to make peace with the individual with whom they have the most common contact, but to the end, unless your partner is a mind reader I would argue that we really do function as individuals.

Listening to Maher Arar, I realized that I was attempting to do what I (and I suspect countless others) do when presented with a story of tragedy, strife and/or conflict. I was attempting to internalize it. I was attempting to understand this tragic story of torture and injustice by trying to bring out my own experience and comparing it with what happened to Arar. It’s that feeling that usually gives rise to the words “I understand what you mean”, “I know what you are going through” or heck, “I feel your pain.” The problem of being islands of individuality with such little interaction between two individuals is that there is no possible way that one individual can possibly truly understand the pain or problems of another individual. In this extreme case, my attempting to personalize Arar’s tragic story was simply laughable. When presented with death, I can look back and think of the time I lost a loved one. It’s how we learn. It’s how we continue to survive and evolve. Presented with torture and loss of civil liberties, there is nothing yet in my repertoire of emotions.

There is a danger in personalization of tragedy, especially an individual’s tragedy. At the most intimate level between a few friends such personalization could help to bring a person from the brink. It could bring a friendship closer and people who have never known each other could become intimate associates. I am sure that those who served in war, even if separated by continents and time can attest to some sort of connection by shared experiences. In that same intimate level, personalization can destroy. Attempting to “understand” someone’s tragic situation when you know that there is no possible way you truly could, can trivialize the situation and the person in question, even if inadvertently. The simple automatic words “I understand what you mean” can destroy friendships and drive wedges between families.

Taking it up a level from an intimate association of people, attempts to personalize tragedy that is alien to you can be just as dangerous. As I sat listening to Maher Arar, I was struck by the fact that very few of the people listening could begin to grasp, just as I couldn’t, the magnitude of the suffering that this man suffered. And therein lay the danger. It is all well and good to listen and to realize that our civil liberties are at stake in how this government and the next government acts when it comes to following Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but were they actually heeding the call? Maher Arar was telling us quietly, by his very example and his struggle that we have to fight to make sure that this never happens to us. However, in our own very human way, where touching a hot stove is the only way that we learn from mistakes, I suspect that the majority of people left quickly forgetting the lessons Arar was trying to teach.

So aside from Arar’s lessons, I was also reminded tonight of my own human failings in connecting with other people. Perhaps, instead of trying to personalize tragedy quickly we should take the time to listen, and listen well. Perhaps we should connect with the pain, rather than the situation. Perhaps we should connect with the feeling as espoused by another and internalize that so we can truly support them. Failing all that, just realize there are some things that we will never understand, nor ever wish to. We should then thank the lucky stars and, as with Maher Arar, applaud them for simply being who they are and follow what they are trying to tell us.

According to Craig, the site has been horribly neglected. Too true. I’ve been busy, details coming soon, some of you photography nuts might be interested. However to keep you entertained here is a random conversation for easter. The conversation is with Rebecca MacDonald in Montreal… well okay, she was marked as away so I had a conversation with her ‘puter…

Dups says (4:20 PM):
 fuck I ate an entire bunny
Dups says (4:20 PM):
 I thought I would pass out from the chocolate high
Dups says (4:20 PM):
 it was disturbing
Dups says (4:38 PM):
 I am disturbed
Dups says (4:38 PM):
 lock me away and throw the key
Dups says (4:38 PM):
 key me away and throw the locks
Dups says (4:38 PM):
 key my locks and throw me away
Dups says (4:39 PM):
 BUNNIES!!!!!!!!!!
Dups says (4:39 PM):
 ATTACK THE BUNNIES!!!!!!
Dups says (4:39 PM):
 are they fluffy?
Dups says (4:39 PM):
 maybe
Dups says (4:39 PM):
 should we care
Dups says (4:39 PM):
 ?
Dups says (4:39 PM):
 yes
Dups says (4:39 PM):
 for fluffy bunnies are evil
Dups says (4:39 PM):
 even if they are made of CHOCOLATE?
Dups says (4:39 PM):
 chocolate fluffy bunnies are truly EVIL
Dups says (4:40 PM):
 they are brown
Dups says (4:40 PM):
 and brown is evil
Dups says (4:40 PM):
 chocolate is sweet
Dups says (4:40 PM):
 and that is why BUNNIES ARE EVIL!!!!!!!!
Dups says (4:40 PM):
 WASCALLY WABBITS ARE ATTACKING US
Dups says (4:40 PM):
 Oh god
Dups says (4:40 PM):
 save me
Dups says (4:40 PM):
 Jeebus?
Dups says (4:40 PM):
 Please Jeebus
Dups says (4:40 PM):
 Save me
Dups says (4:40 PM):
 GIVE ME BOOZE FOR I HAVE SINNED
Dups says (4:41 PM):
 i need booze, save me from the chocolate fluffy bunnies
Dups says (4:41 PM):
 I go now
Dups says (4:41 PM):
 to be eaten by the bunnies
Dups says (4:41 PM):
 please help
Dups says (4:41 PM):
 no more bunnies
Rebecca says (4:41 PM):
 you are a loon !!!
Dups says (4:41 PM):
 no more
Dups says (4:41 PM):
 no more
Dups says (4:41 PM):
 no mor
Dups says (4:41 PM):
 no mo
Dups says (4:41 PM):
 no m
Dups says (4:41 PM):
 no
Dups says (4:41 PM):
 n
Dups says (4:41 PM):
 death