You might recall that I'm a member of the Ottawa Professional Chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB).

Today, March 6, is EWB Day. We're using it for public outreach on a topic that's rather important to me anyway. So I'd like to bring your attention to the issue of Fair Trade.

I just came back from seeing the documentary movie Darwin's Nightmare. It must be one of the most sobering, depressing movies I've ever seen. Someone introduced Nile perch to Lake Victoria, and it promptly wiped out all the native species, and became very prolific. So a whole booming economy has been formed around fishing it and flying it to ( Read more... )

I just got home. It's 6:30am. I haven't slept yet tonight.

I haven't had this much fun since I was in university.

The day started normally enough, for a day of helping with the conference. I had breakfast at home, and made it to the hotel to catch the EWB storytelling. (Man, that seems so long ago now.) A bunch of senior EWB members told ( Read more... )

The conference began today. Kinda. Delegates are starting to arrive, and things are being set up. This thing's going to rock ( Read more... )

I'm getting too old to abuse myself like this.

I've been up late for the past few nights trying to get the EWB Conference website done. They sent me nearly nothing for the past three weeks, and then this week they swamp me with everything. And it has to be done ASAP, since the conference is next week. I put five solid hours into it last night ( Read more... )

I diddled with the website Friday and yesterday, and got it into reasonable shape. There's more work to be done -- always -- but I needed a break. About that time, Adrian called and asked if I was up to go cycling with him and Brian. We had a good ride, I figure I covered around 40km. It was a bit on the cool side, particularly when we stopped ( Read more... )

At the last EWB meeting, I somehow got volunteered to be the webmaster for the EWB Conference 2006 website. That's not bad, really. I'd forgotten why I was invited to a meeting with a bunch of people I'd never met before on Tuesday, but when I got there, they reminded me they were working on the conference, and that clued me in ( Read more... )

So yeah. I haven't been doing very well lately. The less said about that the better.

But things got better on the weekend. I was volunteering at the Engineers Without Borders fundraising garage sale. I'd forgotten how nice the world can be when you get up and get out early. I got up at 6 in order to be downtown at 8am. The sun wasn't too ( Read more... )

Tonight I was at an EWB discussion meeting. We were discussing this article, in which economist James Shikwati claims that the best way to help countries like Kenya with their poverty problems is to actually stop giving them aid, not give them more ( Read more... )

Today I played in the HOPE beach volleyball tournament over at Mooney's Bay, within staggering distance of here. I was playing on the team that Brian entered for Engineers Without Borders. There were ten of us in total, and we had a blast! We lost three games, won one and tied one, but we were playing in the recreational division, so it was all ( Read more... )