NithinCoca.com

My friend Max (visit his blog Maxplorer for more cool images) took an image of me from the Dyke March and turned it into something…crazy!

What do you guys think?

For some unexplicable reason, I’ve had an explosion of Twitter followers lately. Take a look at this graph below – starting near the end of September, my followers #’s have almost doubled after staying stagnant for almost 3 months.

Hmmm. Any ideas? Are you following me? @excinit

Just sent this around to my friends via email. For you stragglers and lurkers here, too, I figured.

Time flies these days – whether that’s a result of age, or having a repetitive office job, I’m not yet sure, but I hope it’s the latter.

In that vein, I realized that it has almost been six months since my last major update. I’ve resolved to start sending this more regularly (i think once every six months doesn’t count as Spam).

San Francisco is great. I’ve had numerous friends visit me in the past few months, including two that I met during my around the world trip, Chyi and Sofia, along with Todd, Pelumi, Maya, and Derek. The invitation is still open, for as long as I’m in San Francisco, come visit. I think my previous guests will agree – I’ll show you a great time.

But even though SF is great, I know that my time here is nearing an end. So, by the end of January, I’m planning to quit my job at the Sierra Club, and head to Europe for a month to visit friends (including some of you). After that, I’m open. I want to enter graduate school either next fall or in the spring of 2010. This is where you guys can help.

1 - I’m looking for volunteer programs, preferably low cost, in any part of the world doing environmental or human rights work. Have any leads of contacts? Please, pass them on.

2 – looking for remote work. I applied for a job as a blogger. Know any writing gigs I can do remotely? Let me know.

3 – Traveling - anyone feel like traveling? Got ideas? Or planning to go anywhere? I’m open – maybe i can visit you in your exotic place? Or we can check something out together. Being open-ended is great.

so that’s where I’m at. I’ve been updating my blog more, though the articles are getting serious. check it out.

http://www.nithincoca.com

and send me a postcard!

(email me if u want my address)

or call me – yeah right

otherwise, keep in touch, and let me know what you’re up to. Chances are, it’s been too long since we met, but i think we’re gonna get a chance soon.

One of the things I most distinctly recall from my travels was not that I took my own freedom for granted, but how little I understood that freedom. All my life, I’d been able to express myself freely, to practice my religion openly, to enter University without fear that my skin color would put me at any disadvantage. I learned, quite starkly, that this wasn’t the case in many part of the world.

Malaysia was one of those countries where I learned a great deal about the reality of freedoms, and openness. Like America, Malaysia was diverse, with at least 8% of the population adhering to the world’s four great religions (Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity). But it was certainly not a melting pot. It was more like a pizza with segregated toppings, rigid lines between each culture, leading to common misunderstandings and distrust. There are exceptions, of course, but far too few.

It was with this background that I took the opportunity to see Anwar Ibrahim speak last Tuesday night at UC-Berkeley.

Malaysian politics has been dominated by a single political party, the United Malays National Organization (UNMO) which, though the the 55% Muslim Malay majority, has governed uninterrupted since independence. Mr. Ibrahim was once part of this monopoly of power, rising rapidly within the UNMO all the way up to Deputy Prime Minister in the late 1990’s. But then things changed.

As any political historian will tell you, Democracy doesn’t work well with a single party perpetually is in power. Corruption reigned, cronyism was standard practice, often, as Mr. Ibrahim himself noted, to the detriment of economic policies. His own attempts to change this backfired, and he was arrested on trumped up corruption charges and jailed in 1999, for the next six years.

It was in Malaysia that I learned about some shocking laws. How it was illegal, by law, for a Muslim to convert to any other religion. How if a Muslim and a non-Muslim wanted to get married, the non-Muslim must first convert to Islam. These laws, of course, did not apply to other religions. There were affirmative action laws in place for the majority Malays, who, historically, had been among the poorer groups in colonial Malaysia, though ignored the plights of poor Chinese and Indians.

What was most striking to me about Mr. Ibrahim was when he spoke about his six years, in solitary confinement, in prison. I expected rage, anger, but instead I saw calmness, reflection, and even hints of nostalgia. Prison had given him time to think, to read, and to reaccess his values. It had changed him as a person

“I understand the value of freedom better than most of my friends,” he said, about what he learned from being jailed.

It made me reflect back on my travels. The times I treasured most weren’t when I was some festival, or party, but it was those in-between moments, when I was sitting on a train, alone, watching the world pass me by out my window, with a book in my lap. I began thinking how it might be good for me if I could be in solitary confinement for a year, to have time to truly read, and come to terms with myself.

I could see a glimpse of where Mr. Ibrahim got his drive from. Incredibly optimistic, hopeful about the future of not only Malaysia and Democracy, but of Islam as a whole to modernize and become accountable to it’s people.

“We will succeed.”

Yes, I know, he’s a politician. But if he’s still optimistic, after all that he’s gone through, I have no reason to give any excuses.

Interested in my Malaysian travels? Here is a link to my posts from my World Trippers travelblog. And here are some photos.

Those of who living in San Francisco already know – the rest of you, you’re probably not surprised. This summer, I hit the road almost every weekend, nine in total between May and mid August.

Where did I go? Well, that’s a good question. And here’s the answer – in short form, the weekend of traveling that was my summer.

1) Sonoma County/Wine Country – Mid May – A nice trip, though the weather there was way too hot. Went with my brother and my parents, didn’t drink that much wine by did get to relax.

2) Portland, Oregon – Late May – the biggest failure. I got sick almost immediately upon arriving, and spent most of the weekend in my Couchsurfing host’s basement, sleeping. I didn’t get to enjoy but one Portland beer, even though part of the reason for me going was to try Portland beer, and didn’t really get to enjoy Portland’s culinary delights either. On the positive, it was a fantastic Couchsurfing experience.

3) and 4) Detroit and Toronto – see Detroit entry here and, Toronto here.

5) Los Angeles, CA – I went on a whim for Fourth of July. Disneyland!

6) St. Louis and Kansas City – This was a work trip, I flew into Kansas City, then immediately drove to St. Louis to do a media training as part of a Longwall Mining Conference, with the bonus of seeing my good friend Eric Mosinger, whom I hadn’t seen in many years. A surprisingly fun trip, as Tim Lelchuk, my best friend from high school, was also randomly in town.

7) San Diego – Went with Young to San Diego, one of the funnest weekend trips I’d taken – definitely one with some of the best food. Couchsurfed with the infamous Lilia Villa, who recommended some fantastic restaurants.

8) Pittsburgh – Went to Pittsburgh for the annual Netroots Nation conference – which was surprisingly fun. Open bar parties every night certainly helped, as did the fact that Pittsburgh is surprisingly beautiful. Wrote up a post about this on Sierra Club’s Compass blog

My plan – was to make September a travel-free month. This promptly failed as a wedding came up, followed by a work trip. Already I have three trips on my calendar – Seattle/KC next week, Chicago next month, and Los Angeles in late October. I just can’t stop…I told you, it’s a disease.

I’d been to Toronto once before, during high school when my mom attended the American Psychiatric Association conference there. Yeah, I know, the AMERICAN psychiatric association having it’s conference in CANADA. All I remember is getting bored, going up the CN Tower twice, and the weird anti-pyschiatry protests ourside of her office.

This trip to Toronto – well, it was completely different.

I felt like I’d left the recession, and jumped into the future.

Toronto seemed vibrant, prosperous, and diverse. But unlike California, where the diversity can be an illusion in a sea of ethnic cliques, Toronto had a different vibe.

In California, the three of us – two Indians, and a black guy, would have stood out. The five backbenchers together – two indians, an Arab, an Asian, and a black guy – were unheard of. Come on, San Francisco. I never see any groups that diverse walking around.

Toronto? While visiting Varun’s cousin, we saw a car accident. Standing outside the two cars, was a rainbow of white, Asian, black, and latino.  We saw interacial couples of all types – more than the white guy/asian girl conundrum in California. Toronto is truly cosmopolitan and far more mixed than any American city I’ve ever been to.

We were there from Monday until Sunday, a progressively growing cornucopia of nightlife, fun, and drinking. And plently of daytime activities as well. Steam Whistle Brewery (picture above), a baseball game at the Skydome, Chinatown, Niagara Falls, a visit to the suburbs, and thourough exploration of many of Toronto’s eclectic neighborhoods.

It was a fun – and exhausting – diversion, and a great experience. Want to see more photos? Check out my Flickr photostream below!

As many of you know (if you don’t, you need to follow me on Twitter), I’m heading to one of the few major American cities I’ve yet to visit, Detroit, this evening.

Whenever I think of Detroit, I think of this fabulous photo-journal entitled “The Ruins of Detroit.” It’s strikingly sad – such wonderful, gorgeous buildings in such disrepair, places where some incredibly historic things occurred – where manufacturing really took off.

For examples, this the factory where the model T – not to mention, specialized manufacturing – first took place.

I’ll be posting my feeling on this city on this blog later.

As for Toronto, I’ve been there before, for a conference my mom attended when I was in high school. My most vivid memory of that trip is the protesters outside the conference, protesting against the overuse of drugs in Psychiatry, the field my mom works in. My mom often agrees.

Until then, you can keep up with me on Twitter.

This is the definition of bravery. I wish the world could know who this young man was. No sign of him has been heard ever since that day.

In China, Twitter and Facebook are blocked as the Government overreacts in fear to the 20th anniversary of the massacres at Tiananman  Square. Any mention of Tiananman is forbidden in Chinese news. The photo above? Never to be found in China.

Also read this great Tiananman Voices piece from the BBC.

It’s almost as if the events of June 4th, 1989, when I was six years old, never happened.

EDIT:

Good AP story on the identity of Tank Man.