What are your jeans doing today?

[beatle]

This country is so damn green, once you get out of Kampala

wonderful picture..says so much...

[thedoad]

Dont know how many Grindcore or Death metal fans post here. Im guessing not so many But i guess we will find out. I just got back from 5 days in baltimore for Maryland Death fest, what has become a yearly trip for me the last 7 years. It was an incredible time. Saw around 70 bands. Saw tons of good friends from around the world and drank way too much. The 17oz sams Were put in the closet for 100 degrees and insane humidity. I'm Stealing pics from some friends and the fest site. Im never drinking again...

Drinking a little jungle juice in the parking lot.

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Eating the hell out of some fresh Maryland crabs.

Roof of fest. Another stage behind this and one inside. thIis was right before a huge lightning storm.

GORGUTS. totally Incredible.

Group shot. Just a little drunk. Carhartts.

Few more band shots

EyehateGod

PORTAL

Wolfbrgade

[/img]

[roy6]

Hands down the best page of WAYJDT ever. Part of what makes Superfuture so great (when it is), and what makes this arguably the most interesting thread on the whole site.

Where else you going to see a grindcore concert, natural Singapore, a super-high-end denim shop, suburbia + outreach work in Uganda so well documented and commented upon back to back?

Awesome. Repped where I was able, wish I could rep all of you, especially the diminutive Steve McQueen of non-governmental organizations.

[ranonranonarat]

thanks roy, this is my favourite thread as well since it constantly reminds me about how we all try to see a bit of fun out of our mundane lives and dkatz is really one of my favourite posters since i dont think i will EVER be heading to uganda. thats the closest i will ever be to being there personally. half the time (scratch that, make it 3/4 of the time) i have 0 understanding about what is going on but fuck, the pictures sure look dingy and fun as hell. cheers sufu fam, have a beer on me.

[-Z-]

Agree on all counts about this thread! rep where I could.

Well i had my 3rd wedding anniversary dinner last night, and it was phenomenal. went to Saffron in downtown MPLS, with a chef that was on Iron Chef, and the 2nd best bartender in the twin cities. Really cool eclectic menu, middle eastern food with a Mediterranean flare.

We had plenty of small plates to start, but these were our entrees.

I had MahiMahi with lobster orzo, spring peas, candied lemon zest, and a citrus emulsion.

My wife had Lamb shoulder with lamb bacon, harissa, and chickpeas

and I had the bartender make me this wonderful thing. Knob Creek, Grand Marnier, and Reeds Ginger beer with candied ginger.

and for dessert...chocolate ganache cake with black olive ice cream, caramel sauce, sea salt and olive oil!

and a Turkish coffee with cardamom

[roy6]

Beatle=repmonster2000

[redX]

i already ate 90% of my shitty ass pizza so no pics of that

i went to check out some places to take pics and stumbled upon this at 4 am

i admit i was drunk taking these pics -.-

[dkatz]

Damnit -Z-... I leave my guesthouse at 6:45 each morning so I don't get breakfast. It's 9:30, I'm at a club as the surveys are running and you are making me HUUUUUNGRYYYYYY.

Congrats on the 3 years, buddy!

And Roy6- great point, man. This thread really is unlike anything else I know. It's basically some kind of conglomerate blog of so many different people doing different things in different places. You all like to laud me being out in the boonies doing "interesting" shit, but I love this thread just as much for living life vicariously through you guys! How I'd love to be eating that meal that -Z- had last night, or cruising around the bay with roy6, or playing with riff's puppies, or wandering drunk with redX at 4am!

In response to ranonranonarat's admission of not knowing what the hell I'm doing, I figure I'll provide a brief background before launching another update (which will come probably today or tomorrow):

So my organization basically helps organizations design and then evaluate the effectiveness of development projects. We do this by doing a baseline survey with a sample of the population of people who will receive the "treatment" (the actual development project), then offering a random selection of them the treatment (while also maintaining a control group who does not receive the treatment), and then coming back some amount of time later and conducting an endline or follow-up survey in order to evaluate how the individuals have changed. By comparing the treatment group(s) to the control group, we can be certain that any changes we see are due to the treatment we implemented.

The past eight months have been all prep-work and project design, preparing for the actual roll-out of the survey and implementation (of my two projects - the second of which I'll be rolling out as soon as I finish this). Presently I am in the baseline survey phase of one of my projects, which involves me overseeing 7 survey teams (of "enumerators") in 4 regions of the country. Immediately after this, I will oversee the roll-out of the actual treatment, and then there will be a lag time of a few months (during which I'll be working on other projects) before I ramp up for the endline survey.

So remember those posts I did about "pretesting" the survey? Basically that was all prep-work for what I'm doing now - I was designing the survey that is now being used in the baseline.

Make sense?

I realize it looks all romantic and fun and glamorous to be traipsing around Uganda, "doing good" and all that, but I'll be honest about a couple things:

1. I have never worked this much or this hard in my life. I've had (most of) 1 day off in 5 weeks, and am approaching serious burnout at mach speed.

2. I'm becoming very powerfully disillusioned with the "development world" in general. That's a topic for a much longer missive, but suffice to say... I really don't know how much "good" I believe the NGO/development world (myself included) are really doing. I think the people who come out of it most improved are the ones who are doing the giving.

Edit: the delicious mango I just made massive face-love too (and which has left my beard and moustache tasting delightfully sweet), just made life way better (it's mango harvest season in Arua, apparently!)

[Grim Ryan]

Went to a local climbing spot to get in my first day of outdoor for the year.

Got home and decided to BBQ

Made some of my girlfriends moms Bulgogi

Cooked up a bunch of kebabs and corn

Lounged in the Hammock

Made mustard with a buddy of mine. Beer flavored!

[Osmosis Jones]

evilcrayon: I know you're in the Bay Area, but which park is that?

I forget. It's near Skyline and Highway 9. a little south of 4 points.

[dkatz]

Oooookay. Where'd we leave off?

Right. Monday night found me drifting off to sleep (maybe "collapsing in a heap" would be more accurate), images of incompetent enumerators, grumpy respondents, frowning professors and pissed off donors dancing in my dreams.

Woooo. Hooo.

Bright and (painfully) early Tuesda, I trudged to the team leaders' guest house, where the troops were rallying for Day Two.

Looking out behind the team leaders' room, where the cooks for the restaurant downstairs had an impressive chapati-production assembly line going:

On the road

At the first survey site, rallying the 12 respondents took a bit of time, complicated by the fact that there was a funeral for a local person about 100 feet away. The wailing of local women just out of sight nicely echoed the panicked alarm bells going off in my head, and harmonized nicely with my constantly-ringing mobile phone. It also led to one of my favorite enumerator notes I've so far seen on a survey: "there was a dead body nearby, which made it difficult to concentrate". Charming.

Once everything was rolling, I set off to town to photocopy some more surveys, since we were already running out and the next batch wouldn't be coming from Kampala for another day.

I had the matatu drive me to the main road, and on our way some local old ladies flagged us down, assuming we were a standard fare-taking matatu. The driver looked at me questioningly and I said "sure, why not". The ladies boarded and immediately started laughing when they realized the situation. Well, despite the doom I felt my survey was spiraling towards, at least running Daniel's Old Lady Muzungu-Taxi Service earned me a bit of good karma.

On the (different) road

In town I found a lady running a print/copy shop and, even though her machine looked alarmingly decrepit, she charmed me into customership with witty banter and low prices. Maybe not my wisest decision, considering it wound up taking her damn near 3 hours to print the 70 copies I needed of the 25-page survey! I decided to make the best of it and give my brain a few minutes away from the constant panicked alarm bells that had been ringing in my head for a few days. I wandered around until I found a little cafe that had some of the best "spiced African tea" (black tea + a ton of milk + even more sugar + uh... spices ("tea masala") ) I've yet had, as well as a lovely, albeit semi-obscured, view of the plateau that is Kapchorwa (where I was the day before) and Sipi Falls:

Tea and a mandazi (one of Uganda's many variants of fried dough):

With printing finally finished, I headed out to meet up with the other enumerator team. We met with a club pretty deep "in the village" (far out of town) and I settled down on the roots of a big tree to review the surveys from the morning.

while the enumerators spread themselves out around the grounds and got interviewing

As I alternately reviewed surveys (becoming increasingly frustrated by prevalent enumerator mistakes) and harping on the enumerators to operate more efficiently, I realized what a bizarrely dissonant and incongruous experience I'd been having the past couple days. Here I was, surrounded by some of the most pastorally idyllic landscape I've ever seen, and flipping out about efficiency, data quality and proper protocol-following. All around me were the green environ and calm inhabitants of a life measured by season and generality, and I was obsessing about seconds and minutiae.

I'd love to say that this ephiphanic moment led to a sea-change in the Daniel Approach to Life (Or At Least This Job), but it didn't. I'm pretty sure that immediately after this realization, I found two missed questions on the survey I was reviewing and barked at an enumerator for wasting time. Maybe next time.

Aaaaand then, just to make everything more fun, it got dark. When we realized the inevitable onset of darkness (and plodding slowness of still-inexperienced enumerators), I hopped in the matatu and went on a desperate search for anything that shed light. 20 minutes later I returned with one fist full of candles and the other with some delightfully charming dual-LED-light-plus-pen-but-shaped-to-look-like-a-pair-of-cigarettes keychain flashlights, all for a grand total of about $10. Using all sources of light we could think of we wound up with a delightful mix of:

1) Enumerators surveying outside by keychain-flashlight (see those blue specks? those are people. working):

2) Enumerators surveying in the church by candlelight:

and 3) Leading the group behavioral games (essentially another part of the survey exercise) by the headlights of the matatu:

[dkatz]

And your fearless narrator decided to join in on the fun, reviewing surveys hot off the press by candlelight in the church:

It was admittedly a bit romantic, and would maybe even have been enjoyable if we all hadn't been working for 14 hours by this point, and if I hadn't been finding SO MANY DAMN MISTAKES.

Okay, still kind of rad to be working by candlelight in a church in rural Eastern Uganda while in the distance the faint roar of a waterfall provided a soundtrack and distant lightning storms occasionally lit up endless green fields at the horizon.

And, on the bright side, one of the field staff managed to talk the landlady of his building into renting us a 1-room apartment for the 3 weeks of the survey for... 140,000 shillings. That's $70. For an apartment! Clean, with a bed, table and dresser, a fully functional (and clean) bathroom (though no hot water, alas). He loaned me sheets and pillows for the night, and the next day I went out and bought the most uncomfortable sheets I have ever felt (they felt more like a net made of sandpaper than bed-sheets) for $7.

This is the apartment the next morning. Yes, I do have this impressive an ability for making a mess overnight:

Okay, that's all for now.

[-Z-]

yo d,

[your posts] are seriously one of the most interesting things i'm viewing / reading ANYWHERE on the interwebz or outside in magazines or whatever...the way you're photo-documenting your time there is very interesting (maybe more so that its driven by a love for really expensive denim...lol)

but it has become much more than that with this thread. you're able to capture so much of the culture whether its through the people, food, clothing like your shirts from Kampala, or even simply the landscape (its contrast between urban and rural, etc.) Truly inspiring stuff for someone like myself who has done alot of travel abroad, but never experienced something as deep or influential such as your work there

cheers.

[ranonranonarat]

its amazing to see how you have to keep plugging away at all that paperwork and ineffiency of the enumerators (did i get that right?) around you. i would never phantom myself working in candlelight, toiling away at surveys. it seems all very war-like, working with clockwork precision (minus the inefficiency of printing machines), absolutely an experience i must say, minus having all the guns. but wow, i hope you get everything wrapped up soon and good luck with things man. it was enjoyable reading all your posts.

[DENIM SAILOR]

[DENIM SAILOR]

sorry guys im learning this image shack thing

now it works woohoo!

finally, my levis red and my Danner super rainforest boots

[-Z-]

wrong thread...this thread is reserved for pictures of Uganda, etc...

fit pics should go in "What are you wearing today (Denim Version)"

http://www.superfuture.com/supertalk/showthread.php?t=148066

[DENIM SAILOR]

wrong thread...this thread is reserved for pictures of Uganda, etc...

fit pics should go in "What are you wearing today (Denim Version)"

http://www.superfuture.com/supertalk/showthread.php?t=148066

thanks Z:)

[dkatz]

Mmmm... pretty, iamstarwards. Also mmmm... beer.

And fuckin A, -z- & ranonaranonarat.... you are going to give me a damn ego complex!

Seriously though, thanks. Sad though it is, I have more of a life on the internet than I do in reality these days - I don't have time to build a real life here, with how much I work.

Just had some bomb Ethiopian food and a beer (plus a fat tip) for $4, at this little down-and-alley joint in Arua town I found a couple days ago (and have had dinner at 3 nights in a row). I keep meaning to take pictures, but then am too hungry/excited and forget. Seriously entertaining cast of characters hanging out there tonight.

Tomorrow at the butt-crack of dawn, departing Arua for about an 18 hour stopover at home in Kampala, then off to Mbarara in the West. Still a lot of pictures/stories to get caught up on. If anyone feels I'm being too dominating and/or wordy here, please don't hesitate to let me know and I'll tone it down.

[riff]

Awesome page! Iamstarwars - lovely stuff.

yo d,

[your posts] are seriously one of the most interesting things i'm viewing / reading ANYWHERE on the interwebz or outside in magazines or whatever...the way you're photo-documenting your time there is very interesting (maybe more so that its driven by a love for really expensive denim...lol)

but it has become much more than that with this thread. you're able to capture so much of the culture whether its through the people, food, clothing like your shirts from Kampala, or even simply the landscape (its contrast between urban and rural, etc.) Truly inspiring stuff for someone like myself who has done alot of travel abroad, but never experienced something as deep or influential such as your work there

cheers.

+1000! I check back here often for your updates dkatz!

[Paul T]

This week my jeans have been living under canvas on a farm. We went with a bunch of friends and had a huge gang of kids who mostly went feral, finding dead animals, falling in muddy bogs and experimenting with electirc fences; most of my tiem was spent getting up early and stoking up the stove, eating, cooking and drinking.

For a few days I broke out my Brit army brace which go well with my lightweight 1901 jeans. I think my fellow campers thought I was a nut job but were too polite to say aynthing. Other friends dropped in and complimented me on my attire... but since then I have noticed the braces (suspenders to you yanks) getting regularly piss-taken in txtx. Oh well.

So, my tribute to eltopo.

[-Z-]

went to the Como Park Zoo today with the little one. she had a blast, I did too as a matter of fact. Really gorgeous day, place was packed with kids on field trips which made it even more fun for her.

as I said, nice day!

we played a little bit,

and then the random assortment of animals in captivity...

She loved the polar bears, but was a bit terrified when it came up close...

so a high five for a good day!

and a long walk home (which turned into a long carry home, as mom left the stroller in her car...and is stuck at work)

cheers.

[almostnice]

A lazy saturday afternoon in the park:

the daughter decided she wants to reach higher spheres

and is teaching the elder boys a lesson

good girl!

[Paul T]

ha, good to see you back Markus. Even if the dad looks a bit grizzled and gnarly those nippers are very easy on the eye. You always tell us how you are well-behaved and the kids are trouble, but we all know it's the other way round.

[ranonranonarat]

the dad is really the king of the jungle and the tarzan of the playground and everyone else are just his subjects. heh

[zissou]

Tonight, my jeans went with me and my daughter to the watch the local AA baseball team play a double header.

It was the perfect evening for it. The other team hit a two-run homer, and the announcer declared that the local Lions Club, which ran the snack bar, provides a hamburger to each player to hit a home run.

I believe the locals enjoyed the game as well...

[fang]

enjoying the film-ness of those photos zissou.

[LandoCal126]

Random Flicks from NY I just found...

My IH-634S's blazing some NYC Sour Diesel out of a Bud can... Yeah I did it dirty the first night.

My IH-634S's on the train to Coney Island...

First things fist, Beer Beach...

Coney Island...

Bella Figura Boys...

6AM on the rooftops of NYC...

Saturday (6/5/10)

Went to grab some mags...

Read Monocle on the bench outside next to one hell of a stylish old man...

Had to grab some odds and ends at Walgreens...

Some lunch form La Boulange to take home. Pairs great with a stack of new mags and some sun on the deck...

[Mixture]

Meant to post these up awhile ago. Random pictures i took in la, enjoy.

[k4727]

Random Flicks from NY I just found...

My IH-634S's blazing some NYC Sour Diesel out of a Bud can... Yeah I did it dirty the first night.

Callin up Juelz?