What are your jeans doing today?

[ranonranonarat]

DAMN YOU PAUL T. HAHAHAHAHAHA. I BET HE WISHED HE DIDNT PUT THAT PHOTO UP.

damn tg, if thats not a rep worthy post, i dont know what is! amazing stuff!

[-Z-]

well, i figured a food [and other stuff] post was appropriate, as I'm still hungry while i'm home writing this!

went to this really good BBQ place called Cap's with the wife and little one today.

I got the pork...Tennessee style with slaw.

wife got the brisket, which I must say was superior to my pork...so damn good.

and some onion rings.

then we walked across the street to Minnehaha Falls. cool waterfall and park in the middle of Minneapolis.

had some fun in the water and sat out in the sun for quite a long time today, was great!

I don't have a lens fast enough to shoot wildlife very accurately (AF isn't spot either) but this butterfly was pretty. (daughter is still scared of flying bugs though, this particular one landed on her and scared the crap out of her!)

the wife almost made her first sufu appearance today, but i figured i'd wait until I got her into a pair of geisha's first.......hmmmm.

[fallen angels]

from last weekend

went to a lavender farm, got a bag of lavender coffee beans and ate some ice cream

skull 5010 6x6

went to an alpalca farm, team got some wool goods

went kayaking

[PandaXS]

@-Z-

That one waterfall picture is amazing!

Your t1i Is getting a lot of use. I cant wait till i get my camera! but i cant decide between 7d and 5d mIII

sorry i cant rep must spread....

[dkatz]

superfuture whatareyourjeansdoingtoday supermeetup in 日本 ?? I think yes. I go once a year, willing to be flexible on the date for partying it up with fellow denim heads. who knows if this would happen, but seriously. i would consider this!

I'm in!

I'll be the guy standing at the end of the airstrip at Entebbe airport with my thumb hanging out, showin a bit of be-denim'ed leg, looking to hop a lift

[dkatz]

Today: Bushy Baseline Beard Begone! (the enumerator teams should be finishing their last surveys today). Yeah yeah, more photos and stories when my lazy ass gets around to it.

Before

After

Verdict: I look fucking weird without facial hair. I'd wanted to remain with a bit more 'stache, but apparently didn't communicate that desire too well.

[riff]

Dkatz - I think it looks great! Been toying with the idea of a buzz myself... Hmmm...

[DoitsuJin]

looks good, i think either look suits you just right !

[weinfeld]

Great weather in NY means only one thing in my mind. Baseball. Gotta love the American pastime. Plus, the Mets are on a roll, so I can't complain.

Ride out:

A little Subway Series, anyone?

This is really cool (IMO). This is the media box. So they get the live feeds from every camera on the field, and then decide which one to broadcast. This is also where they add all the titles, stats, etc. There was a lot going on in this room. It's a lot more hectic than I ever imagined.

[k4727]

saw some photo shoot, kinda lol

Went down to Self Edge, couldnt resist

Quick jean shot

Went to 255 Elizabeth street to watch Denmark v Cameroon and get some t-shirts

Ran into Florian

Love the little details you can get done

[farmer]

This thread doesn't slow down.

killin' them weeds.

Pre

Post

John Deere 2240 with the three point hitch cultivator we made in our shop.

All to make it easier for these little guys to thrive.

[jjkchung]

@weinfeld..

were u using tilt-shift?

[lowrider]

my jeans spent pretty much all damn day building a tool shed. there's nothing worse than shitty instructions...

[beatle]

floc - nice shirt..next game is against the team with the guy that took out no 13 before the world cup started...

[Guest I LOVE LFC]

No intent from Boateng at all, Ballache said it himself.

[beatle]

it´s never intended

[>++fishb0neR]

Poldi and Schweinsteiger should make everything alright, Beatle.

It's time they step up anyway!

[alexwgoody]

it's funny, today is fathers day, my grandmothers birthday and my parents anniversary, so after doing a craigslist sell at 10, we're all spending the day together. first at the Alameda dog park, then on the beach (even though it's cold) later we 4 are going to House of Prime Rib In San Francisco which is cool cause I've never gone before. my Diors are in for a good day!

[Paul T]

Sunday, out early again (not as early as usual... I got father's day scrambled eggs made for me first), again to East London for a couple of rendezvous.

There's a new station been built in what was once one of the biggest brick built sturcutres in Euyrope - a Victorian railway goodsyard. It used to be a warren of archwways and tunnels, which up until a few years ago would hold markets; get there early in the morning, the stalls would be lit by candlelight, and you'd have to take a torch. Now it's nearly all been bulldozed. Just the odd archway left like this one. Imagine, when there were dozens of them, all dark, damp and interconnected, like a maze...

We were meeting a rare record collector, who'd I'd heard of, one of the best people at ferreting out old vinyl. He's lived in Shoreditch, mostly to hang out around the market and pick up records, for decades now. Coincidentally, he bought a pair of my old Lees on eBay. I dropped them off then he headed off to prepare for a show he's doing tonight - spinning old vinyl, over football footage at Somerset house , this cool classical building overlooking the Thames. We'll meet up for coffee another week, and I'll probabyl post photos of him with some rare reggae that almostnice can't afford.

TO hit the marekt form his place we headed along a few unfamiliar streets, lots of fascinating little alleys like this one with an old brass foundry - and then, around the corner this gorgeous old Victorian pub, Ye Olde Axe, which now hosts strippers most nights. So right next door to each other you have art shops, trendy loft apartments, strip bars and massage parlours. IN the cheaper strip clubs, like this one, sadly, they're mostly smack addicts, according to a detective I met who worked this area, altho that was a couple years ago. Maybe this place has gone upmarket since, along with the rest of the area.

This place used to be full of Banksy paintings - they were great, in-yer-face statements on main roads, or little observational ones in hidden corners. Now it's strickty his imitators.

vintage, gap, Lee, Grafters

We hit the flower market as usual, including London's best sweet shop, Suck and Chew. Note the traditional English workwear jacket that complments the propreitor's traditional ENglish 'tache.

This week we picked up soe contraband. We joked that they might be illegal... but I wondered if this might be true.

So.. channeling Lendo!

(Sorry we couldn't find a suitable dog).

Lendo, this kind are much better for yer bronchial tubes!

We came back a different route, and edned up at what's normally our first call, the beigel shop. The nipper took a photo of beigels being made. On the left, the white rubber roller in the machine takes blobs of dough, and makes them into the classic beigel shape. The tray on the right is where they immerse the dough rolls in bouling water, which I thinl gives them the shiny finish, before they bung them ni the oven. Apparently the beigel one of the most important geometiric shapes in nature, when they manage to make fusion power generators they will likely contain the reaction with a magnetic field in a beigel-shape. Or something.

[Paul T]

We went thru Brick Lane quickly. After the non-event of Friday night, I was glad to see at least one person is still an England fan. It's a really cool boot store behind him, solvair boots - made by the old Doc Marten factory in Northampton, rather than china. Obviously, this guy is one of many who know how fashionable their boots are...

Today, a friend's show opens on Draper's Walk, opposite Son of a Stag. He's called Mick Hutson , his rock'n'roll photos are pretty well known, but turns out he's been doing reportage in the Congo, etc. After dealing with people like Curtney Love I gues a guy with an AK47 is small beer.

Howveer despite his new subject matter, he still keeps rock'n'roll hours, and we had to leave before he got there.

We were heading for a little old building that's only open a couple of times a year. AN old house built for the Huguenots in 1719.[

It's amazing, in that it was later converted into a fair-sized synagogue in the 1800s. The whoel thing is squashed into what was once a tiny garden. It's amazing inside, all dark , worn lead paint, with tapes of audio footage of all the waves if immigrants - jewish, bengali, somali, who've moved into the East End over the years. They don't allow photos, but I snapped off this one just to give an idea.... By coincidenece, they told me it was in the basement of this building that the Jewish community planned their response to Moseley's march thru Cable St, which we posted photos of last week.

By now we were late, but I was in desperate need of a coffee so we wandered over the the shop Present. It was great to see Gwilym, London's best barista, iWorld Champion 2009, is back from his travels. What I didn't expect was a barista supergroup.

ON the left, is Michael Phillips, US champion barista, 2010 then in the middle, partly hidden, is Stephen Morrissey Ireland's best barista, world champion 2008, and Gwilym on the right, pulling my coffee, or the nipper's hot choc. THey were all charming dudes, still discussing the intricacies of grinding machines as I left. The SDA in Present might be pricey - £300 - but at £1.50 my espresso must be the best value in London.

I think all the guys are in town for this year's Barista Championships, held in London right now. While we've forgotten how to play football, at least we can kick your asses when it comes to coffee!

I'm feeling good now... in an hour or so I'll head for the old brewery in Greenwich, where I'll balance the caffeine rush with some hospital porter...

[lance]

Paul, always a pleasure.

[ranonranonarat]

for a moment there i thought you were shitting around with us when you said he was a champion barista. could we see Paul T being champion expresso connoisseur soon?

damn for £1.50, its worth every bit of money. unhappy about my plight with just shitty starbucks all around.

all this looks as interesting as it can get Paul, rep when i get some back. great post!

[dkatz]

Love it, Paul! You really should start those East London tours, I'll be your first customer - but in real (waking) life this time!

Also, my best friend is actually a competitive barista. He hasn't won anything of note, but I absolutely love just listening to him talk about it or watching him pull shots - I love riding on others' passion (hence my presence on this forum, I suppose!). I miss that dude, he's been in Honduras the past year.

Okay, working on getting a bit more caught up on the field work. Not what my jeans were doing today, I know, but I hope you guys will forgive me! The teams actually just finished the last surveying today. Mostly gonna let it be anecdote- and photo-driven:

I was still in Mbale district at this point, working with the teams there.

Out with one team, braving the bush for the sake of data collection:

My office for a morning:

Had an interesting experience at this club. We were about an hour into the surveying when one of the respondents admitted that he had been asked by the club's patron to say he was somebody else.

For each of these clubs, we'd met with them once before to collect a list of club members. From these lists, we randomly selected 12 to be our respondents. As we are returning to the clubs now, to do the actual full individual-level survey, we call in advance and ask that these particular 12 club members be present. People routinely promise high and low that all 12 of them will be there, no problem. And low and behold, about 75% of the time the enumerator teams actually arrive at a club... they're not. Usually only about two are present, and frequently several other club members are there. The club patron usually makes some comment along the lines of "well I figured you could survey these club members instead, because those other ones that you wanted aren't here." It is frustrating to a profound degree. Why do people just straight-up lie? I DON'T UNDERSTAND. I mean, we'll be in the matatu on our way to the club, talking to the patron on the phone and he/she is saying "yes! All 12 are here right now, we're waiting for you!" and we show up and every damn time it's a damn lie! Half of the time it's just the patron him/herself sitting there with a finger up her nose and a shrug on her shoulders, and a comment along the lines of "they are around" in response to "where are the 12 members?", which more or less directly translates to "I have no idea where they are but I'm pretty sure they're alive".

UGH. Mobilization: my own personal hell.

And what's more fun is when, as in the case of this club, the patron decides that she think she'll get some sort of reward or service (read: handout) for getting these 12 members there. So, rather than being honest about not being able to get them all there, she lies and asks club members present to impersonate some of the 12 respondents who are not there. Charming. And it's usually pretty obvious, when after calling someone's name four times, someone elbows that "respondent" in the ribs and says "oh he is right here!" and that "respondent" looks profoundly confused and then brightens up and says "oh yeah, that's me". At least try to be cagey!

Sooooo I wound up having the joyful experience of pulling the patron outside and informing her that by instructing her club members to impersonate, she was violating the law and causing us to violate law as well. She was... unapologetic. But she did at least then agree to help identify who the actual respondents were, so I guess it was a net win.

Aaaaanyway. Back on track.

Pretty pretty scenery at this church, at least:

Local construction

Wound up back at that second-story restaurant doing some work

Caught up with the other team later, unfortunately just as they were finishing the club. So we sat in the nice sunset light and did some survey review

After this day, I decided I'd done my duty in Mbale, so it was time to rotate to another district - Arua (North/West Nile). Up bright and early

[Transit-attire]

Nike

Hanes

Unlucky

Tellason Strummer

Rainbow

Part two shortly...

[ranonranonarat]

just a quick question dkatz, when the fuck do you think you'll be done with all this people bullshitting you? estimated time of completion of the project?

[beatle]

my jeans are celebrating I:NZ 1:1

w2JEpEj10a8

[Deadramones]

Today, my jeans hung out while I rode:

Found this tree and just had to climb it. Eventually made it via the branch on the right.

Gained a new perspective from up there...

Had a quick wash in this random basin I found, not sure where the water comes from, but it was crystal clear and cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.

A well spent morning.

[dkatz]

just a quick question dkatz, when the fuck do you think you'll be done with all this people bullshitting you? estimated time of completion of the project?

Haha, constantly finding myself thinking about this as well.

So...

A) I'm actually back in Kampala right now. The stuff I'm posting right now is from a couple weeks ago (just getting around to uploading shit now).

The baseline survey actually ended today - all teams should have their surveys in to data entry tomorrow.

but

C) The actual "implementation of the intervention" begins tomorrow. We're running a training all next week on running the intervention (delivering a curriculum on basic financial literacy to 1/2 of the clubs we surveyed), and then I'll be back out in the field for the next couple weeks overseeing the rollout of the intervention, which will take about 3 months to complete. After that, the project will basically be dormant for about 9 months, then we head back out to do an endline survey.

Also, Deadramones- that looks like a great ride! What are you riding anyhow?

picking up where I just left off (so shit from about 2 weeks ago):

Bright and early, caught a bus from Mbale to Kampala.

I'm not entirely sure why, but at one point we had to get off the bus, walk about 200m while the bus, empty, drove the same distance, and then re-board. Oooookay.

Saw a guy crawdad-fishing along the way

This guy boarded the bus at one of the stops and hawked some drugs for a while. See, you can tell his drugs are legit because he's wearing a lab coat!

(The scary part is how many people bought from him.)

Four hours from Mbale to Kampala, hopped off the bus and zipped home for 20 minutes to take a shower and do the dirty-for-clean laundry-swap, then hopped aboard a bus for the eight hours to Arua.

Jeez, it looks like Africa!

Endless green plains. Some scrap plant matter being burned in the distance.

Upon arrival, met up with the enumerator team leaders and the auditor to get the low-down. Sounded like things were going generally well - good to hear! Also, as I later learned, not true.

Found my room at Jershem Hotel and sacked out for the night. Up bright and early (ugh) to meet up with the teams the next morning

More churches

Hung out with one team for a while, then hopped a boda to find the other team

While waiting at a trading center to wait for the auditor to come pick me up in the matatu, decided to have some local breakfast: chapati and incredibly over-sugared tea

Caught up with the other team and settled in to some survey-review

More in a moment... (let me know if I'm overposting!!)

[dkatz]

Two Thumbs Up to local architecture!

Nothing quite like tucking a company tee into jeans to make me feel like a real doofus.

Driving to the next survey site. Approaching 45 degrees of tilt

Went for a walk through the village to meet up with the other team

Starting feeling a bit lost, so a local guy offered to help direct me. As we walked together he told me all about how some muzungu missionary had come and Christianized the whole area. Also, he reeked of booze.

At another point, I walked past a trio of young men, one of whom was holding a crying child. As I approached, the man holding the child looked at me then said something to the kid, resulting in raucous laughter from the other two men and a look of sheer terror from the kid. As I walked by, they informed me that they'd told the kid that if he didn't stop crying, the muzungu would "slaughter" him. Lovely! Scary part is that it worked... the kid shut up!

Found the other team at this remarkable "cathedral"

Pretty beautiful wood ceiling

Who needs church bells when you've got oil-drum-cum-drum-drum?

My life: reviewing surveys (in the matatu).

And back to Arua town

Upon reviewing surveys from the couple days before I arrived, I discovered that they were, in a word, abysmal. I mean, after a week of enumeration, I was still finding absolutely unacceptable errors - copious missed questions, totally incorrectly-coded responses, and all sorts of creative eff-ups that I hadn't even considered as possible.

We needed to send the completed surveys back to Kampala the next day, but sending down erroneous surveys would be... dumb. So, upon finishing the day's surveying at 4pm, I surprised the enumerators with the news that we'd be spending as long as necessary reviewing and correcting all mistakes in their surveys. They were... less than pleased.

Six hours. It took six hours for me to review every single one of the surveys' they'd completed up to that point. Because, as I started reviewing, I discovered that their surveys were so tragically and epically terrible that I needed to review EVERY SINGLE one. So we set up a little factory - me reviewing surveys, the team leaders and auditor arranging logistics, and the enumerators calling back damn near every one of their respondents to get clarification. Not the most fun evening I've had. Also not the most fun evening any of them have had. Let's call it "motivational" or "character building".

The evening also led to the first step in my growing reputation amongst Arua enumerators as quite the hard-ass task-master. Good. They needed it!

Next day, on the road, moving between teams:

Fulmer V2

American Optical

NATO

Grimace + Bushy Baseline Beard

(aaaaand a few more pictures coming momentarily...)

[tg76]

my jeans are celebrating I:NZ 1:1

SAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!***********************************************!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

my jeans spent yesterday getting my spare room ready for my new 15 year old german 'daughter'... she can translate beatles youtube for me

[dkatz]

Some local food for lunch: millet, goat's-meat stew and bo (bitter greens in a kinda glop) with some passion fruit juice.

Amusingly, the TV in the lunch place was tuned to National Geographic, playing some American Cops-type show. It took me a few minutes to figure out what seemed weird about it, then I realized that I'm in the kind of place that Nat Geo usually features, watching a Nat Geo special on where I'm from. The irony!

While on the phone at the next survey site, checking in with teams in other districts, I went for a bit of a wander from the church we were at. Found a big rock overlooking some pretty amazing plains, and decided it would due as my office for the afternoon (some of you may recognize the scenery from when I posted it in WAYWT a couple weeks back):

A funny trend: clubs we visited to survey giving us sodas. Could you imagine someone asking you to take 3 hours of your day to do a survey (with no compensation), and then you feeling so grateful that you offer them a refreshment? Hooray for cultural differences!

I'm thinking about selling this picture to Coca-Cola

Walked back to check on the team. Set up my office on a fallen tree.

Okay, that's enough for now. Coming next time: dkatz faces a near strike and learns that being a disciplinarian sucks.