1/1000

So I am now finished with my idea submission to Google's Project and the deadline for submission has passed. Looking at Google's Project 10^100 page now indicates that Google received over 100,000 submissions to the project. Only 100 ideas will be released to the general public to vote on in January. This means that I have less than 1 chance out of 1000 to get my submission into that top 100 project ideas. I have confidence in my idea, but 1/1000 is pretty stiff odds. It's not the lotto, but it is pretty intimidating.

I am concerned that my project might not touch enough peoples lives to be considered as a top idea. There are sure to be other ideas that would have direct effect on more peoples lives as compared to mine. I am excited to see what other ideas have been submitted; January cannot come fast enough. I have found some other submission ideas that have been posted online by the idea authors. So far I have seen about three or four. I am not the only one trying to promote my idea prior to January. UVOL needs the support of volunteer organizations and volunteers all over the world if it is to be a successful website. Therefore, I have started trying to spread the word about UVOL now. Even if it not chosen as one of the top 100 ideas, perhaps my own efforts to promote UVOL will open doors.

When the idea for UVOL first hit me, it was like a rush of mental craziness as my brain started thinking of all the possibilities for what can be included in the site and how it could change things. I do not think this idea would have formulated if not for Google's Project, however. Since I began writing my submission last month I have been going over in my head how I first started thinking about what eventually came to be my idea for UVOL. The idea was certainly born out of my personal frustrations in finding volunteer work which stem back all the way to my high school days. Over the years I have had numerous experiences which have led to the formulation of this idea. The most recent experience I am still...experiencing. Had I known exactly what the volunteer project here in Jiaozuo was like, I probably never would have come. Things here are very disorganized and I still have my doubts about how trustworthy the project coordinator is. If UVOL had existed when I was searching for volunteer positions in China, I would have known to steer clear of this project and would have had a much easier time in finding a more worthy project of my time. I must be thankful for this project though; it has allowed me the time and opportunity to spend many an hour working on my UVOL submission and it has directly contributed to my ideas about what UVOL will be and how it will work to solve the problems volunteers and project coordinators face.

Searching for a desired volunteer project is like trying to find a needle in a haystack; after a systematic and planned search you might find that needle after hours upon hours of relentless searching. The only problem is, you never really know how the particular project you find will be or what the people are like that run it. Many times it takes a leap of faith that the project is how it is made out to be in the description (just like I had to do with this project). Same thing goes for project coordinators that are trying to find volunteers as well; how can anyone be sure that a volunteer is trustworthy and will do the things that he/she says they will? With luck, UVOL will make things a bit more transparent in the volunteering world. This will instill confidence in projects and in volunteers allowing people to make more informed decisions. Hopefully this will allow more people to volunteer who otherwise would not even try.

In the world of technology, simplicity is king. UVOL aims to make volunteering simple which will help volunteerism penetrate into the minds of the mainstream masses.

Okay, enough about UVOL. In less than a week I will be in Shanghai. I am very excited to be moving onto the next thing here in China. I always hate goodbyes though. I am not looking forward to saying bye to people that I will probably never see again. Saying bye to one of my Tai Chi teachers will be especially difficult, I think. He and I have become quite good friends even with our very difficult time communicating with each other. He has been teaching me things about Tai Chi that he is apparently not supposed to. The Chinese culture is very interesting in this regard. From what I have gathered, their "secrets" and wisdom that has been accumulated over thousands of generations are only passed down through family or to very select individuals. It is only very recently in Chinese culture has this trend started to change and the open sharing of information been introduced into the minds of the Chinese people. My Tai Chi teacher's teacher is very upset with him that he has been teaching me the things that he has. Even though my teacher is being open with me by teaching me these Tai Chi secrets, he makes a point to tell me that I am not to pass on the things that I have learned even to other Chinese people that he considers friends. He says that they are not his students so they cannot be taught this information. I do not fully understand this concept and tradition, but I find it very fascinating. In any case, I am very humbled that he has accepted me as his student even though it is getting him in trouble with his teacher. It will be very difficult to say goodbye to him.

I will be taking a train to Shanghai, but I will not be immediately meeting up with my friend Alan in Shanghai. Alan's family own an apartment in Shanghai where I will be staying for a time, but at the moment there are some plumbing problems in the house and we cannot stay there until those are fixed. Upon my arrival to Shanghai on Monday, I will be staying with a couchsurfer. I am very thankful for the existence of couchsurfing and not just because I get to stay in wonderful people's houses for free. Couchsurfing has also played a part in formulating my ideas for UVOL. Anyway, I am looking forward to staying with another couchsurfer and I hope that one day when I have a place of my own I will be able to host people from around the world as well.

UVOL: Google's Project 10^100 Idea Submission

I have been working long and hard on my submission to Google's Project 10 to the 100th. Thank you to everyone who has helped me along in this process, I greatly appreciate it. With luck, UVOL will come into being and make finding a volunteer position easier, faster and more affordable for all.

The document below contains the description of what Google's project is along with my submission to the project. If you cannot see the document below, click the following link or copy and paste the text into your browsers address bar:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/7196515/UVOL-Googles-Project-10100-Idea-Submission

UVOL - Google's Project 10^100 - Idea Submission - Upload a Document to Scribd

The Wuzhi Project Faliure

I have a little over two weeks to go before I travel to Shanghai to meet up with my friend Alan. In the scheme of things, two weeks is nothing and will pass in the blink of an eye. It sure does not feel like that right now though.

I feel as though I am wasting my time here at this project. There is not much for me to do. Even when I do teach English it is for 2 hours at most in one day. The rest of the time here is spent trying to think of things to do which could occupy my time so I do not go crazy. The problem is, I do not have much energy and things that I could be doing I do not feel like committing any time or energy to. I could be spending a lot of my time trying to learn Chinese, like I was hoping to do before I came here to China. At this point though, I feel it would be a waste of time. I do not foresee myself coming back here to China after January and I also am not interested in teaching myself to learn a language. I have been spending a considerable amount of time learning Tai Chi in the early hours of the morning and in the evening. I find this to be a good experience. I do not particularly care for the ideas or philosophy behind Tai Chi, but I find it to be a good way to wake up in the morning, stretch, and keep my body in a healthy condition. I think I have been overdoing it a bit though; my left leg is currently injured. It started out as a small pull and eventually then complicated some other parts of my leg as well. I choose not to do any Tai Chi last night or this morning and I probably will not do any tonight either in the hopes that my leg will be well enough to wake up for some Tai Chi tomorrow morning.

Overall this volunteer project is not what it is said to be. It has potential to be a great volunteer experience and benefit a lot in the local community, however, the people that are currently running the program (which is Yao as far as I can tell) seem to be focused only on what can make the program money which at this point is just teaching English to a few school children. Yao is trying to liaison with others in the community here in Jiaozuo to expand the number of students that are taught, but it does not seem to be going very well. There are many other things that volunteers who come to this program could be doing to help the local community, but it seems that if it is not making any money for the project, Yao is not interested in it. This project seems doomed to failure if this trend continues as it certainly will not attract any foreign volunteers and people here in China are not even familiar with what the word volunteer means. Working for nothing is not a concept that Chinese are familiar with so the likelihood of finding people here in the community that would be willing to volunteer are slim to none.

I have to hand it to Yao and his girlfriend, Wangsha,though for their very kind nature in letting me stay with them. Even though I am doing very little for the program in terms of volunteering, I am staying with them for free. Wangsha cooks food for me on many days and they even just bought another computer because I was spending so much time on their laptop. Actually, they take care of so much for me, I am becoming quite lazy in a lot of ways; a feeling that I hate and is contributing to my not wanting to be here at this project anymore. I would leave this very instant if it was not for the kids that I am teaching English. There are two kids in particular that I have been teaching which are very keen to learn as much as they can. When I leave, I will miss them both and I hope that my time and effort in their English education will help them in the future. I do hope that one day they will both be able to venture outside of China to an English speaking country to see what the West has to offer them.

This experience in Jiaozuo at the Wuzhi project, coupled with many previous experiences with regards to volunteering and finding a volunteer project, has given me first hand experience with the difficult nature and, at times, all consuming task of finding a volunteer project that best suits me. Yao's project does not really suit me, and I know that now, but only after coming here and experiencing it first hand. These experiences have given me an idea for a website that, if successful, will make volunteerism a much easier and manageable task for not only would be volunteers like me, but for projects who are trying to find people as well (even here at the Wuzhi project). I have been spending a considerable amount of time writing up a project proposal that I will be submitting to Google's Project 10 to the 100th. If you have not heard about it, check it out here.

Many of you who read my blog on a regular basis have already seem some version of my project proposal. Thank you all for your feedback and input on the proposal. It is hard taking a step back and looking at my idea from an objective standpoint and you all have helped me in doing that, so again Thank You! I will be posting a blog with the final version of my proposal once it is finalised for all to see. With luck, my project will be chosen by Google as one of the 100 ideas that will be voted on by the public starting in January. I am hoping that with the exposure through Google's project, this website will become a reality and finally make it easy and fast for people to find volunteer projects and for projects to find the people that they need regardless if it is a domestic or international project. I am very excited by the possibilities of what this website has to offer volunteerism everywhere. The hard part will be convincing everyone else of what it can do and that is why I have been spending a lot of time trying to get my proposal just right.

It was bound to happen, and I suppose I am lucky that it happened now instead of earlier in my trip. My camera has died. I am sad to say that I will probably not be posting any more pictures from my time here in China. This is quite unfortunate since I will be traveling with Alan in Shanghai and Beijing. The great wall, the birds nest, the temple of heaven, the summer palace: all places that I will not have pictures of. Hopefully Alan and his mom will have a camera and I can take some shots that I can post after my return home. For now though, enjoy the last of the pictures:

China

Homebound Thoughts

I take very few showers here in this apartment. The water they use for the shower is solar heated, which is basically another way of saying it is cold water. I guess it is a very good way to conserve on energy, both in gas and in water because you rarely use any of either. I assume I am smelling pretty bad at the moment, but luckily I have a cold and cannot smell much of anything.

When last I blogged, I was not very sure about the place that I was staying in nor about the people that I am staying with. I am still not really sure about either, but I do know now that I will, most likely, be staying here for another month in Jiaozuo. Late in October I will travel to Shanghai and meet up with an old friend of mine, Alan and his mother. They will be on vacation for a about 3 weeks. I will stay with them and travel to Beijing with them as well. I am extremely excited to be meeting up with Alan. Prior to me leaving for this leg of my travels in February, I was trying to meet with as many of my friends and family as I could before I left. Alan was one of the people that I tried to connect with before I left, but was never able to. I am not sure how many years it has been since I have seen Alan, but it has been a very long time. It is nice that I will also be going to back to Beijing because there are many things that I intended on seeing when I was there, but never got the chance to. Being with Alan and his mom will also be a welcome change since they are people that I implicitly trust; I cannot say that about the people that I am living with now, unfortunately.

After my travels with Alan and his mother, I will be returning home for the holidays. I booked my flight and I will be returning to San Francisco International on November 14th. I cannot really explain what it feels like to know that I will be traveling home so soon. In a way, I do not really believe it. All this time that I have been away, I have been thinking about the day that I would return home and under what circumstances that would happen. My mind has run through countless scenarios about when, where, how and why this would happen. Pointless scenarios, yet that is what my mind does. So to now know the answers to those questions, it is almost as though my mind is just discounting these thoughts as mere possibilies of a return home and not the reality of actually coming home.

I do not know how long I will be home for. There are many ideas in my head for what I can do. I am just going to wait and see how I feel once I am home. There are to many what ifs that are still floating around for me to be able to know what is going to happen. My main goal will be to spend as much time as I can with my family and friends as possible. I want to see everyone and I am looking forward to being home for the holidays at the very least.

I am also very excited that by the time I get back everyone will know who the next President of the United States will be. I watched the first of the presidential debates today. This debate was much more tame then I remember the debates of Gore/Bush and Kerry/Bush being. Both candidates seemed to be very respectful towards one another, which took me by surprise. Since leaving in February, I have been very disconnected with the general feeling of the country on the elections. As I travel I have had many, many people ask me about who I thought was going to win and who I wanted to have win the election. I found it somewhat strange because this is not a conversation I am used to having in America. We in America seem to feel it is off limits to talk about politics unless you are very good friends with the person you are speaking to. It was nice to be able to have these conversations freely without worrying about offending anyone. Anyway, prior to me leaving I had no reservations in saying that Obama was going to wipe the floor with McCain. Although, it was hard to be able to say that as of late considering just how long I have been away and how disconnected I am with the feelings of other Americans. After watching the debates though, I feel I can state once again that I believe there is only a slight chance that McCain will be victorious. Obama is certainly the stronger candidate and the McCain campaign is not anywhere near the caliber of what the Bush campaigns were in 2000 and 2004. Next week will bring the debate between the vice president candidates which will be very interesting for me to watch. I have been very distant and disconnected from all the controversy surrounding Palin. I do not know very much about Biden either so it will be an educational experience for me to see the two duke it out. One more note on the elections: I can say that if McCain were to win the presidency, many people in many countries around the world will pretty much write off Americans as being naive, ignorant, and/or just plain stupid based off of many conversations that I have had with people about it. Many people in the countries that I have visited are still very confused about why the American people elected Bush into a second term and they are very afraid that we will elect McCain.

The other day I was walking through the streets of Jiaozuo trying to find some good things to take pictures of (there really are not that many I have found). While walking, this chinese girl comes up to me out of no where and starts talking to me in broken English saying she wants to be my friend. I said, okay. So now I have a friend here in Jiaozuo named Nana. We do not always understand each other because she has only taken 2 years of English, but we figure it out most of the time. She is a very nice person and has since taken me to her families house. Nana's mom cooked me a huge welcoming meal full for delicious food and I met her brother and her brother's friends who also speaks some English. They were very excited to see a foreigner, and of course, asked to take a picture with me. I am looking forward to spending some more time with my new friends in Jiaozuo. I trust them more than the people I am staying with.

Things with Yao and his girl friend are pretty much the same as when I got here. I am occasionally helping to teach English. When I am not teaching English...which is very often, I am reading and on the internet, of course. However, I have been spending a lot of time learning Taichi. I have been waking up at 5:30 in the morning and riding Yaos scooter a couple of miles to a square where a very nice 74 year old ex-doctor is teaching me Taichi. Then in the evening around 8:30 or so, I am learning from another Taichi master. Taichi is much more difficult then I every imagined it would be. When I was working for BART in Oakland, I used to watch the Chinese community come out in the early morning hours to do Taichi. It never looked all that hard when I used to watch. So it came as quite a surprise when I started just to do some "warm up" exercises the first day and was sweating and in pain just from stretches. Only after a few days though my body is feeling very good and I can tell that it has helped me out quite a bit. I feel like I am standing up straighter in general. Prior to me starting Taichi, my back was hurting a lot and felt very weak in general. After two days of Taichi my back stopped hurting and feels strong again. It is good stuff this Taichi and I hope to learn a fair amount of it prior to returning home. Hopefully I can continue with what I have already learned once I am back, and perhaps find a teacher near home where I can continue learning. I think, if it was not for the Taichi, I probably would not be staying here with Yao and his girlfriend as I do not feel like I am being very productive as a volunteer.

I have added some more pictures to my China album:

China

International Man of Mystery

I think I now know what it feels like to be a celebrity. Walking around in China everyone pays attention to me constantly. People stare, point, take pictures, whisper to eachother. It is an odd sensation to be the center of attention no matter where you go. Beijing was not all that bad. I ran into other white people every once in a while there. We would then stare at eachother like we too had never seen a white person before in our lives. For some reason, we would not speak to eachother just stare. Such an unusual social experience, China.

Now I am in a city named Jiaozuo. Every chinese person calls this a small city. To me there is nothing small about it. There are people everywhere. I have been told this is a city of 600,000 people. In relative terms, that is not that large. Fremont is a city of 210,000 people. I would say that there are about 50 times as many people on the streets of Jiaozuo then there are in Fremont. The proportions just do not make sense to me. It crossed my mind that it may feel like this simply because there are more people walking or on bikes or scooters here then there are in Fremont. I then looked at how many cars were on the road and there seemed to be more of them as well. The numbers just do not add up. This city feels more like it holds a couple million. Who knows what the truth is. Lets just say there are a lot of people where I am staying and they all stare at me. It is funny to see their faces as I pass by on a scooter; some of them seemed so shocked at what they are witnessing.

Yesterday I went on a tour of a couple of hospitals, an orphanage and an old folks home. Everywhere I went I was being treated like a VIP. Processions of people were following me everywhere. A young woman's only job seemed to be to take pictures of me as I walked around and was shown areas of one of the hospitals. I am not even really sure what I was doing in these areas. My only thought was that at some point I might be doing some volunteer work in these places at some point. The old folks home could really use some help. Even just to organize some people to come and spend time with the people who live there. They seem very estranged and bored. I tried to put forth ideas of organizing some days to come down and spend time with these people. Ideas that did not seem to sit very well with Yao, the person whose house I am staying with and the person that I was warned about before coming here.

It is still to early to tell exactly how things are going to go here at this "volunteer position". I hesitate to call it that at this point. I suppose I am volunteering my time, but so far the only volunteering I have done has been spent with two young boys on two separate occasions. Basically I speak with them and try to get them to use their English that they have already been taught. It helps them to hear a native speaker and it seems like they might enjoy it at times. I am still not exactly sure what else I am going to be able to do here other then that. It seems that Yao really wants me to teach english and only english. I am not sure what his intentions are and there are some communication difficulties. I ask a question and it does not seem like he understands what I am asking. Or perhaps he does understand it and he deflects it. It is very difficult to tell.

I have been able to determine that Yao cares a lot about this project and its future. He hopes to turn this project into a self-sufficient volunteer project that has enough money to operate and a constant flow of volunteers both from within and without China. At this point, I am the only volunteer in the project and I am living with Yao and his girlfriend. Yao is very intelligent and cares about the people here in China both young and old. I do get the feeling that there are things that he is not telling me about. However, I am not sure if that is because he does not know how to say them or because he fears what I may do with the knowledge. It is very clear to me that Yao wants me to stay for as long as possible. He goes out of his way to make sure that I have everything that I may want or need. Well, he makes his girlfriend go out of her way, anyhow. I do not like the way in which he treats his girlfriend at times. I am not sure if it is just cultural differences or if he just has a little domestic violence in him. From my point of view he treats her very poorly. He makes her do things which she does not really want to do. His girlfriend picked me up from the train station when I arrived here, come to find out that he basically forced her to come get me. Yao told me that he was the one who would be picking me up. Later that night, Yao and I were going to go out to dinner but his girlfriend did not wish to go along and wanted to stay home. I cannot speak Mandarin, but I understood that through his words he basically forced her into coming along. I do not like this behaviour, but I am not sure if this is the norm in Chinese culture. Actually, I am not even sure if I care if it is the norm or not. Even if it is normal in all of Chinese culture, I still feel like it is wrong and that Yao needs an attitude adjustment.

I am not sure if the people of China know what stars look like. It is so polluted in this country that you can never see the stars. I am spitting much more then usual in an attempt to get all the crap out of my mouth. It scares me to think that the pollution is only going to get worse here before it gets any better. I hesitate to think what worse will turn into. I never feel clean here. I am constantly thinking about the pollution and about how much pollution is in the food that I am eating or what kind of bugs might be in the water that was used to wash the vegetables that I am about to put in my mouth. Bottled water seems to be a norm though, which is great. I just hope that it is bottled in a part of china that is clean.

Toilets in this country are just plain odd. The traditional western style toilet is a rarity in public places. It seems as though people have them in their homes, but every public toilet I have been to has been a squat pot, as they are so lovingly called. These are basically holes in the ground. One step above a port-a-potty...they smell about the same though. Actually, port-a-pottys might even be better considering there is normally toilet paper in them. In America, before I left the house, I would check my pockets to make sure I had my keys, wallet, and cell phone; here it is wallet, keys, toilet paper. If you are caught out and about in China without toilet paper on you, things can turn ugly pretty quick. I am crossing my fingers that I do not get a stomach sickness while I am here in this country. I just cannot image what would happen if I am in some squat pot in the middle of no where without toilet paper when I need an entire roll, meanwhile a mob of people are waiting outside the bathroom to take my picture.

Here are some pictures from China and I also added some more pictures to the Germany album as well:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ddb123/China#
http://picasaweb.google.com/ddb123/Germany#