March - The Awakening

As we emerge from this cold yet peaceful winter, I figure it's time for a bit of an update on life.

Not real white/gray hair - yet...

I've now been working in Montreal as a Program Engineer for 1 year. One of the latest work-related "projects" I've had the opportunity to develop is our emerging Renewables Integration Conference, which will aid in the emergence of energy storage technology (e.g. batteries, dynamos) and software solutions for modern grid operations with increasing penetration of renewable energy sources (e.g. wind, solar).

I love the work I'm doing at this time, and it's been a fantastic way to nurture and cultivate a lot of my friends and professional contacts from yester-yore, throughout the industry and the stakeholder community in the energy/utility space. I'm trying subtly to steer how we can decisively deploy existing technologies and collaborative frameworks in the utility industry, in order to develop sustainable interconnected transport systems alongside a sustainable interconnected electric power system.

I'm preparing for a dizzying travel calendar in the coming year. If you're around any of these places and would like to re-connect, feel free to e-mail me at buddha17@gmail.com, and let's make some plans!

Blueprint for the future - High-Speed Rail (HSR) + Extra-High-Voltage (EHV) Electric Transmission

March 2019
21-24 : Tucson, AZ
29-31 : Columbus, OH

April 2019
7-10 : Los Angeles, CA
24-26 : Boca Raton, FL

May 2019
9-10 : White Plains, NY
11-12 : New York, NY
30-2 June : Columbus, OH

June 2019
24-28 : Santa Fe, NM

August 2019
20-23 : Raleigh, NC

October 2019
7-9 : Houston, TX
20-23 : Phoenix, AZ

November 2019
19-22 : Palm Springs, CA - Renewables Integration Conference

I suck at Christmas

I'm alone this Christmas. And I'm okay with that.

On one hand, I'm grateful that growing up in such a small/ragtag family gave me the independence that has made me comfortable at traveling around and existing on my own in this vibrant/fabulous/sometimes-scary world.

But on another hand, these tendencies have always made it difficult for me to mesh in groups for long times. I need to work on the patience and discipline to nurture long-term relationships with people and things - even when they don't always jive with my whimsical and transient events. Especially when it's not convenient.

I don't think I'm alone because other people don't want to be with me. I think I'm alone, because I've opted to remain in my comfortable, perpetually insular cocoon of solitude. I don't need others to let me down - when the things that do let me down are in my full and (in-)capable control.

I don't care that I'm alone, for now. Because the reason I'm alone this year is because I've chosen to be alone. My conventional family has failed me. And I refuse to let that failure trigger a deeper crisis in myself.

There are so many failed families and empty domiciles out there this Christmas eve. I'm lucky to afford privilege for now that compensates for one day of peaceful yet ominous solitude with myself this Christmas day.

When I get older, I will no longer have the privilege of peaceful serenity. I will need others - begrudgingly. Each of you knows somebody like this in your neighborhood - that neighbor who everyone assumes wants to be left alone - the crazy cat lady, or the old man on the porch, et al.

Look, I wouldn't recommend bothering any of these fine people on Christmas with some obligatory phone call or visit. But maybe think about them - and consider a random drop-in at some unbeknownst hour. It'll likely do them as much good for their soul as it will do for yours.

Montreal, reloaded

In a dazzling answer to my desperate prayers this winter, I was given the opportunity to move back to Montreal to work as a program engineer at a utility research/engineering consortium based here, blocks from McGill. This is my second time working at the company, where I had first worked around 2010-12 part-time as a technical editor to supplement my thesis studies at McGill.

I returned to Montreal this February. I set up temporarily in a place around Parc LaFontaine, before settling into an apartment along the borders of Notre-Dame-de-Grace (NDG) and Westmount.

Hybrid EHV/HSR Concept

I am a passionate transportation advocate. In particular, I believe that dormant lies a revolution in how people get around, which could potentially ripple into long-term positive developments in sustainable urban design, environmental impact, socioeconomic division, public health, and more in the United States.

Governments and politicians often promise bold infrastructure improvements, yet routinely fail to work together in order to even provide incremental updates to our vast and aging infrastructure. Furthermore, even the most visionary and well stocked investors would be daunted by the paradigm shift necessary for Americans to truly embrace, sustain, and financially reward a whole new mode of transport that requires vast sums of capital outlay with uncertain returns dependent on changing Americans’ finicky behaviors.

Meanwhile, the investment community spurs continued construction of electric transmission lines throughout the US, unleashed by regulatory reforms such as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) Order 1000, designed to harness economic competition among utilities in order to reform transmission system planning and to spur construction of $77 billion of incremental transmission investment nationwide between 2008 and 2015. The utility sector makes for a logical Hyperloop One partner, with considerable financial resources, capabilities in designing and constructing large-scale infrastructure, relationships with communities that minimize NIMBY resistance and enable critical right-of-way acquisitions, correlating demand corridors based on geographic population distribution, the need to haul bulky substation equipment quickly according to power system needs, and further potential inter-industrial and technical synergies..

Linked is a high-level concept proposal for a joint EHV/HSR project between the transportation and utility sectors, which I had the opportunity to present to executive leadership of American Electric Power (AEP) for their consideration and feedback. Without yet dictating technical details, it outlines a host of synergies achievable through constructive inter-industrial collaboration, helping boost the prospects of high-speed rail and securing the relevance of electric transmission systems in an uncertain yet exciting clean-energy future.

Broken Down and Broken Up

This past December was an immensely difficult month for me. I suffered a weed-induced manic attack on 30 November 2017, which resulted in my boyfriend Matthew breaking up with me, my friend Leah cutting off ties with me, and the loss of my housing in Portland, Oregon. In a nutshell, my mental breakdown was costly and resulted in an overturning of my life and my living situation.

The month of December was tumultuous for me personally. I was arrested in Portland when police confronted me about smoking cannabis in my car (which is legal in Oregon). I was checked into a psychiatric hospital for a week in Portland after a dramatic confrontation with Leah and the police. During my 36-hour cross-country drive home from Portland to Steubenville, I was pulled over for a burnt out headlight, only to have the police search my car, which resulted in my arrest for possessing less than 1/4-oz of cannabis on my person. I served 8 days in jail prior to my court date, which was an embarrassing but oddly pleasant chance to clear my mind of the fog in which I had found myself at that time.

Since then, my time in Steubenville has been splendid and healing. My friend Whitney has been gracious enough to open her house and her family to me, while I spend the next several weeks recuperating and continuing my eternal job hunt. In my hometown, I've spent time productively applying for jobs, interviewing, volunteering at my high school, and reconnecting with cherished friends of mine from high school.

At this point, I am still applying for jobs, awaiting interviews, waiting on prospective employers to follow up, trying to rekindle a relationship with Matthew, and basically trying to put my life back together again. I'm thankful for the love and the support I've received from my beloved friends. And I'm hopeful for the future, as I climb from out of "rock bottom" in order to restore the greatness that I once had.

Unions and Tuition

Having worked in student life at both US and Canadian schools, one thing that has long bothered me is how much administration and bureaucracy plagues student affairs at American institutions of higher learning.

At McGill, the student union was run... by STUDENTS. It was a true student union, not a legion of university officials policing what student orgs could and could not do on our campus. The Students' Society of McGill University leased its union from the university, voted to rename it the William Shatner Student Center (much to the chagrin of McGill officials), oversaw operations/maintenance, financed itself via levies for which it campaigned and collected from students' fees, funded organizations, set event guidelines, enforced alcohol policies, ran its own food services and its own bar, etc.

Contrast this to Wright State, who hamstrung its student orgs by enforcing onerous event planning rules, mandating unaffordable security measures, granting precious STUDENT union space to faculty departments, forcing orgs to pay for Sodexho catering at a hefty premium over local businesses, and prohibiting alcohol for "liability reasons." All while permitting carte blanche for faculty departments that weren't beholden to the same scrutiny as student orgs.

Imagine how much savings is possible in American universities by returning student unions to the students, and empowering student governments to exercise direct ownership/control over student unions, rather than merely serving as advisory boards to university administrations that don't trust students enough to run our own unions.

Banned on Facebook in the USA

This past Thanksgiving, I made the provocative posting, “Happy ‘Don’t Trust White People’ Day!!!” As a result of a ‘report’ by a peer of mine in Facebook-land, my post had been swiftly stricken down and deleted from record. I was banned from posting or reacting to anything on Facebook for a period of 24-48 hours.

In an unrelated (but nonetheless awesome) twist of karma, I received a nice phone call from an editor of The Columbus Dispatch, following up on a letter I had written regarding simple electoral reform in Ohio. They were agreeing to post what was basically a copy-and-paste job of a Facebook rant I had made previously, regarding simple things on which Americans can agree in American politics.

It was ironic to me that, during a time of national outcry over a myriad of impactful issues (e.g. tax reform, net neutrality, foreign election propaganda), our local newspapers are not being utilized by We The People fully to their best extent. Instead, we continue as concerned citizens to scream into an empty echo chamber, marketed to us as a way to “give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.” Meanwhile, our generation continues to absorb “alternative facts” and drivel spun by fellow keyboard warriors and despotic regimes alike, while homegrown local newspapers continue their decline into cultural and financial irrelevance.

As part of a younger generation still struggling to define itself among the noise of a hyperbolic media world in the United States, I can’t understand why We The People allow the media titans in Facebook, NYTimes, et al. continue to paint us with their partisan labels, while robust debate and simple consensus on basic solutions to today’s problems continue to wither away in the dustbins of today’s digital age. I implore fellow Ohioans and Americans to challenge the conversation with which we’ve become so exasperated, in order to forge a new brand of American politics that transcends top-down divisions and serves to grow our democracy in a positive and inclusive manner. When We The People stand up to reclaim the stage, we enable the essence of what Makes America Great.