An update on my life in Ubon

Things have been frantic since October and seem to be starting to settle a little for a little.

The book editing is done. It was done too fast and it really should have had more time. The book is now published and there are many errors but they are irritating more than crippling. The book is readable.

With all of the political turmoil here, the conference was postponed. We met last week and have decided to reschedule for April 9-11.

This was/is problematic for me. My promotion and my contract to teach next year were deep-sixed for ridiculous and counter-able reasons. I had initially said to just forget it all as it was clear that there was a faction of people here who do not want me here and I was just tired. I was planning to return home and just forget my PhD work. My current contract ends March 1. This would have meant that I could not be here for the conference. This was problematic for the conference because if I am not here, I am sad to say, the conference will not happen. Apichai suggested that I allow him to reopen my contract and promotion negotiations and kind of let them know that without it, the conference dies. With that, I asked him if it would be possible for me to have a one year, unpaid leave of absence to go home and do research for the PhD. He agreed.

I think what this means (note that this is Thailand and anything can change at anytime) I will be going back to the States in May sometime. I will stay in the states for a year and spend time doing the research for my PhD focusing on a comparative analysis of faith based economics and determining if they can be integrated to a whole that augments each of them and allows for cross communications. It might also provide me time to work on writing a basic text book for Buddhist Economics. (The one course I am needed for here is Buddhist Economics and it will not be offered again until June of 2010.)

This would allow me to go back to the States and talk with people there like David Loy at Xavier U in Cincinnati, Bernard Leitar (and the Marpa Center for Business and Economics at Naropa U. in Colorado), easily access English literature and be able to bounce ideas and discuss in English.

I also need to look into the possibility of having the ligament in my knee repaired. When I was in Uganda last year, I tore the ACL in my right knee and it needs to be repaired. There is no one here in Thailand who does the surgery. I don't have a clue as to the cost or where I can get the money to do the surgery but I need to do something because it is crippling me. I have discovered here in Thailand that life is lots of interrelated spirals and my health spiral includes bone spurs in my heals, the bad knee, the opposite hip, an injured rotator cuff, my weight and high blood pressure. And one changes and it affects all of the other ones. I need to get this taken care of because my way of dealing with it all for the last year has been to meditation and control the pain. In the meditation retreat we did this week with the students, my concentration got diverted from dealing with that pain and I discovered how much effort I have been expending pushing this pain away. I want that energy (and the years it has to be taking from my life) back.

So, Bronwen and I will finish up the work with Buddhism, meditation, ethics and sustainable business this week and she will be returning to England and then I just have to finish out the semester and settle down to getting the "newly reborn" conference back on track. Two or three of us are talking about using the papers from the conference to write a more accessible book on mindful economics.

OK. Off to do some work after 24 hours of forced bed rest for the knee.

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