About Me
I am a Program Advisor with CRWRC Laos living in Phonsavan, Xieng Khouang, Laos. According to my visa, I’m a “Foreign Expert,” but I wonder sometimes in what area? Communication consultant, philosopher-in-residence, professional learner… those could be some of my titles. I observe, ask questions, write, develop media, read, listen… and somewhere in there good community development work happens. My role is to support, train, and challenge my Lao colleagues toward development that integrates people into communities, values with actions, land with the environment, and rising standard of living with justice.
Interests
On the side, I take bike rides, knit, play guitar, fix computers, make websites, and take photos. Currently I knit with silk from the Mulberries silk farm nearby and sometimes I buy nasty acrylic yarn from the market for simple projects. I am planning on knitting a sweater or two this year, but for now I make hats and hats and more hats. They’re quick and easy, small enough to be doable but interesting enough to hold my attention. I like learning new techniques with each project – circular knitting, moebius loops, fairisle stranding, backwards knitting, entrelac, cables, etc.
I am the computer guy for our office here, and for a few friends who live in town. There is always something new to learn about computers. My current challenge is maintaining a virus-free office, a rather difficult task when everyone has fancy cell phones with USB and use computers to load songs into them. I’m also experimenting with virtual machines and running my own server. I am a mac-wannabe — my CRWRC-issued Toshiba laptop has an Apple sticker over its logo to console me until I can buy a Macbook.
I appreciate your support, and that also includes reading my blog, commenting if you have something to say, sending an email, or giving me a call.
What’s a Metikos?
Metikos is a corruption of the ancient Greek word metoikos, used to refer to foreigners living in Athens. I chose it as the title of my blog because I think of myself as a stranger on the inside of many cultures. The subtitle of my blog is “life inside, outside, upside down” because it expresses some of the ways I think about myself as a global Christian. I’m inside American culture, the church, and a few other institutions. I hold on to my outsider’s perspective as a global citizen because it keeps me grounded in what I think this faith should be more like. And I think this whole faithlife thing is all upside down – an upside down kingdom led by a servant King that is turning everything upside down.
About This Blog
I started this blog in May 2004 back when blogger.com was in its early days. I used it that summer from Colorado and that fall from Hungary. I hosted it on my Calvin web space using blogger’s ftp service. Eventually I shifted the whole blog to my own server running WordPress in one of its early versions. First I hosted it in the DR, then I moved it to a server in the US. I have owned the domain http://metikos.com since January 2005. During 2005 and 2006 I had two blogs, a personal one at elrincon.metikos.com, and an ideas blog at metikos.com. I used WordPress through version 2.0 until Spring 2006, when I decided to stop blogging to improve my chances at getting a visa in Laos. In the fall of 2006 I experimented with WordPressMU as part of a project for CRWRC bloggers. In the end I decided that WordPress.com offered better features and simplicity than anything I could administer on my own server. I shifted both of my blogs over to this address, combining archives dating back to the start of this blog. This website runs on my domain but is hosted by WordPress.com, meaning they get to do all the dirty work while I just have to write and you just get to read.
