Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in ivypeace's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
9:37 pm	cool lyrics Eagle in the dark Feathers in the pages. Monkeys in my heart Are rattling their cages. Found a way to blue And another ghost to follow Said “it’s only up to you” And that’s the hardest pill to swallow. You never get to choose You live on what they sent you And you know they’re gonna use The things you love against you One foot in the grave One foot in the shower There’s never time to save You’re paying by the hour And that’s just the way it goes Falling awake And that’s just the way it goes Slipping through the bars Aware of the danger Of riding in the cars Taking candy from strangers And it’s never out of hand Never out of pocket I’m supersonic man Do you wanna buy a rocket? And that’s just the way it goes Falling awake, falling awake Oh that’s just the way it goes Falling awake, falling awake Eagle in the dark Feathers in the pages Monkeys in my heart Are rattling their cages I could learn to play the game I could learn to run the hustle If I only had the brains The money or the muscle - Gary Jules, "Falling Awake So I'm on the wifi at the Coffee Beanery, which is (unbelievably) even more pretentious here than it is in Cairo. And 1 tea cost a whopping 3 frickin Euro!!! You can bet I'm going to take my fair share of free sugar packets! Damn this place is expensive. And they also have parking attendants outside who wave those glow stick-ish things like at the airport. 'Talk abt a den of pretension.  Now that I've submitted my Fellowship application for next semester, I think I'm gonna head out. Current Mood: bemused? (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, October 19th, 2009
9:27 pm	Cryptic words meander Now there is a song beneath the song One day you'll learn You'll soon discern its true meaning An interesting detachment A listless poem of love sincere Desire, despair Overlapping melodies And it's not a love, it's not a love It's not a love, it's not a love song It's not a love, it's not a love, it's not a love song It's not a love, it's not a love, it's not a love song And now the loops are reminiscing Recurring dreams of minor chords Metered time, Muted chimes find the beat And in the pulse there lies conviction A steady push and pull routine Till cymbals swelled High notes fell into reach And it's not a love, it's not a love It's not a love, it's not a love song - Maria Taylor: Song Beneath the Song     SO… Lots to update, little to update:  Well it seems I’m settling into things here. It’s been over a month since I arrived in Cyprus now! Over a month since I was last in Cairo, over a month since I left the US, though now I’ll actually be home in a little over a month. This was a short excursion abroad, by my own standards.  Some Twitter-style notes over the past week or so:  It’s like Christmas, but with US visas, and I get to play Santa every day at 3pm. I heart my job J  I love the ppl in the political office. They’re good co-workers.  Now that I don’t have internet (in yet another Embassy apartment, but the Embassy isn’t gonna pay for internet just for me and the other intern… ‘sucks but oh well) I’ve started writing postcards to friends. It’s fun!  I cut it all off w A now. The hardest easy (or should I say easiest hard) decision I’ve ever made. Something I needed to do, not wanted to do, but maturity means recognizing that your needs come before your wants. A kid, for one, wants candy but lacks the maturity to know that he/she shouldn’t necessarily always get it. I realized that I wanted to be friends w A like a diabetic kid wants to gorge on candy, in that I really wanted something that seemed good but that I knew full well would kill me inside. Maturity means recognizing that you just can’t indulge that want. And yep, sometimes maturity sucks. (now I’ll stop before I sound any more like Meredith Grey…)  You know what else sucks? Not having friends here in Cyprus. Tho I did go to a really chill tavern last Friday night w An from work, and heard live Latin music over huge Carlsburg beers and a halloumi cheese sandwich (which seems to be a Cypriot staple). I talked w a Spanish woman and a Nicaraguan woman; it was a really, really cool evening overall. We finished it off by going to an Irish bar/club, having more drinks and… I shall just say, Argentinean UN Peacekeepers. Whoa… Cyprus def brings together a whole random assortment of people from all over. And I had one of those “life, you really do continue to outdo yourself” (to quote jfg’s facebook status the other day) kind of moments.  So again, whenever I tend to think my life sucks, I realize that it’s really not so bad at all :-)  The next day, I took a long (and, heat-stroke inducing) walk to Alpha-Omega, Nicosia’s answer to a huge grocery superstore akin to the Spinney’s at City Stars in Cairo. Though I arrived exhausted and a bit dazed (yeh, you’d think I’d know better re. taking long walks in 90 degree heat…) , it turned out to be a great trip. The highlight of the trip entailed my rather shameless exploitation of a booth that contained free samples of various foods. First I snuck some very sharp, odd-tasting cheese, then some rice crackers, and then the clerk attending the counter saw me. To my delight, however, she offered me a sample of tea! The rest of the trip consisted of me wandering the huge store (huge grocery stores like that tend to really overwhelm me, I think it’s b/c I’m used to living in places where I just buy groceries at small vegetable stands and corner stores) in a daze, drinking vanilla tea w milk and eating stroopwaffles (also from the free sample bar! And so so good!) and listening to the Grey’s Anatomy soundtrack (esp the songs “Where Does the Good Go” which is pretty much my song of the moment – my answer to the song’s opening question, apparently, is Cyprus, and “Song Beneath the Song” on my Ipod. It was an alright Saturday afternoon, despite the mild heat stroke/dehydration issues that the walk home generated.  I also discovered a Pythagoras Street in Nicosia (I’m collecting all the Greek names of things I can find here… some are quite funny!). Much to my disappointment, however, and contrary to what the famous Theorem would imply, Pythagoras Street is curved and lacks a right angle. I think the urban planners should fix that as part of the Nicosia 25 Year Plan or whatever it’s called.  I discovered Pandora’s! It’s the happy box full of temptations! No, it’s actually a 24-hr bakery near my house that sells, among other delights, brownies w pistachio nuts on them for only 40 Euro cents and amazing whole wheat rolls w seeds on the top for 30 cents! I can finally afford to eat fun/good foods! They also have interesting pumpkin pasties and lots of other pastries, puddings, cakes and cookies that I need to try sometime.  On the food note, tonight I cooked some of the lentils I brought w from Cairo, and I inadvertently managed to recreate a very close approximation to the lentil soup from al-Qazaz in Cairo! I even put onions on the top! The lentil soup from al-Qazaz is prb one of my favorite foods ever, so as you can imagine, this was a huge kitchen victory for one not accustomed to such culinary successes.  Alright, I’m tired, so that’s enough for tonight. That’s basically up to date, I’d say.      Maybe we’re not supposed to be happy. Maybe gratitude has nothing to do with joy. Maybe being grateful means recognizing what you have for what it is, appreciating small victories, admiring the struggle it takes simply to be human. Maybe we’re thankful for the familiar things we know, and maybe we’re thankful for the things we’ll never know. At the end of the day, the fact that we have the courage to still be standing is reason enough to celebrate. – Grey’s Anatomy (the Thanksgiving episode) (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 17th, 2009
9:46 pm	some quotes We’re all damaged, it seems. We carry the damage with us from childhood. Then, as grown ups, we give as good as we get. Ultimately, we all do damage. And then, we set about the business of fixing whatever we can.  – grey’s anatomy   We cross our bridges when we come to them, and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered. – Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead [one of my favorite plays ever!] (Comment on this)
Sunday, October 4th, 2009
7:23 pm	Freedom & Bravery   I took the Foreign Service Exam yesterday. ‘not sure how I did or if I passed, but I took it. Yay for me. That ought to count for something, right?   Oh to be back in kindergarten gym class, where you get an A for effort even if you run like a lopsided Cabbage Patch Kid and can’t kick a ball to save your life, as long as you smile cutely in your ineptitude. I for one could never, and still can’t, do what was called the V-sit-reach. You’re supposed to sit with your legs out in front of you and touch past your toes to a certain point. But I’m so inflexible that I can barely touch past my knees… In one of my more physically agile years of elementary school (probably one of the years that all the ‘cool kids’ could play soccer amazingly run a mile and I, uncool and uncoordinated and hence horrible at soccer, sucked it up and ran a mile faster than almost everyone in the class except for 2-3 people. That feat alone didn’t make me cool, but it did show up some of the ‘cool kids’ at least for that one gym class… though I don’t think I’ll ever be good at soccer) the stupid V-sit reach was the only thing stopping me from getting the President’s Physical Fitness Award.   In honor of my accomplishment, I want to write about something sorta patriotic that I’ve been thinking of since I heard the U.S. National Anthem play at a Toronto Blue Jays game this summer. The last line of the National Anthem is “Oh say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, ‘oer the land of the free, and the home of the brave?” This got me thinking. As much as American rhetoric emphasizes freedom, we hardly ever hear mention of bravery, but really, the national anthem is fairly clear that the two are intertwined. After 9/11 in particular, we heard so much about how America is the land of the free, and how that freedom cannot be taken away from us by any Islamic fundamentalists, psychotic Middle Eastern dictators without nuclear weapons, or women in black niqab. We go to war to bring ‘freedom’ to those who (we perceive) lack it; every sappy jingoistic country song since 9/11 contains at least one line about how “the flag still stands for freedom, and they can’t take that away…” (as though someone can ‘take away’ a concept like freedom as though it’s a Monet from an art museum… really).   And sure, we may be the land of the free, but are we really the home of the brave? We can sing all we want about being free, but I venture to guess that many of us would be wont to reflect on whether or not we are brave, and how bravery figures into being an American.    All of us free people could stand to be a little bit braver sometimes.   In a sense that’s broader than those jingoistic songs, we may be free, but are we brave? And, what is meant by the deliberate linking of these two concepts?   The quotable one-liner from Spiderman (and a bunch of other places, I’m sure) is “with great freedom comes great responsibility.” Maybe instead, Francis Scott Key meant that great freedom necessities great bravery. Existentialism discusses freedom through this framework; absolute freedom is said to be terrifying. Once we free ourselves from the constructs that we had viewed as holding us and our respective worlds in place (ie, organized religion, social morays, conventional morality and ethics), wrote Sartre and Nietzsche, we see that we alone are the masters of our own destinies. For most of us, starkly confronting this absolute freedom over our lives is shocking enough to scare us back to religion and social customs. Many of us, Sartre would allege, are not brave enough to peek out of these comfort zones in the first place.   I’m not sure I’d go as far as Sartre and Nietzsche in my patriotism discussion, but I think we all need to reflect on bravery. America may be the land of the free, but in order to call such a place home (and maybe in order to really take advantage of the freedoms we have) takes a certain level of bravery. Bravery means confronting life head on. It means not running from our problems. It means being mature and confident instead of immature and convenience-seeking. It means faces challenges, even big ones, and dealing with ourselves and the obstacles that stand in our way of our goals. It means sticking with what’s worth it, because it’s worth it.   Somali-Canadian rapper K’naan (who I heard of from Zaki, thank you Zaki!) captures this in his song, Wavin’ Flag:   When I am older, I will be stronger They’ll call me freedom Just like a wavin’ flag… -          K’naan   K’naan seems to suggest that though we have freedom, bravery may require more strength. Hoepfully all of us (and K’naan’s native Somalia too) can find the bravery we need to be free.     OMG so outside my window, I hear a Greek-style remix of Ricky Martin’s ‘Livin the Vida Loca.’ It’s been 10+ years since I’ve heard that song…! Oh my…   If there’s an upside to free falling, it’s the chance you give your friends to catch you. – Grey’s Anatomy (Comment on this)
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
7:19 pm	freeing housing and caving vs spelunking Free housing is like what my mom has said about free advice, worth what you paid for it.   In Damascus that spring I was given free housing from a Syrian friend who ran a travel agency, in exchange for helping him with some editing work and secretarial stuff for the travel agency. On the surface, this was a great arrangement – I was living in an absolutely gorgeous room in a restored Ottoman-era bait 3arabi (Arab house) that his travel agency used as a bed and breakfast. It was one of the most beautiful places I’d ever seen, hands down, and, since my friend went on a multi-week business trip to Iran about a week after I moved in, I ended up not actually having to do that much work for it. The offer also came at a time when I needed it, financially. Until, that is, the bedbugs came out to play. I’d wake up every morning, itchy red bites lining my wrists, ankles, arms, legs, knuckles… I’d feel itchy just lying down in my Ottoman-era bed. It was constant hydrocortisone/bite cream, all the time. The caretaker for the house didn’t believe me when I told him about the bugs, and, with my friend away in Iran (only in Syria do you know ppl who go on business trips to Iran…haha). Eventually, a Spanish guest at the house, an amazing woman who’d lived in India and Nepal for over 8 years and was married to a Swiss guy who worked for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Iraq, noticed that me and her baby also had lice. She told me a trick to get bed bugs out of mattresses (bed bugs don’t like light, so the key is to place the mattress in direct sunlight and flip it a few times… they’ll jump out), and we got lice shampoo and did tons of laundry… I went from 20 new bites per night to around 5… so it helped. But the whole free housing thing…. Yeh. See me get excited about Ottoman palaces again.   Now, same deal. But (thankfully) minus the bed bugs. My co-worker is away for the next two weeks, and offered the other intern and I a chance to stay in his nice, new apartment while he’s gone. Considering that my former housing had been really, really far from the Embassy (and with the crazy German woman…, and expensive, like everything in this country…), his offer had seemed almost too good to be true and came at just the right time. His apartment is nice, he has a microwave (which I pretend I know how to use…), washing machine, dishwasher (also something I haven’t had in a while!), even a drip coffee maker! And I’ll be saving so much money! BUT [cue one of my favorite quotes from Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Prozac Nation, “and that was when I learned that you can never have salvation without a catch”] the internet/wifi that was supposed to have been hooked up last Friday does not actually work (well, the broadband won’t work on my computer, and the the wifi doesn’t work at all), and this morning, the water wasn’t working.   Today is a Cypriot holiday (Cypriot National Day, or something like that), and I really, really want to go out and take a walk around the city to see what’s going on, but instead I’m stuck inside on a beautiful morning (after a long night’s sleep which started at like 8pm the night before) waiting for the maintenance guy to come. I haven’t taken a shower in 2 days, and I might not be able to go to work tomorrow if I can’t shower and do laundry today. All I want to do is brush my teeth. Ugh. Free housing.   ‘Had a dream last night, during my epic long sleep, that I was hanging out with A and C-B3 on the tires/ropes at the old Catamount playground in my hometown. A asks, with purpose, “is there a cave around here?” I responded, telling him about the cave at SVC, and how you can enter into a large sort of room, but going beyond that requires crawling on your stomach for 100 yards, more or less. I’d never done it before. He replied that that didn’t sound so appealing. I was going to launch into a discussion on the difference between caving and spelunking. How spelunking is a funny word and gets a lot of use, but caving is the term more professionally used. I declined to bring up the humor of spelunking, instead responding “yeah, I’m not much for caving.”   I woke up thinking about that cave, and wondering what it’s really like to go farther inside of it. I think when I get home this winter I’m going to hike to it. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
7:16 pm	Green Day had a point when they sang “wake me up when September ends.” This has been a L-O-N-G month! (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 29th, 2009
7:08 pm	Personality Twins and Travel Funsies, getting to know Cyprus more “I hate cheese. The thought of cheese disgusts me. My wife used to have wine and cheese parties, and I’d leave the house. I knew the marriage was really in trouble when she started having fondue parties…. [later] K-----, you’re talking about cheese and I hate cheese. You need to stop.”   - Embassy person last Friday at yet another unofficial happy hour featuring Merlot in my boss’ office   I once heard somewhere that statistically all of us have a twin somewhere in this world. Not an actual twin, of course, but another person out there who, due to random genetic alignments (think of genes and chromosomes as a slot machine), looks a lot like us. I’m not sure if this is true, but it does make some sense. I mean, sure, all of us are unique, but how many different human ‘looks’ can there be? Sure, the world is big, but we are all human, and the world is basically a humongous playground on which we’re all in-breeding on a mass scale…   What strikes me as a lot weirder, though, is when I meet people with personalities that seem to exactly mirror personalities of other people I know. Similar looks makes sense genetically, but near identical personalities? I’d think that would be less common, as our personalities are vibrant, formed through a dynamic combination of past life experiences, how we were brought up, some inherent genetic stuff and how the rest of this list combines with that, and our environment. In other words, I whole bunch of circumstances that, chances are, cannot possibly be even close to the same for two disparate people, especially two people from different places, of different ages, backgrounds, etc. Yet sometimes I meet people who strike me as near personality twins. It’s crazy. Kinda eerie. The person who said the above quote, for ex, is a personality twin of someone else I know who has the exact same aversion to cheese. They also almost look alike, act alike, say the same sorts of things and make the same sort of jokes. It’s really, really weird. Then the head of my office seems to be a personality twin of E from college; everything from his style of dress to his mannerisms is soooo similar. These 2 co-workers are such personality twins that, whenever I speak to both of them, I think, “it’s just like I’m talking to --------.” Though really, I’m not. And in reality, both of my coworkers are much older than their personality twins and obviously really different people. But still, it is weird. Really weird. I wonder if I have a personality twin out there…   It’s also weird to not let your own perceptions and past experiences with one person affect your interactions with his/her personality twin. A coworker of mine at camp this summer was a personality twin of someone else I’ve known, and it was really weird telling my mind that I was talking to her and not her personality twin, and that I hadn’t met her before. This summer I also met a few girls I’ll refer to as name twins; they had the same name and looked like younger versions of other people I know, with personalities that were similar to varying degrees. One of them’s older version is someone I’m not inclined to like, but her younger twin took a liking to me and was actually a really sweet, fun girl. Tho the name/face resemblance was uncanny. There was another name twin whose lost her glasses in the lake and freaked out (not unlike how her older version would freak out). I had to deep sea dive for the glasses, plunging 20+ ft in cold water until my ears hurt, come up fruitless, only to say, reassuringly, “R, you’re going to be fine.”   On the Cypriot front:   The big news this week is that J-Hoff has come to visit! YAY for having a visitor! :-D It’s so nice to have a friend to hang out with here. We’ve been doing lots of cool stuff around the island. I’ve been spending too much money, but it’s been so much fun I hardly care. We went hiking on one day, spent the next day at the beach, and today I got off work early and we went exploring in the northern part of the capital. Something about the overall vibe there reminds me a bit of Syria, actually. It was quite nice. We’ve bought candy and had waffles… fun times. Her visit is making me really appreciate being here, even tho the spending will have to decrease once she leaves tomorrow afternoon. But I am enjoying Cyprus now. It’s small, quiet, and relatively hard to access without a car (we’d rented a car when we went to the mountains and beach), but all things considered, I’m definitely fortunate to be spending the next two months here. Tho I’d much rather spend time than money… J-Hoff is a fun friend too. I’m glad we got to hang out this week. Emilaki left this week, a lot earlier than she’d expected (and her real name is not Emilaki, tho ending things in “aki” is a cute nickname in Greek that means small. Emilaki is 5 ft 10, but the nickname still fits…). We all went out to a really cool café in the Old City last night that I’d been wanting to go to and I got to see some of her Cypriot friends again. ‘was a nice evening.   Work is going slowly… but all in all, life is ok.   Random thought: Why is it that Toblerone is always at the duty free shop? Like, I feel like I’ve hardly ever wanted to buy Toblerone outside of the duty free shop…   If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, the possibility of life is destroyed.- Into the Wild movie (watched it the other day… pretty good! Tho I think I still prefer the book. The book is one of my favorite books)   When you forgive, you love. – also from Into the Wild movie   “das cougar” – coworker from embassy happy hour (referring to my former landlady)  Current Mood: eh... (Comment on this)
Sunday, September 20th, 2009
4:57 pm	The Neptune Cruise “when I overheard drunk diplomats talking about swimming across the Nile, I knew it was time to call it a night.” – random quote (one of many) from Embassy happy hour last night… and it’s even better if you know the full context, which I prb shouldn’t write b/c this is a public-access web site, after all…  So today, I did not think about swimming across the Nile. No, today was the Neptune cruise, an Embassy employee event held on a boat called the Neptune in northern Cyprus. It was great, but as a consequence I’m pretty tired right now, so my writing will be short and list-ish.  Highlight: The US Ambassador to Cyprus was instructing me on how to best jump off the front railing of a boat mast into the Mediterranean Sea in northern Cyprus.  SO frickin awesome. Well, and I know myself when it comes to jumping off of things and swimming. Pretty much instant happiness anyway. In short, today was a great day. I def need to go back to northern Cyprus. It was Turkish and it was way cool.  Also, learning that in the adult/’real world’, events like the Neptune Cruise are just as, if not more, important for meeting people and networking than being at work itself. Maybe, then, our whole selves do count. Those random skills we learned and things we like to do that we say have nothing to do with our ‘real jobs,’ can actually open doors in their own way. It does actually matter that I (finally) feel comfortable walking around in a 2-piece bathing suit, and that I can leap off a 20-foot boat with the Ambassador’s kids and tread water in the Mediterranean with random diplomatic people for an hour.  Other random thoughts from today and the past few days:  Just because information is classified, doesn’t mean it’s remotely interesting. At all.  The families of the Embassy people also went on the cruise today. My oh my diplo-kids… they say ‘pardon?’ and ask politely if I prefer to be called “miss” or just by my first name…. those kids were more composed and together at age 9 than I was at age 19! I did have a fairly in-depth conversation about pop music stars Kelly Clarkson, Taylor Swift, and Miley Cyrus with the Ambassador’s 8-yr-old daughter, though… thank you summer camp ppl for teaching me all I needed to know abt that! We were listening to that Taylor Swift song in which the dorky girl is in love with her jock  best guy friend who dates glamorous girls (“She wears short skirts, I wear sneakers, she’s cheer captain and I’m on the bleachers”… The girl in that song was totally me at one point in my life, tho that’s not so much me anymore… now I’m more about Miley Cyrus’ “7 things I hate about you” or Pink’s “Who Knew”, if my love life had to personify a pop song… which it definitely does not). This was a better song selection than when we first boarded our boat and heard “I wanna fuck you, fuck you, right on the floor… cuz pussy is pussy…” (it’s the dirty version of a rap song I’ve heard before… I’m not sure how it made it into the stereo system of the boat in northern Cyprus… OMG. Again, the reach of pop music is (sometimes problematically) boundless. Needless to say, that song was turned off before the diplo-kids could hear any more of it. Tho watching everyone’s reactions to the above lines was pretty priceless… Like that time at camp when the assistant director and a whole bunch of the staff aired, to an audience of 40+ 12-yr-olds, a movie that started with the line “hey bitches” and featured fun talk of masturbation, sex and boys skinny dipping. (the movie was called “Now and Then.” It was a great movie, just not for a huge group of girls whose parents entrust to you, the responsible adult…) Yep, that was the same sort of priceless.  “There are certain things that guys look at when they look at girls… But ladies, I can’t tell you. That information’s on a need-to-know basis.” – another guy from the embassy, at happy hour last night. Well that was a good time too, now wasn’t it? In the words of the other intern, “happy hour turned into happy night” and featured a trip to Cypriot Burger King, a drunken Marine, a Palestinian-Cypriot bartender that my coworker liked, and a few too many mojitos… good times with the coworkers.  “There’s a really great Syrian restaurant. [But] don’t talk shop there.” – another embassy person who I talked with on the cruise today  “Buenos Aires… Now that’s a divorce post.” – another emb person. The Foreign Service is quite an interesting lifestyle…  Work is going better. So is life in Cyprus. Maybe I’m actually meeting people and getting a life here now! Yay! I’m thinking in terms of small successes, like being able to successfully open the lock on the door to my office. It’s a weird sort of combination lock thing (which I’m never good at as is), and to make matters worse, it’s located at an awkward height. The past few mornings saw me standing on my tip toes, dazed and tired, spinning a lock and overshooting the numbers/failing at opening the door… But well, I can open it now! I also succeeded in not forgetting this lock’s combination, or any of the combinations of the locks on the doors I have to go thru at the Embassy. If they say that moving up in the world is all about opening the right doors, it does help to know which combinations will unlock them. But seriously, considering my abysmal track record when it comes to remembering numbers/codes/passwords/PIN numbers, I’m ridiculously proud of myself.   Current Mood: OMG SO exhausted (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009
4:47 pm	Nicosia We’re adults. When did that happen? … And how do we make it stop? - grey’s anatomy   This entry is written in the narrative style of Grey’s Anatomy – a show I’ve really been getting into lately – it’s between that and episodes of Early Edition and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia that lurk in a folder on my desktop, and let’s face it – EE is kinda boring now that I’m not in 5th grade, and It’s Alwys Sunny in Phila is just not that funny and doesn’t have an engrossing storyline… so medical soap opera it is! Hott! Plus, as I’m an intern here, I figured it kinda fit… But anyway, Grey's Anatomy always starts out with the main character lamenting about a certain conceptual problem/existential frustration, tho she's not always that deep, and then concludes by returning to said problem/issue and reframing it in a more optimistic light/saying it's not actually a problem after all. The above quote about adulthood fits into this framework -- She basically goes from saying that adulthood sort of sucks b/c you end up getting a huge helping of resposibility instead of milk and cookies, and she concludes by saying that, responsibility considered, adulthood isn't so bad b/c you do get great sex and drinking, and you don't have to deal with your parents telling you what time to go to bed... and well, who needs milk and cookies anyway? Like I said, her existential dilemmas aren't always that deep (and, let's face it, neither are mine or those of most people, at times), but the show's narrative style is kinda cool. I'm going to write like it now.   When you blow out the candle, one light stays aglow, it’s the love light in your heart where ‘ere you go… - kids happy birthday song   Whoever said you can’t take it with you was obviously not talking about emotional baggage. Sure, we’d all like to travel light, breeze through the security check with just a small handbag or a laptop case, or a mini-rolling suitcase that contains a toothbrush, a TSA-approved 3mm bottle of shampoo and all we’d ever really need to start life anew in a new place, but sometimes life just doesn’t work like that. Sometimes we just sort of feel a need to over-pack, to take it all with us and arrive at the airport with two bursting full suitcases of poorly compartmentalized emotional overflow. Sometimes we want to take it with us; we all have things that we just can’t bear to leave behind, or things we toss in at the last minute, never knowing what we might need for the road ahead. Sometimes it comes with us, whether we’d like it or not.  And lemme tell ya, the oversize baggage fees aren’t getting any lower.  The past few days in Cyprus, for me, have been about what I’ve taken here with me, what I’ve come here expecting, and, to some extent, what I’ve come here to get through. I’ve been on my own and slightly overwhelmed; my internship has been interesting but difficult (not the work necessarily, just the social pressures to meet people, make a good impression, and perhaps find a few friends at the Embassy or at least get to know a few cool people or break into the fold…), I’ve come home exhausted (I’m staying across town from the embassy, and getting to/from work involves an hour-long walk, which I learned the hard way should absolutely never be done in uncomfortable office shoes!, or a bus ride and a 15-20 min walk... which also isn’t great to do in office shoes… I think I just hate wearing nice office/work-ish shoes, that might be the problem. But whoa, after walking home on my first day, my blisters were so profound I could barely walk!) I feel like I’ve still been unhappy and dwelling on things, on A, on Cairo and memories of last year and jealousies, bitterness over what was, what wasn’t, and what is now. In a way I cannot pinpoint, I had let that baggage get to me more than it should have since I’ve been here. Over the summer, it was different. After a shitty last month of the spring semester, I purposely surrounded myself with the things I knew would make me happy. I sought these things out and made sure to place myself in the middle of them, whether it was Camp, friends, road trips, weddings/parties, DC, camping, swimming all the frickin time, Dunkin Donuts and American coffee, etc.  But here in Nicosia, which seems to be a fairly quiet and sleepy city at this point, I’m on my own. I hardly know anyone here yet, and by virtue of not having internet at my place, I’m fairly cut off from my friends. It’s expensive to be here and I’m ridiculously broke, so my other ‘treat yourself’ indulgences (ie, anything from a ritzy latte shop, cookies/donuts, and even travel to some extent) are not looking so feasible right now.  But now I’m gonna be happy. I’m going to do this internship here, and make it work.  I’m in the security office, combating insecurity, my own included. (Why is it, really, that I, as a person prone to insecurity, ended up studying security in college? At the time, I’d said it was b/c I wanted to understand why countries go to war. But really, can anyone understand that? Maybe up to a point you can, even though after the fact, it sometimes seems harder to comprehend. One of the reasons we learned was that often, countries go to war based on mis-assessments of their own insecurities vis a vis those of the other country, misalignments of mutual insecurities, in short. When you put it like that, people aren’t any different. It’s like that Band of Horses song, “Details of the War”).  On the happy front, today I got to swim in the ambassador’s pool! I also talked with a few more people from the Embassy and met a cool girl who’s doing the Fulbright here. Though wow, before I jumped in the water I had a moment of realization in which I asked myself if I really wanted to go out, in my bathing suit, in front of work ppl who I’d like to impress. It’s not that I don’t think I look fine, it’s that being in front of co-workers you’ve just met in a bathing suit is pretty bold, isn’t it?  And I just finished eating really good yogurt (since I’d heard that Greek yogurt is supposed to be really good… the strawberry yogurt I had this morning was pretty nasty, but this one was great!).                                                                  I’m paying 25 Euro to go on the cruise w the embassy people in Northern Cyprus this weekend. It’s money I don’t really have, but whatever. I deserve it. And I want to take pictures of beautiful things.  I still need to find out what Cyprus is to me.  At the end of the day, what we take with us is what makes us who we are. When we again find ourselves alone in a new place, it’s all we have to establish continuity between who we were, who we are, and who we will become. And don’t forget, emotional baggage isn’t always a negative weight. There are friendships from afar, memories, lessons learned and a certain ironic beauty that comes when the dust settles and when you realize that no matter how careful your preparations, life’s a trip through many unknown destinations, one that turns out far differently from what you ever would have foreseen but makes you don bright blue sunglasses, a Hello Kitty shirt and scrub pants, and grin at yourself for no reason in a Cypriot mirror nonetheless.  You can take it with you, so you might as well take the adventure with you, too.    "but it all fits into morning, and you open your eyes” – how is it that Belle & Sebastian have a song that captures literally everything I’m feeling at so many moments of my life? Current Mood: satisfied (Comment on this)
Friday, September 11th, 2009
4:31 pm	DATELINE: NICOSIA (Cyprus) Day 1 in a new place, and all I can do is roll my eyes and wonder what exactly I’ve gotten myself into this time.  This morning I laid in my bed for about three hours, thinking of various things and having the sort of dream that you think is actually happening (isn’t that what a lucid dream is?) and you seem to be at least 50% conscious for, until you then roll over, hear your cell phone alarm again and realize, well duh, you’ve been lying in bed this whole time, and you’re still lying in bed, aren’t you? If so, then there’s no possible way that you really would have met up with said people and done said things; your conscious mind was guiding the dream to come out in a way that you’d like, but it was still a dream, still a delusion after all. Though these kind of dreams do make getting out of bed seem not immediately appealing.  EgyptAir pulled its same old shit at the Cairo airport. By that I mean my flight was delayed about an hour with NO explanation. What is it with Egypt and being on time? Apparently A was on a Star Alliance-test run EgyptAir flight back to CAI, and he said it was really nice, and left on time. My flight back to Cairo, as a note, left 3 ½ hours late, also with no explanation. I’d rushed back from my sojourn into Milan only to find that out, and then I fell asleep on the bench at the airport…I hadn’t slept for about 40 hours, wasn’t in the best emotional state anyway, and I was anything but pleased. When the Star Alliance inspectors are away, it all reverts back…  EgyptAir is a part of StarAlliance now and the Cairo airport as recently been refurbished to look the part… But that doesn’t mean everything is really operating as smoothly as it may seem (sorta like Egypt, as a country – the veneer is only skin deep and gets dirty in less than a day). The kicker about my flight yesterday was that the loudspeakers in the airport announced it was boarding, and then they announced the final boarding call for it, (so it seemed like everything was being done by the books), but then when I arrived at the gate, everyone was waiting and the flight was very obviously nowhere close to boarding. Ooooh Egypt. I did get seated in the exit row (which triggered a temporary moment of mental panic over whether or not I was qualified or competent to perform the duties as required in an emergency situation, but I’m sure I’m fine with that), which had an embarrassing amount of legroom (as in, my feet barely touched the seat in front of me) and made me think of D and his obsession w seatguru.com.  The ride into Nicosia from the airport last night was trippy enough too. After being in email correspondence with the Embassy’s intern coordinator throughout the last month, and after she told me that she’d pick me up from the airport (well, I had rightly assumed her to be female, though I’d never heard her name before), I land in Larnaca to find two men holding a sign that said my name, written in messy handwriting on a crumpled sheet of copy paper. I think they were as surprised to see me as I was them.  It turned out that the two men were not kidnappers (tho the thought crossed my mind), but rather worked in the office where I will be working. One of them was British (from Liverpool), and had the sort of laid-back, Brit-international vibe of an African Safari guide or the Croc Hunter. The other, an American, was named after a color. Odd, eh? They were private investigators, they told me; the office where I'll be working does police work (I hadn’t realized that before, but alrighty). They had that ‘security studies’ manly shtick going that I recalled from the Military Security in World Politics class at Georgetown. I hadn’t liked it much then… On the car ride back, they discussed, among other things, staying at the luxurious Balmoral Hotel in Edinborough, Scotland while providing security detail for the G8 conference, and the American also mentioned that he’d worked in Sudan and Iraq. The Brit (whose name I forget) also did a training at the Embassy in Cairo and loves sheesha (so at least I have one thing in common with them…) Tho half the time I felt like an intruder on a sausage-fest-meets-exotic game hunt. It was weird… And these are the people I’ll be working with for the next two months or so… WHOA.  Arriving at my place of lodging ended up being just as strange of an experience. I meet  the German woman with whom I’ll be living, and to whom I sent some money last week… She seems kooky but nice; she’s living here with her Nigerian husband (they married something like a month ago; he doesn’t speak very much and seems younger than her). There’s a British PhD student renting a room in the upstairs of the house. The room I’m renting seems also really, really nice.  The German woman is older with bleached blonde hair; one of my first impressions of her was that she looks a lot like the Austrian landlady in Persepolis II. Oh my. I hope my experience with her turns out better than that of Marji. She’s a self-employed “healer,” meaning she uses crystals and amethysts and stuff like that to treat medical conditions like Depression, back pain, and even, as she told me, cancer. She has crystal balls scattered throughout her house. She also has random paintings of her ‘visions’ (done by one of her former ‘healing’ students from Martinique) and statuettes, including an ancient Egyptian sort of thing of a Pharaoh-like figure sitting in a chair (or is it a throne?). It’s interesting, to say the least. Some people may describe her as downright crazy. I’m not sure I’d go that far, but she’s definitely off beat, and perhaps batty. This morning I was asking her about the neighborhood, and I asked if there was a pharmacy nearby. “Why would you need a pharmacy? We have a healer here!” she replied.  Last night, I stood in my room, overwhelmed, thinking, what have I gotten myself into now? I’ve had these sort of existential what the fuck? moments lots of times now, with the first being on my first day of study abroad.  My entire flight experience with Royal Jordanian Airlines, and my first day in Damascus (which I spent wandering around with Abdel-Khalik looking for apartments in all the oddest places), my ride back from the airport on my first day back in Cairo (during which I had to leap to the front seat and grab the emergency break to keep the car from rolling backwards into oncoming traffic while the driver was across the huge highway asking for directions), my whole fainting in the library situation during the first week of grad school in Cairo… these were other such moments.  I’m reminded of that part on Monty Python where he says “and now for something completely different…” and then the scene changes.    Then I also remember my philosophy about jumping into cold water: just do it, and then by the time you have a chance to freak out and want to hesitate, you’re already in the water so you’ll be forced to deal. This way, they’ll be no hesitation, no standing on the edge of the pool with your feet half in acting like a wimp. Just jump, take the plunge, and deal with being in the water once you’re in the water. (and by then, you’re swimming anyway…) No hesitation.  I try to go into every new experience with such an attitude.   I reckon it’s again my turn, to win some or learn some… But I won’t hesitate  No more, No more…. -          Jason Mraz Current Mood: bemused (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
1:14 am	overheard at AUC, and other amusements of the new campus So there were two amusing things about my trip to the new AUC campus today. I'm not gonna compare this to the amount of annoying and/or unproductive/not-fruitful things that also characterized this trip, and that seem to characterize nearly every trip I've ever made to the new AUC campus... but anyway: overheard at AUC: "I wish there was a religion that said pre-marital sex is good for you" - said by a  Egyptian AUC guy (of the sort of typical AUC Egyptian guy look --eg, purple tight-ish t-shirt with English lettering on it, stylish, Euro jeans, gelled hair) to his two friends. All I can say is.... ooooh Egypt. I'm sure he wasn't the only one in this country to have felt that sentiment... An honest sign on the new campus, for once: "The indoor track is closed for repairs on its surface. We have no idea when these repairs will be completed." [italics added] This was a sign posted at the gym. Note that the indoor track was open for about two weeks last April (the entire gym only opened last March) before closing due to these nameless repair needs. I was actually taken aback by the honesty of this sign, as the university tends to lack such honesty regarding nearly everything on the new campus else that's either broken or not yet completely constructed. The new swimming pool at the gym, for example, will be finished within "two weeks to two months." This is the same answer I've been given on it since last March... apparently there are problems with a part or some company or something... Last year, AUC also said that the new campus would be completed by September (ie, when classes there started), and that the student center and dorms there would be completed by October, then November... they just kept moving the date back. Perhaps a nice, honest sign like the one on the indoor track would've just made things easier from the beginning. I went to dinner at Laura and Bob's place downtown tonight, with Jenny too. 'All the fun ppl from the wedding. It was good times indeed. Bob mentioned that among the rumors going around in Egyptian society at large (which is pretty much an amazing international rumor mill -- did you hear about how the Jews caused 9/11? Or how Monica Lewinsky was a vast Zionist conspiracy to discredit Bill Clinton's efforts to make peace w the Palestinians? if the 'Arab street' is good for one thing, it's preposterous rumors) is one that the new AUC campus has a casino, a strip club, and lots of topless women. And that the old AUC campus downtown had a pool where women sunbathed topless.  AUC, as a bastion of Americanism in Cairo, does get targeted from time to time for being, among other things, a hotbed of American spies and, as the above rumors suggest, a den of vices that pollutes Egyptian society. But wow, if AUC can barely handle feeding everyone on the new campus, do you think they could really be running a casino/strip club there? Come on. And, for there to be any topless swimming or sunbathing, the swimming pool would have to be operational.  Though, give it "two weeks to two months"  and we shall see... Really tired. Damn, why do I always end up staying up until 2am talking online? I've got stuff to do tomorrow! "And when it's done, And all this is gone, Just find a feeling, pass it on..." ~ the Coral Current Mood: tired (Comment on this)
Sunday, September 6th, 2009
1:29 am	Riding in cars with Egyptians, or, karkedeh mirinda = what Egypt means to me Dateline: CAIRO Sometimes I find it so hard to remember why on earth I ever fell in love with this city. Sometimes, I know implicitly.  Sometimes, it’s a difference between night and day.  My past few days in Cairo can be easily summarized by the above two statements. During the days in Cairo, mainly during daylight hours, I have: waited for 3 hours at a bank to send a money order, gotten my ATM card  retained by an ATM; tried unsuccessfully (and successfully, the 5th time!) to call said bank; reached close enough to the brink of heatstroke (tho that’s the perpetual battle…), seen Cairo sights and been plagued by memories/associations and lingering feelings of sadness abt A; had a few fruitless walks in 100-degree weather to find cheap food (which I didn’t find) or phone credit (which I also didn’t find – most of the small kiosks and cheap restaurants are closed during the day b/c this month is Ramadan, or they’re open at really inconsistent hours… aargh). In other words, heat and frustration.  Cairo nights, however, have been a significant improvement. Cairo nights – especially Ramadan nights, remind me of what I love about this city. The weather is cooler, people come out into the streets, and amidst the traffic, bustle, sheesha, stray cats, grainy cell phone music, and haphazardly strung Christmas lights, you capture a sense of the thriving life and spirit of the city. You lose yourself in the crowd, or stare into the smoke of your sheesha, sip your mint tea and just sort of let Cairo seep under your nails and skin in the sort of indelible way that won’t wash out, no matter how hard you try. I don’t think I care to know how many hours I’ve whiled away over sheesha in Cairo at night, having amazing conversations with amazing friends; I’m not sure if any other place can quite conjure up the same atmosphere for discussions about the deeper things in life than a somewhat sha3bi Cairo café at 2am.  But as for the days…  Two days ago, I found myself in a Western Union office in Maadi. I had to transfer money for housing in Cyprus. Since Maadi is known as a very affluent area, popular with foreigners, I figured that the small transaction I was going to make would go simply and quickly. Think again. I found myself in a small, crowded room with what must have been a significant percentage of Cairo’s African population. The room was small and smelled like sweat. Perhaps it was because the bank has reduced hours during Ramadan… I don’t know. I’m not sure if I’ve been in a more crowded, uncomfortable place since that summer at the Ministry of Immigration in Damascus. There, it had been me, small and white, pushed up against huge Iraqi men holding multiple passports. At the Western Union office, it was me pushing my way up to the desk alongside several Sudanese men (at least one of whom had a special attachment in his passport from UNHCR), guys from the Congo and Uganda, and a handful of Filipino maids. Even with my summer tan, I was, by far, the whitest person in the room. If Dutch Boy Paints had a series of kitchen paints in the tones of human skin, even with my summer waterfront tan I would be at least a dozen bookmark-like toner strips downwards from most of the people in that room. I pondered again how strange I must seem to the others there, and how many times I seem to have wound up in similar situations over the past two years since graduation. As I pushed ahead (and you have to push—if basic human rights aren’t guaranteed in a country like this, you can sure as hell bet that the luxury of waiting in a neat and orderly line that promises equal access to everyone is even more evasive), a thought came into my head about all the various aspects of the post-colonial world that were represented in that room. I’m sure someone could write a Master’s thesis on the manifestations of post-colonialism in the money transfer office in Maadi. Why, for one, do so many people from the Philippines travel so far away to work? What does it say about a country when so many of its citizens go to nearly the opposite side of the world for work? I noticed another African man (maybe Congolese?) sending a text message in French. The imperial legacy is never that hard to spot. Someone’s cell phone went off, playing that Santana song that goes “tell me baby girl ‘cuz I need to know…” (I honestly wonder if singers ever realize their true reach… Does Akon realize that his “Smack That” was a sensation on the streets of Damascus that summer? Does the Dutch band Aqua ever realize that though “Barbie Girl” faded into obscurity in the midst of copyright issues nearly a decade ago in the US, it’s still headlining several Arab-world mix CDs…?) And there I was, an awkward looking American with red hair (I dyed it just before I came back), in the middle of it all.  On my walk back, it was Ramadan rush hour (don’t ask why Ramadan rush hour starts at 1pm when the sun doesn’t set until nearly 8pm… Egyptian is its own special class of logic, and one that doesn’t conform neatly to predetermined expectations or flow charts or symbolic greek characters, one that will not and doesn’t intend, through mathematical formulas of derivatives and integrals, to arrive at the truth … and if it does arrive at the truth, it will be arrive 3 hours late, with a broad smile on its face, saying “izzaik!”). I arrived back at Sarah’s place hot and exhausted. Ugh.  The past few nights, however, have been less exhausting.  I went out one night to the area around Khan al-Khalili with some Egyptians, Hussein and a friend of his named Mohammed. (an upshot of all that went down last semester is that I made an effort to maintain friendships with people who I knew would be in Cairo in the fall… though in the biggest irony of them all, I’m not going to be here for most of the fall now; it’s good to still have the friends to call on either way). From the moment I got into Mohammed’s souped-up Skoda at Midan Tahrir (oh, getting into random ppl’s cars… but Hussein is a trusted friend, though, so I knew I was fine), I knew I’d have the kind of Cairo experience that makes me remember why I do, in spite of everything, keep coming back to this city. Hussein, Mohammed and I walked around a bit in Old Cairo; everyone was out strolling around after ifTar, the mosques were all lit up, people were in good spirits, and it was all in all a quite pleasant night. I discovered Mirinda Karkedeh, or, hibiscus-flavored soda. Although as a rule I don’t drink soda and I honestly don’t like most of it, I’m now pretty much obsessed w Mirinda Karkedeh. I plan to seek it out every day. Afterwards, Mohammed drove around a bit in Abasiyya and downtown, blaring techno/dance music on his stereo (oh, how Egyptians love driving in cars with the music blaring...!) so loud that at one point I winced.  This is Cairo, I guess. It’s a random hodgepodge of awkward juxtapositions, a place that makes you so frustrated you want to scream at times, yet a place that somehow draws you back for more. It's a country that feels like it's just barely holding itself together; it's messy and disorganized and haphzard. Sometimes, you can get tricked by a glittery or glamourous facade, but it's never too long before you're reminded that life in Egypt, on all levels, is a constant process of barely holding on. I thought of this today when the electricity went out at the new AUC library. As Michelle once said, referring to her professor's really swanky, upscale Zamalek apartment (as Michelle was pointing out the unevenness of its otherwise beautiful hardwood floor), "it's still a Cairo apartment." I remember in my final sociology class last spring, we watched a rather ridiculous Egyptian film about, among other random circuitous sub-plots, a beggar who eventually becomes a famous singer, after getting in a fight with a rich man and getting one eye stabbed out (I’m really not doing justice to quite the immensity of the plot of that random-ass movie, but that’s the general point). At one point in the film, the beggar is in the hospital recovering from losing his eye, and he and the other patients miraculously rise out of their beds and perform a ridiculous song and dance number. As I remember, the film just got more ridiculous from there on out.  I remember commenting, in an effort to sound smart and fill that sort of awkward avoid during which everyone is waiting for everyone else to say something smart, that I was on board with the film “until everything ceased to be realistic.” (basically, until the scene I described above) My professor countered that part of the point of the film was that sometimes and for many Egyptians, dreams are unrealistic yet they are dreamt anyway, regardless. Unrealistic things are thought possible; it’s a country where, at least on the outside, anything goes (but then really, anything doesn’t go). I was thinking more about this today as the bus pulled out of campus, and I feel like my prof might have had a point after all. Sure, it’s unrealistic to think that a beggar with no education will ever become a famous singer, but isn’t realistic a relative term? In a country where over half (I think a lot more, tho I’m really bad w statistics) of the population lives on less than 2 USD/day and yet I can go out and blow 40 USD on fish fry and ice cream at the most lavish shopping mall I’ve ever visited, what is realistic anymore? Is it realistic to be able to pay off a cop when you get a ticket, buy Prozac without a prescription and download entire TV series, but not to be able to criticize the president or attend a protest? Is it realistic for young children to pull European tourists around on camels at the Pyramids all day, instead of going to school? I was trying to explain to Sarah the other day how, in Egypt, I feel that there's a sort of slightly ironic can-do attitude. I'm not talking about work ethic necessarily (b/c that's, well...), but I was trying to describe how, in Egypt, it sometimes seems that anything's possible. If you skip a deadline, mafeesh mushkila, for ex. If you want to rent a minibus going to El-Gouna at 4am, and if you have enough money, you generally can, and there will always be 10 people trying to help you make it happen. The sobering reality, however, is that you're dealing within the context of an oppressive dictatorship with sharp socioeconomic disparities in which very little is actually possible. Maybe the smaller things (skipping deadlines, etc) are made possible b/c the broader things (ie, freedom of speech) are not. Maybe people just hold out hope at possibilities. A beggar can't become a rock star, but in such a scewed context as Cairo, maybe it's better not to write anything off.  On my way back from campus today (when I was already feeling tired and hot and sort of let down after what I think was an unsuccessful attempt at passing the Arabic exam for MEST), the shuttle felt like it was going to flip as it skidded down a newly minted dirt road outside campus. Then, it hit a speed bump so hard I physically rose from my seat, like a kindergartener in the backseat of a school bus.  As I came down, I couldn’t help but smile widely and laugh to myself.  Matchbox 20 lyrics popped into my head: “and now, you’re laughing out loud, at just the thought of being alive…”  tehya Masr. Current Mood: exhausted (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 21st, 2007
12:08 am	So I found out yesterday that Fatema, one of my friends from Arabic class was killed in a car accident w/ her father on Tuesday afternoon. She wasn't a really close friend of mine per se, but just a  really great person and alwys a pleasure to run into around campus (you know, the kind of friend you alwys whished you'd see more of, and someone known by many of my other friends), so it's still fairly sad, tragic of course, and not something that my various life philosophies help me address overly well. 'doesnt help that I'm cut off from everyone this week, since I'm in Canada visiting Bonnie's fam for one more time before Damascus. I didn't feel like being down all day and bringing up the death to them, but in between picking Maeve up for lunch and calling hotels in Syria (and, amazingly, getting thru and making reservations at one! yay!), I made a sad walk to the drugstore and post office to buy and mail a card for her family, listening to Keane (typical depressed soundtrack -- their 1st album) on my iPod while dodging felled trees in the neighborhood on the way to Avenue Rd. I'm up late tonight watching the Daily Show and Colbert, even though I have to be up at 4am for a 6:15 flight back to Albany tomorrow morning... But I figure that I won't get a chance to watch the Daily Show in Syria, so I might as well seize the moment now and deal w/ the sleep deprivation later, c'est la vie, ya know. Fieldng the questions of Bonnnie and Rick over the past few days have also made me realize how unprepared for Syria I really am (and that's quite unprepared). Right now I have a job (tho I don't know where my place of employment is located exactly) and a hotel reservation for a week (even tho I haven't seen the hotel and it might turn out to be full/dirty/a brothel, notwithstanding Let's Go's high recommendation of it).  I have the phone numbers of a family there I could call... Ok, now I'm sounding prepared again, yet somehow every time Bonnie asks me questions abt Syria I just have no idea what to say and I come across sounding as underprepared as Bush in Iraq (ok, not that underprepared, but ya get my pt). The bottom line is, I can do this. YES. Syria will be my adventure, and I guess I"m feeling ready enough. gaah the past few days have been a bit weird/odd. I'm leaving soon enough, so kiss me and smile for me :-) Maybe I'll write again some time, but I'm not sure when or from where! (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 22nd, 2007
11:44 pm	the future's calling... and my ringtone is too loud (or, the sound of settling) SO I'm graduating soon... 'graduating', damn, I sound so important and sophisticated now... and what am I doing with my life? What have I accomplished? WHERE am I going? whoa..... I'm here. And I'm been procrastinating way too much lately; that's all I really know right now. I might have a teaching job in Syria for next year/this summer, but I have to figure out the logistics and see what the details are -- I literally can't wait until the person at the agency there emails me back with the details about the salary and the accomodations. Then I have to get  a new passport (b/c my passport has an Israeli stamp in it, and the Syrian govt won't accept that), get a visa, buy the plane ticket, find a place to live in Damascus, etc, etc... none of these things will be easy, but I really think the experience of being abroad again and getting to know Syria,  a country that seems so intriguing, will benefit me. I'd want to do this more than some random PR/NGO internship in DC this summer. At this point I'll prb end up spending a year in Syria then applying to grad school or law school, or figuring out what else I'd like to do with my adult life... Growing up, it seems to me, is so often a process of settling.  All around me I see dreams compromised by reality, especially when it comes to jobs.  Whether out of practicality, or to do circumstance, a lack of qualifications, disillusionment or financial limitations, so many of us tend to go for less than we'd dream of and convince ourselves that we'd be better off that way and well, maybe the dream will revive itself at some later point (it's on the back burner). We (and I do this too, as much as anyone) tend to sometimes go for what's easiest over what we really want to do, what we've dreamt of ourselves. We go into investment banking or some random low-level publishing or office job, for example, rise a little bit, make decent money and the next thing we know, -BANG- we're approaching 30 and getting married, and suddenly we're excited over things like whether the wallpaper we've chosen matches the paint on the doorframe in our new townhouse and we're worried about whether the office mailing went out on time. I don't at all mean to bash marriage and office jobs, but I'm just saying that somewhere during our '20s, lots of people's dreams get sidelined ... and it's not like I have that many lofty dreams anymore anyway, but that kind of office life just isn't for me right now. That's just not what I want to make me happy.  Already, in my job at the Registrar's, I feel like my soul is slowly being eroded away by the sheer triviality of that office. I just don't see myself working at that kind of  a job next year, and I don't even want to convince myself I'd be happy doing that.  At this point, I think I still want to be a journalist and work in the Middle East (as a dream job); teaching English in Syria next year won't be that dream job, but to me, it wouldn't be settling.  Web site Monster.com's slogan is "never settle." I like that slogan, and if the price of not settling is a $900 plane ticket to Damascus and $100 of assorted passport and visa fees,  then well, I have the money saved up, so count me in. lyrics: This could be the very minute I'm aware I'm alive All these places feel like home With a name I'd never chosen I can make my first steps As a child of 25... What have I done it's too late for that What have I become truth is nothing yet... (snow patrol) "a tragic opera in my mind... and it told of a new design in which every soul is duty bound to uphold all the statutes of boredom therein lies the fatal flaw of the red age. Because it was nothing like we'd ever dreamt, our lust for life had gone away with the rent we hated and because it made no money nobody saved no one's life.... (the shins)  <-- this song kinda touches on my point about people having to settle (Comment on this)
Saturday, April 7th, 2007
1:40 pm	some quotes from my trip South.... so far So I'm here in Charleston, SC @ D's house  for Easter break. It's a beautiful, quaint, charming city, a la Gone With the Wind, and in some respects, not much has changed here since that bygone era... some quotes to illustrate: "Well, what can I say, not much has changed here over the last 200 years.... oh, my dog doesn't like black people." -- D, re. the black people who were mowing his neighbors' lawn, as if it were a modern plantation Me [re what I thought was a house in D's neighborhood]: wow, that house is small! D: that's the poolhouse. On that note, I'm off today to explore and perhaps go to a plantation, unless that costs too much money.... (Comment on this)
Monday, April 2nd, 2007
1:31 am	FINAL FOUR ATLANTA!.. or, the craziest 48 hrs of my semester so far... Here's pretty much a copy of the email I just sent my mom, expressing the craziness of this w/e and my Southern travels: whoa, that was a crazy 48hrs... oh my. After a 12-hr overnight bus ride (sponsored by Georgetown) to Atlanta on Friday night, which included such events as a 3am stop to get gas at a redneck souvenir shop/truck stop on the border of NC and SC (it was full of tacky polyresin sculptures, a la the Dollar Store, weird fried pork products inc. pigs' feet in a jar, and TONS of bumper stickers w/ the Confederate flag and that said things like "Confederate by birth, Biker by Choice" and "Redneck"), we made it to Atlanta, which is a sprawling, rather industrial-looking, very heavily commercial/billboard-covered city. The basketball game was crazy and exciting the entire time, but definitely a bummer when Georgetown lost. The stadium where it was held was also vast and huge; we had very high seats but were still able to see everything, and so many Georgetown students were there the atmosphere was ecstatically festive. Everyone wanted to go drinking afterwards, which also got interesting, as Georgia state law prohibits the sale of alcohol on Sundays, and by the time we got to the hotel bar, it was midnight on Saturday night --- so no alcohol for anyone! (isn't that crazy?!). Between the confederate bumper stickers and the law abt alcohol, we were beginning to joke that the South was still stuck in the past (ie not realizing that both the Civil War and the Prohibition were long over...!).   Other elements of life in the South were more interesting, in a better sense. I went to a Waffle House, which is like a diner the serves cheap waffles, breakfast foods, grits, etc... it's a very popular/common Southern chain. That was actually really, really good and fun. The people in Atlanta, overall, were VERY nice, chatty and friendly -- definitely not cold at all like Northerners. Atlanta is also definitely very racially mixed. The metro subway in Atlanta seems to be something that African Americans use more; several white Georgetown students from Atlanta had advised us against using the metro, saying it wasn't clean/wasn't a good thing to use, should be 'a last resort' etc... But it seemed fairly decent and functional overall, and there were definitely  more black ppl using it than whites (which is interesting to note in light of how white ppl seem to not like it).   Today I opted to stay in Atlanta for a bit longer to see Ming Feng, who is going to school at Georgia Tech for a finance grad program.   We drove around Atlanta for a bit and went to lunch at IHOP (pancakes) w/ a friend of hers, then, when her friend was driving, another car turned out from a driveway and ran into the side of Ming's car! None of us were hurt, thankfully (the car just jolted), but the entire side of Ming's car was badly dented, enough that the doors didn't open. We had to call 911 and get the police to come and everything! The weirdest part of all was that the woman who ran into Ming's car (whose fault the accident was, very clearly) drove off and didn't come to see if we were ok! Luckily 2 college-aged girls who were in the car behind hers  managed to follow the car and get the liscense plate number (and take a photo of the lisence plate w/ their camera phone), then lead the police to a shopping center down the road where it was parked. But now poor Ming has to deal w/ all that insurance mess... crazy, isn't it? I still can't understand how ppl can do things (ie hit someone's car, run into me while skiing) that are so obviously their own fault (well, they are "accidents" in which the responsibility is clear), and not even stay around to make sure the other person is ok. I couldn't fathom doing that myself. I thought it was just a given that people stay around to make sure their actions have not caused harm to others, really...   I flew back to DC tonight (AirTran had cheap student flights if you agree to fly standby -- ie your seat is not guaranteed, so if the flight is full you'd have to wait and take the next one), as the buses from Georgetown run on Tuesday morning, and since Georgetown wasn't in the game, I didn't want to stay around that long and miss all of my Monday classes. Overall, the past 48 hours have been so hectic and crazy... I'm flying to Drew's house in SC on Wednesday morning for Easter break. Hopefully that will be a more restful Southern break (and I'll get to go to a Waffle House again!).  now, time for sleep. Current Mood: exhausted (Comment on this)
Saturday, February 3rd, 2007
2:58 am	my 'seduction style': the escape artist random quiz, kinda (but not entirely) accurate: http://www.seductiveshorts.com/images/blogs/escape_artist.gif and i'm not cynical, I'm cautious. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 20th, 2006
8:17 am	Merry Christmas! (my graphic design study break Christmas cards) a Christmas carrell for you! doves of peace... kinda obvious the draft of the peace doves ... any guesses as to where the background cloth came from? I need to write an actual post soon, but not tonight b/c I've got lots of other stuff to do before I head out to NYC tomorrow morning! (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 12th, 2006
11:32 am	a thousand and one traces of sand, diverged in a desert, and sorry I... So I guess that kind of Arabi-fied Robert Frost is what you get when you go from Vermont to the Middle East and back to DC, and still can't decide what you're going to do in your life. 'That's pretty much where I'm at right now, and after a few weeks of ups and downs (mainly a few emotional downs and just general feelings of malaise abt the progress of my semester and my life as of late...) I'm relaxed and chillin and trying to stay cool w/ the world. some opening  lyrics: I wish we could open our eyes To see in all directions at the same time Oh what a beautiful view If you were never aware of what was around you And it is true what you said That I live like a hermit in my own head But when the sun shines again I'll pull the curtains and blinds to let the light in. -- Death Cab for Cutie. Those lines basically capture my state of mind the last few weeks. Halloween was weird this year -- aside from the fun that was the Hoya golf party (where my apt was one of the holes!), The Exorcist was kinda getting boring, and the random wandering on M St afterwords was weird and socially kinda tense; maybe I was already in a mood, maybe it was my company, maybe I just felt that as a senior I should be doing something more than wandering among the sketchy drunks in weird costumes on M St. Oh, that so many nights and afternoons have involved wandering around aimlessly on M St. lately...  Tonight I went for sheesha (yay sheeesha!) and hummus w/ C and we basically talked abt everything that's been happening for each of us over the past few weeks, as friends. That on top of dinner at La Madeleine w/ Drew brought me bk to the days of carefree freshman yr friendships and made me generally feel good. I'm coming more and more out of the existential funk that consumed me last w/e when I suddenly realized the following all at once: my semester wasn't turning out as successfully as I'd intended, I didn't have any amazing internships lined up for my now/spring/summer, this year wasn't even going to come close to the awesomeness, friendship, experiences and learning of last year abroad, I'm not really that good at very much compared to all of the other incredibly smart ppl at this school, and the ppl I thought were my friends at gtown really didn't bother to include me in much and might not actually care. So a week of being depressed abt all those realizations has made me a bit more humble and myself and my expectations and led me to the following other findings/realizations that mitigate what I'd thought before: more specifically, at least half of the senior class is prb feeling confused/lost abt the future right now, I have more friends than I thought and more ppl (namely the outdoor ed. ppl) care abt me than I even prb know, my Cairo roomates still miss Cairo in the same way and have a lot of the same feelings re this year, I might not be doing that badly in my classes after all (I got a 90 on my CPS midterm!) and as for the future, well, I guess worrying won't do me much good and what happens will happen. And it's not like I don't have ideas, direction and some options... Bottom line: My life is never going as poorly as I might think. This doesn't mean I need to feel arrogant or rest on my laurels and stop trying for things; I just need to not get down on myself and think I'm alone (if senior year is like a cruise ship, I'm merely alone in my room, while many ppl are also alone in their rooms too. I just need to make a visit to the ship bar a bit more often... and get a tan on the pool deck :-) Possible things I could be doing a year from now:  Studying Arabic in Syria after spending a summer interning w/ a newspaper and getting sweet journalism connections; studying Arabic in Syria after working at the Seeds of Peace camp over the summer; doing something (writing, teaching, Arabic, random media studies) in Cairo and livin it up; some cool job in DC (in media, journalism or something law-related); studying graphic design in Israel or NYC... Now I've just got to get applications started and see if I can make the remains of this semester count. Ready. Set. GO. On a totally unrelated note, I saw Borat w/ Drew last w/e. SO FUNNY. I need to stop watching Borat on YouTube. I'm also really enjoying The Office (I can't decide if I'm more like Pam or the young guy in the office that likes Pam... I see similarities to myself in both characters and can relate w/ both of them at diff times), but I need to stop watching my roomate's dvds of it b/c it's lethally distracting to studying. Also -- I'm really liking the band Voxtrot. They're really new and have like 10 songs to their name, but those 10 songs are awesome. Some more apt lyrics: "Come to decide that the things that I tried were in my life just to get high on. When I sit alone, come get a little known but I need more than myself this time. Step from the road to the sea to the sky, and I do believe that we rely on when I lay it on, come get to play it on , all my life to sacrifice. ... When will I know that I really can't go to the well once more time to decide on. When it's killing me, when will I really see, all that I need to look inside. Come to believe that I better not leave before I get my chance to ride, When it's killing me, when do I really need, all that I need to look inside. The more I see the less I know The more I like to let it go – hey- oh. whoa, whoa. Deep beneath the cover of another perfect wonder where it's so white as snow, Privately divided by a world so undecided and there’s no where to go In between the cover of another perfect wonder and it’s so white as snow Running through a field where all my tracks will be concealed and there's nowhere to go. .. When to descend to amend for a friend all the channels that have broken down. Now you bring it up, I’m gonna ring it up Just to hear you sing it out Step from the road to the sea to the sky...  The more I see, the less I know The more I like to let it go - "  Red Hot Chilli Peppers- Snow (Hey Oh) Current Mood: optimistic existentialist (Comment on this)
Thursday, August 17th, 2006
1:24 am	random daily show quotes from across the summer I was packing tonight and discovered the scraps of papers and envelopes on which I'd jotted down these (I don't think I've written any of them on here before): the most recent first: re. the news that George W read The Stranger (my favorite book!) over his 10-day (surprisingly short!) vacation in Crawford: "if you're not familiar [with The Stranger], it's a classic novel about a Westerner who kills an Arab for no good reason and dies with no remorse... does that ring true [to Bush]"? -- Jon Stewart. I like The Stranger for entirely different reasons, however... re. the news that the US Capitol cafeteria has changed the "freedom fries" back to French fries, and how that's like letting the terrorists win: "You don't see them [the terrorists, of course] changing the name of their 'Death to America' falafel." -- Colbert damn! I went all the way to Syria and didn't try the 'Death to America' falafel... I did partake in the Death to America Dunkin Donuts iced coffee in Beirut, however... "If we were to outlaw for adults everything that college students abuse, we'd all just sit around doing nothing." -- random Senator (I didn't catch his name) discussing online gambling on the Daily Show. This is such a great quote! re. his idea that gay marriage should be allowed, but only in Massachusetts: "then [gay ppl] will all flock to Mass. like it's some sort of gay Israel. Gay-srael... come on, no one likes Massachusetts. Look, we all have to acknowledge Gaysrael's right to exist." -- Colbert (this was said before the conflict btw Israel and Lebanon. hey! I was born in Massachusetts! "Doesn't a rising tide lift all the yachts and the rest of us can hang on to the dingies?" -- Colbert, re tax cuts "The country is run by extremists b/c moderates have shit to do!" -- Jon Stewart, re American politics The Daily Show showed a ridiculous clip of GWB at a ham roast in Germany while all hell was literally breaking loose between Israel and whatever forces might be in Lebanon. GWB makes some dumb comment about how much he wants to slice into the ham. "I'm just gonna assume that is some sort of euphamism for solving the Middle East crisis, since pork is forbidden by both sides..." Jon Stewart "then I look at the morning paper, and WORLD WAR 3 IS BEGINNING!" -- Jon Stewart again, and what do you figure he was talkig about...? well hopefully there might be some sort of peace over there now, ISA... And now it's time for me to go to sleep. Ck out the funniest site too:http://www.despair.com/viewall.html. It's hilarious and their products make some VERY good points. I especially like the ones entitled "Madness" and "Get to Work" and "overconfidence". The one abt discovery and the winds of change also made me laugh out loud. Dare to Slack is also funny. (Comment on this)