internet struggles

The internet in the AKF office and the hotel are terrible -- both have restrictions on how much you can use (Serena by time, office by MB) and cut you off when you've used up your allotment. In the Serena you can just get re-upped for free but it's a hassle. Anyway, that's why the lack of posting.

The rest of the trip went really well. This morning's meeting with a more focused group of Mission and DC people was more productive than the first one, although I left both with the impression that they're more enthusiastic about this whole business than I imagined. I should really stop having any expectations at all, I've been surprised basically once a week for the past four months.  At any rate, we left with lots of work to do in the next 2-3 weeks and a much clearer picture of what we need to address in order for the project to happen. Vague!

Got dinner with Colin last night at Taverna. I missed him before he left for his new job in Kabul (he left the day before I did from DC), so it was good to have a couple of beers and see what's up. He just started as Chief of Party of a big contract in the East and South -- kind of a hotshot job for someone his age (29?).

It's been interesting to spend more time around Aly, the ambassador. He's seriously impressive in meetings, just very easily confident and authoritative without being domineering or aggressive in any way. As MJ pointed out today at lunch, it helps when you've been giving the AKDN spiel and answering every question in the book every day for ten years.

Finally, I finished The Quiet American, by Graham Greene. More thoughts later, perhaps, but it was interesting* to encounter a character who is (ostensibly) working for the precursor to USAID, in the precursor to Vietnam (well, before we got really entangled there, but still), while in Afghanistan for meetings with USAID.

The rest of my thoughts will be self-censored for possible eventual workplace discovery purpose.

Now I'm sitting outside the gate here in Dubai, struggling with yet another shit-tastic internet connection and hoping the inflatable neck pillow I bought helps me get at least five hours of sleep on my flight. T-minus three hours and nine minutes to takeoff.

*Yes, this is a terribly useless word, like "stupid." A lazy substitute. I am too tired to think of a word that better describes what I mean.

19th-century european pop culture

First full day in Kabul went better than expected. The extra Benadryl I took last night meant I woke up with my alarm (!) but also gave me a slight headache. Nothing an aspirin and some excellent coffee couldn't fix.

I ran into Noor K on the way down from breakfast and we greeted each other warmly. FOCUS are just the nicest freaking people. Turns out FOCUS was on the last day of their annual board meeting, so were going to be spending all day in the Serena. So I chatted with him for a bit, then went to eat breakfast with Mirza. While we were eating, the rest of the FOCUS crew showed up. We met several of the board members and promised to come by their meeting in the evening if they were still there. (Makes sense, we are their biggest donor.)

We also ran into the CEO of Roshan, the telecommunications company that the Network owns, and the single largest taxpayer in Afghanistan (they contribute something like 7% of the government's annual tax revenue, which is just stupefying.) I started to narrate the wild goose chase that followed trying to get to the AKDN office (different from the AKF office) but realized it was actually quite uninteresting, even at the time. At any rate, around 9 we met up with our colleagues and headed off to the embassy for the morning's meeting with AID.

Karim, the Roshan CEO, and Aly, HH's ambassador to Afghanistan, had both mentioned since we got here that they refuse to go to the compound. It's easy to see why. They treat you're a prisoner entering prison. They had dogs sniff our cars twice and checked our ID's at least four times, including at two different guard houses within the compound, before we even got to the entrance of the embassy itself. Then they take your passport and any electronic device you're carrying and you can't go anywhere without an escort. We had to double-check to make sure it was okay to GO ACROSS THE STREET from the embassy building to the side of the street that AID is on. Bah.

Anyway, the meeting went rather better than I expected. They had some substantive questions and pushed us on a few issues, but the enthusiasm for this to work is clearly there, which was a surprise.

Had lunch with Aman and this guy Adam, who helps run the hospital reconstruction that AKF and AKHS are doing up north. Then spent the afternoon starting a meeting note, trying to get connected to the internet, and going on a grand tour of the whole AKF "office" (four separate buildings within a walled compound) with Akhtar, the AKFA CEO, and Mirza.

When we got back to the hotel, we went straight down to the FOCUS meeting room. It turned out to be a good idea. Mirza gave some extemporaneous remarks and, given that they sprung (sprang? sprung) the request on him without warning, he did well. I also spoke a bit about the donor atmosphere and how I think FOCUS would grow, and considering that they sprang that on me, as well, I was pleased to hear myself giving a cogent and helpful answer. We left after that and then, a couple of hours later as we were eating dinner, Ruby came over and thanked me for one of the comments I'd made. Apparently it played right into one of the things that she was trying to get the board to approve! Nice to feel useful.

Anyway, now I'm exhausted and I haven't even been able to write about the most interesting thing that's happened in the past week. Namely, my discovery of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Most interesting and most frustrating. HPMOR lends itself to the title of this post. It's a serial that I discovered when 85 chapters were already complete and published (online, for free, at hpmor.com). So after gorging on it for a few days I'm now panicking because it may be months before the next chapter. This must be how people in 19th-century England felt with Dickens, or the French with Hugo. Except they were used to it and I'm freaking the fuck out.

More on it later.

09/09/01

Serena Hotel, Kabul. The trip over was pretty rough but I feel okay at the moment. It's going to catch up with me today, though. I slept barely at all on the IAD-DXB leg, had a relatively pleasant 12 hours in DXB (there's a gym! that you can use! and showers!), and then slept not a wink on the DXB-KBL flight. But everything since we disembarked has been smooth and now I'm in my non-street-facing room, about to take a nap for a bit.

Apparently there was an attack yesterday near NATO HQ (the US embassy compound is nearby but was evidently not the target of the attack). No one seems much fazed here but we'll see what happens later today. It's really shitty, the kid who carried it out was 14 years old and, of course, all the casualties were civilians.

Today is the 11th anniversary of the death by suicide-bomb-hidden-in-TV-camera of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the hero of the Northern Alliance and something like a patron saint to the police and military here. No idea how he's perceived down south but in the capital and parts north his face is almost as ubiquitous as Karzai's. The Lion of the Panjshir.

More later, too tired now and need to close my eyes.