bring up the bodies (cont'd)

I was looking at the Atlantic's list of its writers' and editors' favorite books read in 2013, and one of them put Bring Up the Bodies. And to point out why, the reviewer opened her blurb with this, a quotation taken more or less at random from the book and put into verse form:

These days are perfect.
The clear untroubled light picks out
Each berry shimmering in a hedge.
Each leaf of tree,
The sun behind it,
Hangs like a golden pear.

Riding westward in high summer,
We have dipped in sylvan chases
And crested the downs,
Emerging into that high country where,
Even across two counties,
You can sense the shifting presence of the sea.
In this part of England
Our forefathers the giants
Left their earthworks,
Their barrows and standing stones.

We still have, every Englishman and woman,
Some drops of giant blood in our veins.

books read 2010-2013

In the past four years I've read 95 books and will finish 2013 at 96 (Galapagos, by Kurt Vonnegut) or possibly 97 (TBD!) if I get some time to curl up over winter break. Didn't hit my 30-book target for 2013 but that's okay, I waded through a couple of very dense, very satisfying reads in Godel, Escher, Bach, Through the Eye of a Needle and Discipline and Punish.

That's not a ton but it's not too bad, a few points above the 80th percentile according to Pew, if you take my average (~24). In 2012 I was probably well into the 90s (28). Lower than I'd like and lower than I expected. Boo. GOTTA STEP UP MY GAME. I wanna see Pew's dataset -- how many books gets me into the 99th percentile? Also, I got into the habit earlier this year of jotting down some quick thoughts after finishing each book. I need to start again. It's a good habit.

Here's the list. I've highlighted some of the ones that stuck with me. Looks like 2011 and 2012 were fat years, relatively speaking, and 2010 and 2013 comparatively lean.

2010
1. The Mismeasure of Man (and essays), by Stephen Jay Gould
2. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, by Richard Feynman
3. A House for Mr. Biswas, by V.S. Naipaul
4. A Stillness at Appomattox, by Bruce Catton (second or third time)
5. The Lost Books of the Odyssey, by Zachary Mason
6. Speak, Memory, by Vladimir Nabokov
7. Applied Nutrition for Mixed Sports, by Lyle McDonald
8. Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, by Haruki Murakami
9. The Looming Tower, by Lawrence Wright
10. Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Stories, Volume 2, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
11. Silk Parachute, by John McPhee
12. All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren
13. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson
14. The Girl Who Played With Fire, by Stieg Larsson
15. Encounters with the Archdruid, by John McPhee
16. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, by Stieg Larsson
17. Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen
18. Stretch to Win, by Ann and Chris Frederick
19. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (and Six More), by Roald Dahl (again)
20. Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris
21. The Lost City of Z, by David Grann
22. An Anthropologist on Mars, by Oliver Sacks
23. Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami
24. Bloodlands, by Timothy Snyder

2011
1. Aeschylus, Agamemnon
2. Virgil, The Aeneid
3. David Simon, The Wire (TV show but I'm counting it, shut up)
4. Patti Smith, Just Kids
5. Plato, The Apology of Socrates and Crito
6. Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
7. Michael Chabon, Maps and Legends
8. Frank Miller, The Dark Knight Returns
9. Anton Chekhov, The Duel
10. Ian Fleming, Casino Royale (shut up, it's a classic, plus I needed a break from Devils)
11. Arthur Rimbaud, Illuminations
12. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
13. John McPhee, The Curve of Binding Energy
14. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
15. Robert Alter (translation and commentary), Genesis 
16. John O'Hara, Appointment in Samarra 
17. Steven Mitchell (translation and commentary), Job (twice in a row)
18. William Strunk and E.B. White, The Elements of Style
19. Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly 
20. Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country

2012
1. Annals of the Former World, by John McPhee
2. Strength in What Remains, by Tracy Kidder
3. How to Live, Or, A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, by Sarah Bakewell
4. In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote*
5. The Control of Nature, by John McPhee*
6. Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder, by Lawrence Weschler
7. Wise Blood, by Flannery O'Connor*
8. A Good Man is Hard to Find, by Flannery O'Connor*
9. The Violent Bear It Away, by Flannery O'Connor*
10. Pakistan, A Hard Country, by Anatol Lieven
11. Awakenings, by Oliver Sacks*
12. Freakonomics, by Stevens Levitt and Dubner#
13. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, by John LeCarre*
14. The Russia House, by John LeCarre#
15. Hail to the Victors, ed. by Brian Cook
16. The Cave, by Jose Saramago#
17. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald*
18. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by Jonathan Berendt
19. Skinny Dip, by Carl Hiaasen
20. The Quiet American, by Graham Greene*
21. Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov*
22. Irons in the Fire, by John McPhee (again)
23. Tombstone, by Yang Jisheng
24. The Book of Job, trans. by Stephen Mitchell (again)*
25. The White Hotel, by D.M. Thomas
26. The Monster of Florence, by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi
27. The 50 Funniest American Writers, by Andy Borowitz
28. The Leopard, by Jo Nesbo

2013
1. Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel
2. The Art of War, by Sun Tzu
3. The Age of Wonder, by Richard Holmes
4. Bring Up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel
5. Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas Hofstadter
6. Some Hope: A Trilogy, by Edwin St. Aubyn
7. The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury
8. The Spider's House, by Paul Bowles
9. Cuba Libre, by Elmore Leonard
10. The Human Factor, by Graham Greene
11. Liar's Poker, by Michael Lewis
12. The Places in Between, by Rory Stewart
13. Going Clear, by Lawrence Wright
14. The Hobbit, by JRR Tolkein (maybe third or fourth time but first in years)
15. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, by John Le Carre
16. Becoming a Supple Leopard, by Kelly Starrett
17. Smiley's People, by John LeCarre
18. The Sound of Things Falling, by Juan Gabriel Vasquez
19. Through the Eye of a Needle, by Peter Brown
20. Discipline and Punish, by Michel Foucault
21. The Honourable Schoolboy, by John Le Carre
22. Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood
23. Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin

nine pm

I picked Taksim as the neighborhood to stay on the recommendation of my friend Erol, who said it's the happening neighborhood for young people. That is no doubt the case, but I haven't met anyone yet -- the hostel is not exactly a happening spot and I didn't go out of my way to talk to English speakers I overheard throughout the day -- and frankly, after undersleeping last night and nine hours of walking around today, I'm just going to pack it in.

What a day, though. What a city! Istanbul lives up to the hype. I walked down Istiklal Caddasi (street) to the Bosphorus and then crossed the bridge. I knew from the map the guy at the hostel gave me, and from talking to Erol and others, that the main sights are all pretty close together. So I just picked the first big, old, mosque-looking building I saw and walked in. Turned out to be the New Mosque (ca. 1650). Gorgeous, lesser-known than its sibling the Blue Mosque. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I took my shoes off and walked into the main hall of the New Mosque. It's gorgeous. This became a theme.

After a few minutes gaping, I walked back out into the sunlight and across a small courtyard to the Spice Bazaar. Wandered around, checking out the spice wholesalers and all the other shops hawking their wares. It's crowded and close but not overwhelming at all. Not that I'm easily overwhelmed by crowds or chaos, I guess, but it felt orderly somehow. I wandered out and then walked around trying to find my next destination. This turned out to be the Topkapi Palace museum. Twenty bucks later and I was again agape, exploring the huge grounds, many buildings, and staggering objets d'art that the Topkapi offers. Some of the stuff is incredibly cool. They've got 500-year-old caftans worn by Ottoman sultans, jewel-encrusted cups and scabbards and tons else, ebony thrones with mother-of-pearl inlay, gifts from faraway rulers like the Chinese and Russians. And then a whole wing dedicated to relics and other religious objects: the sword of King David (yes, that King David), Abraham's sauce pan (yes, that Abraham), Moses's staff (you get the idea), the Prophet's swords and bow, and on and on! Like all relics the provenance is a little dubious, but they make no allowances of that kind in the displays. David's sword is dated as ca. 10th century BC. Abraham's sauce pan as ca. 19th century BC. They've also got old pieces of the Kaaba in there.

Objet'd out, I made my over to the highlight of the Topkapi: the harem. Turns out this refers not just to the concubines who kept the sultan happy and bore him children, but to the whole private residence of the sultan and his retinue: concubines, his mother, his sons, his eunuchs watching over everything. The architecture and decoration in this part are just unreal. There was a lot of gasping.

After that I visited the big brother of the New Mosque, the Blue Mosque. It's similar just bigger and more spectacular. The Hagia Sophia is closed on Mondays so I went to the Grand Bazaar. It is Borgesian in its apparent infinitude. There are points inside where it doesn't seem to end, but rather to repeat in all directions like a fractal. I successfully avoided buying anything that I don't need, although I did stop for tea at a cafe with wifi, so I could check to see whether my colleague Kishwar had written back about dinner. He had not. I moved on.

More wandering took me to a little cafe, where I sat outside and drank some hot spiced red wine. Finally I retraced my steps, more or less, and ended up back on Istiklal. Had dinner at a restaurant that TripAdvisor recommended, called Faros. It was good but extremely generic: convert the prices to USD and you could plop the whole thing down in any decent-sized city in the US and it would not be out of place. I had tagliatelle with chicken and mushrooms and rocket salad with the largest sheets of parmesan I've ever seen tented over the top and drizzled with balsamic vinegar. And a beer. Like I said, tasty but unexceptional.

And now I'm back in the hostel, it's 9:20 PM, and I think I'm going to watch an episode of Sherlock or some other movie and call it an evening. I'll head to the airport around 10 tomorrow morning and be back in DC by dinnertime. What a trip!

is-tan-bul

Arrived safe and sound at the Green House Hostel after a longish taksi ride. Istanbul is huge. Driving into it from the airport is like a cross between San Francisco, New York, and Karachi, but really comparisons fail. Just grabbed some breakfast and my first Turkish Turkish coffee, picked up a map, and in a second I'm going to put my shoes on and head out for the Hagia/Haya/Aya Sophia/Sofia, Blue Mosque, Topkapi, etc. The day is cool and sunny. 

last tango in tajikistan

The cabs here run along numbered routes, although, as I learned, those routes are inconsistent or at least sometimes unintelligible to the likes of me. After a lazy Sunday morning I hopped in a number 8 cab en route to the Ismaili Center Dushanbe. It took me a few minutes to find the entrance to the compound, which is surrounded by walls and gates. Eventually, I picked up a visitor's badge and walked in. Outside the building are some nice gardens, where young Tajiks were sitting around in small groups. One kid had a guitar.

A woman met me at the entrance with a clipboard and I said, hopefully, "I'm here for a tour?" Turns out I was the only person there for that purpose so off we went. The building is gorgeous and very functional. Lots of interesting Central Asian features, geometric calligraphy everywhere saying, "Allah hu akbar," and, "La illaha il allah," and giving the names of the prophet's family. Beautiful handpainted tiles from Uzbekistan, hand-carved roof beams and wood screens from Tajikistan. The prayer hall (jamat khana) itself seats up to 1500 people, mostly just on the carpet.

I had a bit of an adventure coming back: It turns out that the small car cabs and the van-sized cabs run along different routes, even if they're the same number. Ignorant of that fact, I jumped in a number 8 van across from the ICD. It went...not to the Serena. Still ignorant of the differing routes, I figured if I just took it to the end of the line it would turn around and come back, no problem. So that's what I did. An interesting way to see Dushanbe, lots of stops and starts for people to get on and off at this market and that. I got out in a parking lot with many number 8 vans, and got into one parked pointing back the way we'd come. It filled up, maybe 12 passengers, and then we took off. But not by the Serena, either. I started just keeping my eyes peeled for a building I recognized in the distance, and eventually I spotted the hideous wedding cake buildings and tugged on the toll-taker's sleeve to get the van to stop and let me out. It was a nice day and the walk back to the hotel from there was pleasant enough. I felt like running, actually, somehow I was very primed and full of energy.

Once back in my room I did some work, went to the gym for half an hour or so, ate dinner and then met my old colleague Noor for a drink. We just parted ways and I'm writing this post to procrastinate packing. It was nice to see him, hear how he's doing, what his plans are -- he's applying to grad schools in the States, UK and Germany for next year. It's always interesting to get a different perspective on our internal politics. He also had a really generous compliment for me, that apparently people at Focus were always amazed at how calm I was; despite however much work, tight deadlines, poor communication, whatever, I never seemed stressed or took out my frustration or stress on anyone else. He said I was a role model for him in that way (!). I'm not sure how exactly I'm that way but it was nice of him to say.

Anyway, now I really do have to pack. Leaving in 5 hours for the airport and I'd like to get a few winks at least before hitting the road.

Weather for Istanbul tomorrow: mid-50s and mostly sunny. I'm ready.

saturday

Had a three-hour meeting today to follow up on yesterday afternoon's kicker. It was good, got some clarity and things are maybe not quite as dire as they seemed. Gotta write a quick email in a bit to just explain how it went and maybe temper yesterday's email update a little.

After it was over I had lunch and then went on a nice long walk down Rudaki Avenue with Kate. It's beautiful outside, probably 70 degrees and sunny. We didn't find what we were looking for -- nice tchotchkes to bring home for AKF USA's Christmas presents and a pair of shorts to replace my now crotch-holey pair -- but that's alright. It was good to get out of the hotel and into the fresh air.

Other than that email I mentioned I don't feel like doing much today. Picked up a few movies on a flash drive from Liz yesterday and will give one a go a bit later on. Gym. Dinner. Reading. Yeah. 

meetings, meetings, and more meetings

Yesterday, I had seven meetings. Today I had two but they were the most important of the whole trip. Today's were the most stressful of the whole trip, though, so it feels like I had another seven. That doesn't even count the pre-meetings and post-meetings I had with Liz and Amin. The last was the biggest of all, with USAID. Liz described it well afterward: The feeling was like watching an episode of "Homeland," where by the end you feel guilty and anxious even though you've just been sitting on your couch. The meeting was very productive but there was a lot of mixed news and, even though it's not even close to my fault and even though I represented well if I may say so myself, afterward I was filled with anxiety about how to share things with the higher-ups. It's going to take a little while to digest all the information we got and see how it all fits together.

Also, last night I was up very late working on the work plan for one of my projects, so I didn't get enough sleep. On the plus side, it's been really nice hanging out with the group of colleagues who are here right now. We went out to the awesomely-named Public Pub the night before last and had some weird chicken sandwiches and the first cheese-stick based veggie burger I've ever come across. We also did a fun game where everyone bought the drinks of the person to their right. I was hacking up a storm so my left-hand neighbor bought me mulled wine with honey. Very sweet (both senses)(corny). There was a bunch of shouting and explosions at one point but it turned out the military is just drilling for its parade during tomorrow's inauguration.

Last night we just had dinner here in the Serena, but it was a good time. Lots of laughter. I forewent the wine in order to be able to focus on work when I got back to my room.

In short, an exhausting end to the trip. Or maybe just a brain-frying end. I don't feel that tired but I think I'm probably operating a little slower than usual right now. A few more meetings over the next couple of days but I'll also get some time to go shopping and see the Ismaili Center, which is apparently an architectural marvel. Then Istanbul (!) and then home (!). Can't wait.

the honourable schoolby and oryx and crake

Just finished Oryx and Crake. Last week finished Honourable Schoolboy. Both super enjoyable, Oryx and Crake more interesting. Will read the rest of the MaddAddam series in the not-too-distant future, I think. 

omar khayyam

Whether at Naishapur or Babylon,
Whether the cup with sweet
Or bitter run,
The wine of life keeps oozing
Drop by drop,
The leaves of life keep falling
One by one.

On my pillow this morning. Gotta run now, more later.

looks like driving weather

After three straight days of beautiful, sunny skies, today dawns cloudy and with a chance of snow. Come on, helicopter! But it looks like driving weather. Oh well.

UPDATE: It's driving weather. They're prepping the car and then we'll be off. On the plus side, we're going to do the whole thing in one go, so I'll be back in Dushanbe tonight. That makes sense, it's much easier to drive on the other side of the mountains and then down in the plains at night than it is over here. 

viyod, tizhmoy and pidrud

After a bit of a comedy-of-errors start to the day -- the guy who stamps visas in the Afghan consulate was sick so the PE staff had to send someone out to find him, then it turned out Oistamo's visa had expired four days ago so she couldn't cross -- Jamshed from PE and I crossed the Tem bridge on foot around 11 AM today. A guy in a beat-up but resilient and surprisingly smooth Hi-Ace picked us up on the Afghan side and we were on our way to visit the three "villages" (really two villages and one loosely unified area with a bunch of sub-villages in it) that PE connected to the grid under the previous USAID project.

First we stopped in Sarchashma, which is the district center and which you can see from the Serena in Khorog, to register with the police and to get our walking-around papers, which consisted of the Shugnan District governor's business card. We also got some bread and this weird cream stuff that comes in a juice box but that you can spread -- it's good, I feel like I've seen it in Latin America, too -- for lunch in lieu of real food. I would not eat the real food over there unless my life depended on it. No sirree.

We bounced up the road to see transformers and go in a couple of people's houses in Tizhmoy and Pidrud villages, to the north. Jamshed's English isn't great, but it's good enough and he was patient and game and, like everyone else at PE, is pretty good-natured. I took lots of pictures, both of the stuff I was there to see (transformers, meters, toaster ovens, TVs, light bulbs, people using those things) and of the landscape. It was a spectacular day and the light up here when the sun's out is like the light in late evening at home on a very sunny day when everything looks a bit polarized. But all day.

Then we drove down to Viyod by way of Sarchashma, where we picked up the elected leader of Viyod and a local mullah who lives there. More transformers and lines, more pictures, including a group shot of me with the various men who had attached themselves to the trip -- a guy from DABS, the Afghan utility and assorted others -- and then the mullah invited us up into the chaikhona for some tea and snacks, which had been laid out for us. It was getting late but we went up, of course. We really did drink and run, though, because Jamshed was worried about the border closing before we could cross back. Not for lack of trying to keep us on the part of our hosts.

On our way back up to the car we went to one other house, and as we were leaving it the mullah stopped and told Jamshed he wanted to make a prayer in honor of our visit. Which he then did, thanking god and the Aga Khan and Pamir Energy and me and asking that I and my children be blessed by god, and then chanting for quite a long time in (at least partially) Arabic. I asked Jamshed to thank him for his generosity and hospitality as my host and that I hope god also blesses him and his family.

As we were piling back into the car the village head, whose name is Bakhtojomol, made a last-ditch effort to Jamshed to get us to stay and eat. Apparently they were going to slaughter a chicken and I guess we'd have spent the night. Jamshed handled it like a pro, though, explaining that I'm sick (true although not THAT sick) and that I have to leave for Dushanbe tomorrow (also true) while avoiding pissing anyone off that I could tell.

We made it across the bridge with less than 10 minutes to spare.

Back at the office Oistamo had gotten some food from the Indian place in town and we partook right then and there. I was hungry. Jamshed took his leave and Oistamo and Mehrafruz and I sat talking for a while longer. We finally left around 7:45.

Now it's 9:30 and I'm going to call it a night pretty soon. Fingers crossed extremely hard for good weather tomorrow so the heli can fly. If it doesn't I'm going to have to drive and I'm not relishing that prospect. Hope outside my control. 

sunday brunch at the serena

In no particular order:

Iran's Foreign Minister sounds infinitely more reasonable and grounded in reality than anyone from the USG or (needless to say) Netanyahu's government.

Typhoon Haiyan...holy shit.

Raw vegetables...when will I learn my lesson?

Past couple of days have gone well although I continue coughing. Friday and Saturday morning were very productive. My training on working with USAID went over really well, I think. The PE staff asked lots of questions and were very engaged throughout, which is a good sign. Notably, I felt extremely comfortable giving the talk and answering questions, which is a great feeling and not at all how it was last year with Satpara in Pakistan. And for that one I even had Caryn with me. Partially that's just because PE folks are friendly, as I know I've said before.

After we finished yesterday, Oistamo, Mehrafruz, another PE colleague and I went to lunch at the same place as Friday. The food was better this time: borscht and pounded-flat steak with legitimately good french fries. Fun conversation again, it's interesting to see the differences between Mehrafruz and Oistamo. Mehrafruz is much more traditional -- believes in heaven and hell and believes morality is tied to your punishment or reward in the next life, believes men and women can't be friends without attraction -- while Oistamo is much less so. We talked at dinner on Friday night about atheism. They were both surprised that I don't believe in god, but Oistamo thinks that when we die, that's it. No soul. I found that kind of interesting, that she would believe in a god but not in souls.

Last night I was getting ready to read, do some bodyweight exercises, and watch the only worthwhile English-language channel on the dial here, BBC World News, but my shot-in-the-dark email to a colleague at AKF Afghanistan panned out when she wrote me back with her cell phone number and said she was going over to some friends' for dinner and why don't I come over? I jumped, obviously, as much because I figured it might help me find an activity to do today as anything else. The hotel night duty lady called a cab and we had a very awkward four-way, two-phone interaction trying to communicate to the driver about where we needed to go. The conversation apparently failed, because we drove to the market area, then pulled back into a rabbit warren of alleys behind the Soviet-era apartment buildings where the middle class and expats live. No one here is rich, as far as I can tell.

The driver stopped behind a seemingly random building, got out and called my colleague Tahira's cell phone. Then he came back over and gestured for me to start walking with him. So we continued through the rabbit warren on foot, with the guy checking buildings periodically, asking the few people around outside where the foreigners live, following their gestures, calling Tahira back and grunting into the phone to Tahira's friend who speaks Russian, and walking some more. Finally I took the guy's phone and called her myself, and she said she'd come downstairs to meet us and asked what was around us. So after about ten minutes of searching, we made it. I was going to give the guy a bit of extra cash because he'd done so much walking around and calling on my behalf, but Tahira said he was incredibly rude to her friend so she just gave him the fare and we went upstairs.

Dinner was tasty if vegetarian. Nice to have some home-made food with well-cooked vegetables, and good company. Coming home was much easier.

This morning I got a chance to Skype with Dad, which was great. Then I did a little work, did some bodyweight exercises and stretching just get the juices flowing a little after wayyyyy too many days without any exercise, showered, and read. Last night's crew showed up plus a couple of guys from OSCE who were here doing election monitoring. They're on their way home but came by the Serena for one last brunch. The food was good -- Pamiris do breakfast much better than they do other meals, as far as I've experienced -- and again nice conversation.

Now I'm sitting in the common area while they clean my room. My social activity itch has been scratched so I'll spend the rest of the day happily plugging away at work, exercising and stretching some more, etc. 

khorog

This morning's helicopter ride was a success, after some drama in the airport because it was a full, 11-passenger flight, the weight limit is 15kg per person, and some people were over capacity. The guy who's in charge of checking people in for the helicopter -- no idea who he works for or what the rest of his job is -- was being very severe. Mehrafruz, Oistamo and Jamshed met me at the airport (and the driver, whose name I forget) and we drove first to the Serena to drop off my suitcase, then to a pharmacy to get some cough syrup, and finally to the office. By then it was lunchtime so Jamshed, Mehrafruz, this lovely older guy Mike (forget his Tajik name but he lives in Staten Island and goes by Mike in the States), and the driver went out to lunch. Jamshed made a special request for the music to be the Scorpions, who did "Dust in the Wind," and are apparently both German and very popular in Tajikistan. Not my cup of tea.

After lunch we did real work, going through and pretty much finishing the performance monitoring plan and making very good headway on the work plan, as well. Tomorrow I'm going to give a presentation on working with USAID and then I'll spend the rest of the day working on some of other documents we have to get ready.

My cough was bad again today after dying down last night, and despite last night being my first solid unaided night's sleep of the trip. Now I've got a headache, to boot, which is mild to the point of not noticing except if I squeeze my eyes shut or look left or right. I did manage to get my hands on some robitussin-equivalent, which I guess helped with the cough. Will take some more tomorrow and hope for the best. But it has phenylephrine in it so definitely not touching it so near bed. The other syrup they got me is apparently just straight ephedrine, which, again, not touching with a 10-foot pole at 8 PM.

Khorog is beautiful right now. It's cold but not very cold. The poplars, which are everywhere, are in full fall orange-and-yellow blast, and it's late enough in the year that the mountains have serious snow caps. On Sunday I'll take some of the day off and hopefully get to walk around and see some sights, even if it's just ones I've already seen. A trip across the Panj is looking likely for Monday afternoon.

I like the PE staff a lot, they're very easy to work with and very friendly. Oistamo, Mehrafruz and I just got dinner (inconsistent Oxford comma use! but I'm not editing it) at a funny restaurant in a basement but done up to look like a pleasure garden, with lattice work overhead and fake grape vines and grapes hanging down, a pool and tree and walls painted withe a bucolic scene.

One other thing to report: Saw a new fruit today. Skin smooth like an apple and yellow like a schoolbus. Flesh dark orange and in texture seemed to be like a plum, but there are seeds instead of a pit. I didn't touch any because I'm immunocompromised and would prefer to avoid admitting any more strange microbes than strictly necessary.

Now I'm gonna do a bit more work, finish unpacking, and call it a night.

you give me fe-vah

Something did, anyway. 100.7, or 38.3 in un-American. Shame.

UPDATE: Down to 99.1 and I feel much better. Chest still congested but I'm not coughing as much, aches present but milder, skin not as sensitive, brain functioning a little more quickly, and I don't want so badly to go to sleep as I did 5-6 hours ago. It was odd, I tried to take a nap around 12:30 and it just wasn't happening. This afternoon was basically a waste but what am I gonna do? My immune system apparently sucks now. 

no heli

It's cloudy in Khorog so the helicopter has been cancelled for today. Now the various admin people are trying to figure out what to do with me: take our chances tomorrow or leave today by road? Only problem with the second option is that it'll probably take two days, since it's too late now to make the trip all at once. So I guess I'd drive to Darwaz or somewhere and then the rest of the way tomorrow.

Disappointing, would have been nice for the weather to cooperate but what are you gonna do? At least next week is supposed to be sunny.

EDIT: Or maybe not, apparently the flight has not been cancelled and now we get to go wait at the airport for a while to see if it'll take off. Fingers crossed.

EDIT 2: Sike, we got to the airport, got in the heli, took off, flew for a little while, then turned around and came back. Clouds too low to fly through the mountains. Try again tomorrow. That's actually kind of nice because I'm a bit sick: persistent cough and that sucky lightheaded, mildly woozy feeling.

Also, this happened: http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2013/11/06/mayor-s-son-stabs-engineer-to-death.html. The murdered engineer worked for us. So sad and stupid.

still jet lagged

Mad at myself for not bringing more benadryl, and not making more of an effort yesterday to get my hands on some more. It's 4:40 and I've been awake in bed, tossing and turning with my eyes closed, for an undetermined amount of time. Could be half an hour but I'd guess more like an hour. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

election day

Well, it turns out that maybe I just needed an extra-large dose of benadryl. Slept from 11:15-6:45 last night. Very nice. Now I'm out of benadryl because I neglected to pack enough given my apparent increased tolerance for the stuff. Crap.

Today is election day in Tajikistan. Emomali Rahmon will win a new seven-year term as president, with probably around 80% of the vote. There are a bunch of election monitors here from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. They were wearing white arm bands and speaking in French, Spanish, Greek, and sundry other languages at breakfast this morning. I wonder about their presence here -- doesn't it lend an air of legitimacy to a laughably, transparently undemocratic election? The government isn't even trying to have fair elections here, so it's not like monitors can be looking to ferret out intimidation at the polls and raise an international outcry over it. No one has even heard of the opposition party candidates for president, not least because the main opposition party is not participating at all.

Also, it's a national holiday (on that score, at least, Tajikistan is more democratic than our voter-suppression-loving country). So I've been cooped up in the Serena all day, working away inefficiently at various things. Going to the office is especially important on trips because in the hotel it's very easy to let work and rest bleed together. It's 5:40 now and I'll be doing work until I go to bed. I'll also watch some TV while I eat dinner, maybe go to the gym, pack, and read. All mixed together. I showered at 3:30 this afternoon. Weird day.

In other news, I managed to talk to Mom and Claire this morning (success!). Great to see their faces through the miracle of video chat, as always.

Tomorrow morning I head to Khorog. Here's hoping the weather allows us to fly. If not, I guess that means hitting the road. Knocking every piece of wood in the room.

benadryl has stopped working

Fell asleep at 10 or so last night, feeling pretty good about how well I'd made it through the day. Took my usual early-trip dose of benadryl to help me sleep through the night, but I woke up probably around 3 AM anyway. Tossed and turned, took some more benadryl, but now it's 4 AM and I am wide the fuck awake. I slept for a significant chunk of the IAD-IST flight, which is a good thing. Maybe I'll just have to accept improved plane sleeping ability as a trade-off for being able to rely on benadryl to ease me through jet lag. So now I'm cranky and pissed off at this computer for sucking -- the brightness controls don't work and this brand-new piece of crap constantly makes the lovely grinding noise of worn-out computers everywhere. It tells me every 10 minutes that I have low disk space on the D (recovery) drive, which is not even the main hard drive so shouldn't matter. I can't change the trackpad settings. Periodically, when I'm typing in a document or a window like this, the cursor just decides to jump up a few rows. I just downloaded f.lux, which is a piece of software that dims and warms your computer monitor at night and it did nothing. Great.

Deep breaths. I'm going to lie back down in a little bit and hopefully get back to sleep. But while I'm up: Yesterday was good, like I said I managed to stay awake pretty well. Did some work in the morning on PE stuff and then in the afternoon I got invited to sit in on a strategy meeting for the Mtn Societies Dev Support Program. It was helpful to listen and observe the dynamics between the management of the Program and of AKF -- MSDSP is a lot less independent than its equivalents in Pakistan or India. I knew that coming in but it's interesting how clear the difference is in practice. The meeting appeared to go well -- the leadership in the room are comfortable with each other and so while there were some serious points of contention and some pretty tough criticism from up top, no one seemed resentful or angry at the end, in fact there was some good-natured joking as everyone filed out of the conference room. Maybe I'm just bad at reading Tajiks.

UPDATE: I uninstalled and updated the graphics adapter and now the brightness adjuster and f.lux work. Mash'allah.

After the meeting was over I met briefly with Yodgor, who's the Foundation CEO over here. He's very nice and clearly on top of his game. Then it was back to the hotel. We got stuck in some traffic so I bailed on the car and walked the last quarter mile or so. It's nice to be in a place where that doesn't feel uncomfortable, although I am definitely conspicuous here with my fair complexion and tweedy jacket. Traffic or not, in Kabul you just have to wait until you're smack-dab next to the gate.

Guess that's enough for now, might try to grab a few more winks but I don't have my hopes up.

iad-ist-dyu

Here I am, back in the Dushanbe Serena with BBC on in the background and several cups of coffee keeping me more or less awake. The trip over was smooth and uneventful, although somehow I managed to completely miss Natalie and David in the layover at IST. I waited for them to arrive on the buses from the tarmac to the arrivals gate and even hung out at their gate for 30 minutes, but didn't see them at all. Still trying to figure out how that happened.

IST is a nice enough airport, much smaller than DXB (duh). I picked up some baklava for my PE colleagues and read a lot of The Honourable Schoolboy, which I've already almost finished. Maybe 20 pages left. Flying into Dushanbe at night is like looking at the most fabulous night sky you've ever seen through a thick black sheet with patches cut out here and there. The lights are uniformly white pinpricks, very different from the diversity of lights you see flying into a first-world city at night: headlights and taillights, neon signs, stop lights, yellow street lamps. In between the concentrated explosions of pinpricks Dushanbe is dark as anything. Quite a nice sight, actually.

Istanbul is a better stopover than Dubai because there's no killer 12- or 13-hour leg; IAD-IST is less than nine hours. But the downside is that it's back-to-back redeyes. Finally got into my room about 6:30 AM local time, 10 hours ahead of DC, and then rested my eyes and slept alternately for about 3.5 hours. I fear the jet lag is going to be rough tonight. But right now, time to raise someone at the office and make my way over there.

discipline and punish

Still grappling with it and trying to figure out if I know what Foucault is saying. Glad to finally have read it and I will be thinking about it for a long time.

through the eye of a needle

I was going to start off by saying it's been a while since I read an academic history, but it hasn't, really. I read Tombstone last year and Bloodlands the year before that. Speaking of which, those are pretty grim  titles for extremely grim subjects. Comparing the Ukrainian and Chinese famines might be interesting for someone smarter and with more free time than me. But I digress.

Through the Eye of a Needle I read because Garry Wills said in his review something to the effect of, "It's a privilege to be alive when a book like this is published." It's hard to imagine higher praise than that. And indeed, TEN is an amazingly erudite, subtle, and fascinating book. The style is quite professory and even a little pedantic at times -- lots of, "Now let us see why this was so," and, "Let us examine this further" -- but it actually grew on me as the book went on. It's only 500-something pages but it felt much longer simply because it's so densely constructed. And boy do I ever know more about late Roman Christianity than I did before.

Long story short, kind of a hard book to recommend to someone unless that person is looking to challenge themself* more strongly than the average lay book reader. But it was very rewarding to finish, even though it may make me come up short on my 30 book target for the year. Now I've moved on to Discipline and Punish, which, though shorter, isn't going to help me reach that goal, either if the first 40 pages are any indication.

*Yes, "that person...themself" is an acceptable construction. Deal with it.

books books books too many

I'm coming to the end of Through the Eye of A Needle, which I am excited about. I don't often read academic books and it is gratifying to come across a new argument so richly researched and from a scholar so knowledgeable. I'm getting a bit giddy about the final chapter. Not Eichmann in Jerusalem-level giddy -- the last chapter of that book knocked my pants off completely -- but I have a sense that Brown's summation of his argument will register in power chords, even if the prose is careful and a bit fuddy-duddy.

However.

This means that once again I am facing the overwhelming task of choosing which books to read next. Keeping a reading list is important, but hewing to it without adding is ridiculous, and so here are some more.

1. On Immunity, by Eula Biss

2. All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr

3. Redeployment, by Phil Klay

4. On the Nature of Things, by Lucretius

5. A Natural History of the Senses, by Diane Ackerman

6. The Periodic Table, by Primo Levi

7. Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple

8. The Last Samurai, by Helen DeWitt

9. A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki

10. The Talented Mr. Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith

11. Battle Cry of Freedom, by James Macpherson

12. That Thing Around Your Neck, by Chimamanda Adichie

13. Middelmarch, by George Eliot

14. I Hotel, by Karen Yamashita

15. Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie

On top of all this business:

The Devil and Sherlock Holmes, by David Grann
A Season on the Brink, by John Feinstein
Where I'm Calling from, by Raymond Carver
Crazy in Berlin, by Thomas Berger
The Death of Arthur, by Sir Thomas Malory
Underworld, by Don Delillo
Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell
Tooth and Claw, by T.C. Boyle
Them, by Joyce Carol Oates
Between Past and Future, by Hannah Arendt
Psychological Types, by Carl Jung
Genet
Bartleby, the Scrivener, by Herman Melville
Moby Dick
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Moral Man and Immoral Society, by Reinhold Niebhur
What Hath God Wrought, by Daniel Walker Howe
Battle Cry of Freedom, by James McPherson
Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walter
Stuart, a Life Backwards, by Alexander Masters
Moth Smoke, by Mohsin Hamid
Pulphead: Essays, by John Jeremiah Sullivan
Quo Vadis? by Henry Sienkiewicz
The Translated Man and Other Stories, by Chris Braak
Levels of the Game, by John McPhee
The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac, by Freedarko
The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga
The Big Short, by Michael Lewis
Great House, by Nicole Krauss
Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville
The Reactionary Mind, by Corey Robin
Mottled Dawn, by Saadat Manto
Nixon Agonistes, by Garry Wills
The Signal and the Noise, by Nate Silver
At Swim Two Birds, by Flann O'Brien
The Book Of Laughter And Forgetting, by Milan Kundera
The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, by Paul Hoffman
The Lives of Girls and Women, by Alice Munro
The Shipwrecked, by Graham Greene
The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton
Jerusalem, by Goncalo Tavares
Mottled Dawn, by Saadat Hassan Manto
The Night in Question, by Tobias Wolff
Team of Rivals, by Doris Kearns Goodwin
The Breaks of the Game, by David Halberstam
Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers
The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll, by Alvaro Mutis
Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex, by Alice Dreger
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, by Wells Tower
Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It, by Maile Meloy
Sophie's Choice, by William Styron
The Nature and Destiny of Man, by Reinhold Niebhur
Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy
Assassination Vacation, by Sarah Vowell
On Heroes and Tombs, by Ernesto Sabato
History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides
The Nature of Things, by Lucretius
Confessions, by Augustine
Matthew, Luke, Acts, John, I Corinthians, Romans
Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes
Meditations, by Rene Descartes
Paradise Lost, by John Milton
Theologico-Political Treatise, by Baruch Spinoza
Discourse on Metaphysics, by Gottfried Liebniz
War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy
Histories, by Herodotus
The Gay Science, by Friedrich Nietzsche
Philosophy of Right, by GWF Hegel
Collected Short Stories - Isaac Babel
Labyrinths - Borges
Other Inquisitions - Borges
One Hundred Years Of Solitude - Garcia Marquez
Correction - Thomas Bernhard
Nog - Rudy Wurlitzer
Gimpel The Fool - Isaac B. Singer
The Assistant - Bernard Malamud
The Magic Barrel - Bernard Malamud
Entire - Samuel Beckett (In other words, everything!)
Hunger - Knut Hamsun
I'm Not Stiller - Max Frisch
Man In The Holocene - Max Frisch
Seven Gothic Tales - Dineson
Gogol's Wife - Tommaso Landolfi
V - Thomas Pynchon
The Lime Twig - John Hawkes
Blood Oranges - John Hawkes
Little Disturbances Of Man - Grace Paley
I, Etc., - Susan Sontag
Tell Me A Riddle - Tillie Olson
Hero With A Thousand Faces - Campbell
The Paris Review Interviews - Various
How We Live - ed, Rust Hills
Superfiction - ed, Joe David Bellamy
Pushcart Prize Anthologies
Manifestos Of Surrealism - Andre Breton
Documents Of Modern Art - ed, Motherwell
Against Interpretation - Susan Sontag
A Homemade World - Hugh Kenner
Letters - Flaubert
The Changeling - Joy Williams
Going After Cacciato - Tim O'Brien
The Palm-Wine Drunkard - Amos Tutola
Searching For Caleb - Ann Tyler
Thank You - Kenneth Koch
Collected Poems - Frank O'Hara
Rivers And Mountains - John Ashbery
Tragic Magic - Wesley Brown
Mythologies - Roland Barthes
The Pleasure Of The Text - Barthes
For A New Novel - Robbe-Grillet
Falling In Place - Ann Beattie
In The Heart Of The Heart Of The Country - William Gass
The World Within The Word - Gass
Journey To The End Of The Night - Celine
The Box Man - Kobo Abe
Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino
A Sorrow Beyond Dreams - Peter Handke
Kaspar And Other Plays - Peter Handke
Nadja - Andre Breton
Chimera - John Barth
Lost In The Funhouse - John Barth
The Moviegoer - Walker Percy
Black Tickets - Jayne Anne Phillips
Collected Stories - Peter Taylor
The Pure And The Impure - Colette
Will You Please Be Quiet, Please - Carver
Collected Stories - John Cheever
I Would Have Saved Them If I Could - Leonard Michaels
Collected Stories - Eudora Welty
The Oranging Of America - Max Apple
Mumbo Jumbo - Ishmael Reed
The Death Of Artemio Cruz - Carlos Fuentes
The Rhetoric Of Fiction - Wayne C. Booth
The Divine Comedy, by Dante
Faust, by Goethe
Go Down Moses, by William Faulkner
Three Tales, by Gustave Flaubert

the spy who came in from the cold

How the hell does he write dialogue like that? Seriously, it boggles my freaking mind even as I'm reading. I think to myself, Oh my god, there is more emotion, action, tension, depth packed into this page-and-a-half of nothing but barely adorned spoken lines by two characters than in an entire Dan Brown book. I read this book in two days and if I hadn't been sick on the plane I probably would have finished it in one. Unbelievable.

the hobbit

It's The Hobbit, it's fucking great.

the places in between and liar's poker

The rest of the way home sucked. I got brutally sick on the plane and spent the last seven hours of the flight using every bathroom in economy at least once, and the back-right one at least six times. Turns out I also had a fever. So Sunday I was a dehydrated mess, although in the plus column Mom visited and bring Gatorade!

Anyway, some quick thoughts on Liar's Poker and The Places in Between, which I read back-to-back on this trip. Both are pretty well-written accounts of journeys taken by men in their mid/late-20s into utterly different alien worlds: in the former, the world of 80's boom-market bond trading; in the latter, the desperately poor series of communities on the road between Herat and Kabul in 2002. As you might imagine, the books have different tones and different lessons, although it was interesting to note how clearly and explicitly both writers drew lessons from their experiences. I wouldn't call either of these a great book but I enjoyed reading them.

The Places in Between definitely qualifies as an incredible adventure and something of a throwback to the days of Romantic (and then Victorian) Voyages Into the Unknown, a la Joseph Banks in Tahiti or any number of British Empire explorers. It's a footnote in the book but given my work I couldn't help zeroing in on the point he makes about the poverty of development work in a place like Afghanistan, where Westerners come into the country with prescriptions for how to run everything, produce grand strategies and plans in consultation with a tiny number of powerful people and absolutely no understanding of the priorities and needs of the vast majority of the people they are ostensibly there to help. And then they (the expats) leave after a year or two at most, and the next wave arrives and makes new plans. He compares capital-D Development unfavorably to old imperialism in the sense that the old regimes recruited people to spend years or decades living in the colony, learning the local language and culture. They did that in order to better exploit the colonies, of course, but they recognized the need to know how the places they'd taken over worked. We pay lip-service to that idea now but in many places, especially dangerous places like Afghanistan, it really is just that. Stewart writes with humility and honesty and his courage is pretty stunning. He's now a Conservative MP in the UK (he's Scottish), after apparently being Labour before. Wonder how that change happened.

Liar's Poker is about the meteoric rise and the beginning of the end of Salomon Brothers, where Michael Lewis first worked out of grad school. It's just about the insane culture of Salomon and Wall Street in the 80's and I'm not going to finish this thought now. Something something greed recklessness disproportionate power relative to value added to society blah blah blah. Maybe later.

fast and furious

I thought that my layover in Dubai was 20 hours but really it's 17, and with transport time and needing to be at the airport two hours early it's really more like 13. So I got to my hotel around 8:15, having made the booking last night based on a search for "hotel dubai 24 hour check-in." The hotel did not have my reservation on file when I arrived. Half an hour later they'd found it, god knows how, but there was no room ready. Also, check-in at this hotel is at 2 PM, so the lady wanted to charge me an extra AED100 (like $30) to go up to my room early. I bitched and she dropped it without saying anything.

It's all good, though, the place is fine: Room comfortable and cool, nice view of lots and lots of cement, big flat screen TV on which I watched "Tintin" the animated movie for about 20 minutes before falling asleep for two hours, bringing my total last night to four and a half or so. I was debating whether to do something adventuresome today like go dune buggying in the desert, but it's expensive and the timing didn't look good. Then I thought about going to see the souks -- the old (although I'm sure much-gussied up for tourists now) markets of Dubai where they sell gold and spices and fabric and stuff. Then I thought, screw that, I'll go to the mall, have lunch, wander around, buy a an iPod charger cable (somehow lost the old one in Dushanbe) and a new book (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, can't wait to crack it on the plane), and go see "The Fast and the Furious 6." The movie was great, totally worth the price of admission if you're in the mood for bad acting and awesome action movie writing -- verbatim example at the end of the post. There's a big chase scene involving the fastest and most nimble tank ever created by mankind and you think, How are they going to top that? But they do.

Now I'm back in the hotel with about an hour and a half to kill before I have to head to the airport. I'm trying to import pics from my iPhone but something is wrong. If I lose these pics I will be crushed. I think I'll go to the gym and get the juices flowing a little before the long haul back to DC. Almost home.

From "The Fast and the Furious 6":



The crew are trying to catch a bad guy on a mountainous road. The bad guy surprises them by driving not a large military truck but a very fast tank. The crew are freaking out.

TYRESE (driving his car): Guys, we need a plan B!
LUDACRIS (standing on a bridge over the road): Plan B? We need a plan C, D, E, F!
PAUL WALKER (driving his car while making eye contact with Vin Diesel, who is driving his car alongside): No, we do what we do best: improvise.

Then there is a whole shitload of crashing and eventually they harpoon one of the wrecked cars (Tyrese's) to the tank and push it over the edge of a long bridge as an anchor on the tank, which flips over and grinds to a halt. They've caught the bad guy.

TYRESE (who has ended up in Paul Walker's car after his was crushed by the tank and he jumped onto Paul Walker's car's roof and climbed in through the window): Haha, woo!

khorog to dushanbe by road

Last two days:

Woke up extremely early Thursday morning. Nude session in the outdoor hot spring at Garmchashma with the Norwegian ambassador to Central Asia, DJ, and a bunch of local Tajik men and boys. Porridge for breakfast and then back to Khorog, where I went straight to the Mountin Soceites Dev Suport Program (sic) office with His Excellency to talk about Norwegian forestry projects and restoring an old fort out in GBAO. Then to the PE office for a meeting with Jamshed about the project that's closing out and some money issues, then DJ came and we talked about PE's future plans. Then to the Khorog museum, which was a trip down Soviet memory lane, some amazing taxidermy, and a mixture of very strange and very cool dioramas and exhibits. Then lunch at the same cafe as the other day. It was Unity Day here yesterday, the anniversary of the end of the civil war in 1997, so the park was packed.

The helicopter flight was cancelled because of weather and the forecast for this morning was bad (and borne out, we had a lot of rain and a thunderstorm, but I'm getting ahead of myself), so I had no choice but to join DJ, HE the A of N, the Norwegian Deputy Ambassador to Germany, and a senior counsellor to the Norwegian delegation in Kabul on the 15-hour drive back to Dushanbe up and over the mountains. We had several stops along the way to talk about Norway's projects here with PE, including in a village along the Panj where HE put on a suit and we sat a table in front of most of the village while speeches were given, mostly in Russian. They had laid out a big spread of fruit and berries and I took a deep breath and ate two apricots. Generally I shy away from fresh fruit over here but it would have been insulting for me not to eat any. Good news: no ill effects.

It was dark a couple of hours before we reached Darvaz, the midway point (ish) of our journey and the place where we spent the night, in an extremely strange little resort complex that is owned by the big Tajik aluminum company. We were quite late and we had to get up at four this morning, so I had some Sprite and a couple of pieces of watermelon before heading up to my room and falling instantly asleep.

We had breakfast at 5 at the home of PE's regional manager for Darvaz. It was really excellent, samosas and fresh bread and tea and fresh honey, eaten sitting cross-legged on a covered platform next to his house. The setting was beautiful, in a deep and very green valley. DJ took his leave, back to Khorog, and the Norwegians and I piled into one of the Land Cruisers and took off for the final stretch to Dushanbe. It was actually a lovely drive up and over a 3200-meter pass and then down through the mountains onto the plain. We talked pretty much the whole time, about Norway, about the US, about Tajikistan. The Norwegians were (are) all very friendly and relaxed guys, and so it was an easy 7.5 hours, despite the condition of the road and the fact that I was in the middle of the back seat. I'm taller than HE but he's an Excellency so he got the front, and my back-seat-mates are both well over six feet and more than 20 years older than I am. No worries.

We got back to Dushanbe a few hours ago, had lunch, showered and then HE had some meetings with various ministers and the other two and I went for a walk down Rudaki Ave to the monument and park. It absolutely poured rain as we were coming into Dushanbe and then cleared up and is cool and sunny out. I'm writing this instead of doing work so I'd better stop, but I think my next post will be from Dubai. Car leaves here at 3 AM.

EDIT: Map of the route we took from Khorog to Dushanbe is below. The yellow dot is where we stayed in Darvaz.

garmchashma

(Written offline on the evening of 6/26 as I wait for a 3G modem to get me online. It's now just before 10 AM on 6/27 and I"m sitting the office of the General Director of Pamir Energy, where internet is good. Mash'allah.)

Sorry for the multi-day absence. We left for Khorog on Tuesday morning via the helicopter (no prohibition on pics so I have lots more) and on arriving in Khorog unexpectedly found myself without internet. We were not in the office at all and the hotel didn’t even have TV reception. Being without internet when you expect to be is nice, but when it’s in the middle of a work trip it’s kind of anxiety-inducing. I’m late on a couple of kind of important emails that no one else can write, or, if they could write them they don’t know to because I can’t communicate with them. 

That aside, Khorog has been very cool. I spent all day yesterday driving around with a couple of PE engineers, Malohat and Mansoor. Malohat speaks English pretty well so she was my interpreter and guide. We visited a bunch of different substations, saw where the lines cross the river into Afghanistan at Tem, and checked out the two power stations: Khorog HPP and Pamir I HPP. I’d never been inside a hydropower plant before. Khorog HPP was especially cool because they are repairing two of the turbines, so they were turned off and we could see into the pipes and get up close. I imagine that in the States the safety precautions would be a lot higher but we had hard hats. Pamir I is bigger, 28 MW versus 10, so the turbines are vertical and a couple of stories tall rather than just lying on their sides. We also visited PE’s customer service and billing center and the main office, which is right above Khorog HPP. 

In the midst of all that we stopped for lunch in Khorog City Park, which was rehabilitated by AK Trust for Culture a couple of years ago. It was really nice, and the outdoor cafe where we ate was tasty. Lots of people around, kids swimming in a big pond, big poplar trees, groups of teenage girls looking exactly like groups of teenage girls look in the States, swing sets. The works. 

We had dinner at the Serena, which was excruciatingly slow if also very pretty. After a day of being driven around by Mansoor, who seemed to know every third car we passed, I knew at least 3/4 of the people who came to the Serena while we were there. There’s a big crew here for this built environment conference that I didn’t know about and ended up at today by pure coincidence. Focus people, AK Planning and Building people, AKF Pakistan people, and so on. I’ve met a bunch of people on this trip who I’ve corresponded with for years in some cases but never seen face-to-face. That’s been awesome, of course. I ate last night with my PE guides and then they left and I joined the Focus table (plus Hadi of AK Planning and Building) for some socializing. Lots of jokes, it was nice. A few of them were staying at the same hotel as me on the very opposite end of Khorog, so I caught a ride with them. 

This morning after breakfast Karim and Yousef and I walked around the somewhat overgrown but beautiful botanical gardens outside the hotel. Then they headed off to see some Focus stuff and I went down the hill to this conference. It was pretty dry so I won’t expand on it here.

And now I find myself in Garmchashma, which literally means “hot springs,” about an hour and twenty minutes south of Khorog, or upriver. Where I’m from rivers flow east or they flow south, so a river that flows basically due north gets me turned around. I’m here at the invitation of Daler, the General Director of PE, who’s been on a tour of some remote areas with the Norwegian ambassador to Central Asia. There has been some confusion with the logistics -- a common theme since I arrived in Tajikistan -- so I’ve been relegated to a kind of shitty room after being led to a quite nice room in a different building. I don’t mind taking a back seat to His Excellency, but I’m not going to say I wasn’t disappointed at the switch.

Frankly I guess I’d just rather be back in Khorog, where I know people and can communicate. It should be fun to be out here, and I’m glad I accepted Daler’s very last-minute invitation because if I was in Khorog I’d be thinking, Darn, I should have gone to the hot springs. By reputation they’re really nice, although I haven’t been in yet. Maybe later tonight? Maybe tomorrow? I’m at someone else’s mercy (Daler’s) and I don’t know where he is. I’m ashamed and angry with myself for feeling anything but gratitude and adventure for the opportunity to be in a place like this but I think I can just chalk it up to having this work hanging over my head and being unable to do it. I’ve even written out the emails, so it’ll just be a copy-past job: Once Daler arrives with his 3G modem and I can tick a couple of boxes off the list I will relax. Also once I eat. 

We’ll get up early and go back to Khorog in the morning, and then it’s meetings meetings, fly back to Dushanbe at 4 PM, and check back into Serena for one more day of meetings. Unless, of course, everything changes again. Anyway, two more days and then I’m on my way home. 

***12:20 AM***

I’m leaving the above the way it was because it’s the way I felt at the time and I’ve got no reason other than self-embarrassment to whitewash. Daler came a few minutes after I finished writing the post. He was so apologetic, and he’s such an incredibly nice person. And of course I said, No problem, don’t worry about it because (A) it really is fine, a few hours of mild inconvenience is really nothing to complain about and (B) I’m not a douche bag. So we had dinner together, with the Norwegian ambassador and a couple of other Norwegian guys, one from the Almaty office and one from Kabul. And also my co-passengers in the ride from Khorog, one of whom turned out to be former Deputy Minister for Energy in Tajikistan, and a major friend of PE as they were getting off the ground 5-10 years ago. The two Excellencies both speak fluent Russian so they went off into a corner and Daler and I had a chance to catch up.

After dinner was the springs. The Norwegians wanted to wait for the outdoor pool because I guess they’d been in the indoor one earlier in the day. Problem: At night it’s first-come, first-served, and there were some ladies there. No gender mixing, as you might imagine. I didn’t want to wait so I joined Daler and the Deputy Minister in one of the covered pools. It was great, hot but not overwhelming and minerally and peaceful. We did two dips, the first one maybe 15-20 minutes and the second one 8-10, with 30 minutes in between. Very relaxing. 

And now it’s late and I have the 3G modem but it’s really slow, so I’m not sure I’m going to get this up tonight anyway.

monday

More work, some meetings, I'm going to Khorog tomorrow after a bit of drama about whether I'd get as seat on the helicopter or not. Now more work, but in the hotel.

Lunch was Indian food: absolutely delicious and very inexpensive! Chalk one up for Dushanbe's culinary scene.

sunday in dushanbe

Woke up much more on time, about 8, and got right to work on finishing the budget for the proposal. Went to the office around 10:30 to work with MJ for a while on the revised narrative and budget notes, then came back to Serena for lunch with a big Network crew, at the invitation of the head of Focus Tajikistan. Pretty good, nice conversation, blah blah. Back to the office and finished the budget and the technical narrative while MJ toiled away on the budget notes.

We finished and then MJ, OM and I took a nice long walk from the hotel up the main drag here, Rudaki Avenue, to Rudaki Park. I'd passed the part and its neighboring monument on the way to and from the office. Seeing a city at walking pace and outside the confines of a car is quite a different experience from driving around. I guess that's obvious. Anyway, the evening was warm and lovely. I took some photos of the monument and then ran up to the top of the base to take some other photos, which is apparently not allowed -- a cop came over and said I had to get down! OM talked to him and apparently you can only climb the stairs if accompanied by, well, a cop. Stupid. It was okay, no big deal. The monument, I should say, is to Tajikistan's greatest leader, Somoni. I have pictures, words are not going to do it justice. There's a large arch and some gold involved.

There was a concert going on in the park so we walked over to watch. Lots of families around, little kids with ice cream and a girl on roller blades so heavy for her that she was knock-kneed with her feet out to the sides. The music was evidently Uzbek, and then Tajik, but I can't tell the difference. There was a woman singing and some men behind her playing instruments. Or, I should say, "playing." It was comically obvious that they weren't actually playing them; they weren't even doing an especially good job syncing with the music. The stage was under a pretty monument to Rudaki himself, who is apparently Tajikistan's greatest writer.

We meandered back to the hotel and I took my leave, the better to get a little exercise and chat with C. 

dushanbe weekend part the second

READ PREVIOUS POST FIRST

(cont'd)

I woke up around 10:15, much later than I'd meant but I guess I was tired. Also the phone didn't work, so my normal alarm clock was out of commission, i.e., I couldn't ask for or receive a wake-up call. Oh well. I sprang out of bed, bolted down some breakfast in the lobby restaurant, and called OM from the front desk. The car came 15 minutes later and I was off to the office. It's a short drive, less than ten minutes in light traffic and just over ten with morning traffic, as I found out today. But I'm getting ahead of myself there. Arrived just after 11 and OM, MK, and MJ were already hard at work. On a Saturday. We relocated to the conference room, which has more space to spread out than PE's small room here. Their main office is, of course, in Khorog.

Then we got to work. With a brief break for a very hearty Tajik lunch of rice, shashlik (shish kebab), and tomato-onion-cucumber salad, we worked until 7:30 PM. Then we went to dinner. The waitress brought menus in Cyrillic, which of course might as well be elvish runes to me. Then she brought an English menu but it was at least ten pages long. As I was poring over it MK, the most senior of the three women (OM and MJ are even with each other, I think) just started ordering stuff and I eventually gave up and just said, You do it, I'll eat whatever. So we had salads and soups and steak and cheese and honey and bread and vodka. 

And entertainment. The dining room was on the second floor of the restaurant building, large with a few small tables around two sides, two sets of long tables from front to back in the middle, and a stage in the corner opposite the stairs. Relatively early in the night, a guy got up and played a couple of smoov tunes over a drum machine. Then he went away. Then a six-piece band got up, sax guy included, and proceeded to play Pamiri, Afghan, and Uzbek songs. I think because of the sax, tinkly keyboards, and drum machine, it reminded me (awesomely) of "Free Willy." HOLD ME. LIKE THE RIVER JORDAN...

The band finished after 15 or 20 minutes and then it was time for the dancing. We had a woman Uzbek dancer, and three women doing some other kind of dance, and then the show-stopper. The three ladies had gone off stage and the opening bars of a Puerto Rican, Ricky Martin-style pop song started up. I said, out loud, This isn't Tajik. And then he sprang to the stage. The dancer, in white pants, an insane ruffled Mexican-ish shirt, a red bandana and a little black hat. And he absolutely killed it, the guy was clearly a well-trained ballet dancer. Our whole table was laughing out loud, it was so unexpected. Yes video, I will put it up when I get home.

He was followed by a belly dancer. Then, I kid you not, the band came back out and did another set, this time of Persian club bangers. The table in front of us was a mix of locals, expats, and Afghans and one of the guys was a very enthusiastic dancer. Forgot to mention that several of the people from that table and from another table along the wall got up and danced during many of the acts. Anyway, during the club banger set the guy was going around his table and pulling people out of their chairs to go dance. Then he came over to our table, shook his head and waved his hands dismissively at the women, and held his hands out directly to me. I said, Not a chance. He was persistent but I was bashful and refused. Mistake, I would have liked to dance to that music. It was fun. Opportunity lost. So it goes.

Then the three ladies came out again. Then the belly dancer. Then Spanish dancer and Uzbek lady, in different costumes, doing a more Central Asian dance. Then the three ladies came out in belly dancer outfits, holding candles, and one of them had a CANDELABRA ON HER HEAD. Then the band came back out. It was exhausting. We left. I went home, called C, caught up after a week of not talking at all, and passed out. 

End of Saturday.

dushanbe weekend part 1

What a packed weekend. It's going to take a couple of posts to get through it, because I'm sitting the lobby of the hotel waiting for the PE driver now to take me to the office and he'll be here in a few minutes.

The flight over from DXB was pleasant. Only 70 passengers on the whole 737 so I had an exit row to myself. Read about Bilbo et al., bought an expensive but not terrible chicken wrap and a beer, put my blindfold on, and conked out. The Dushanbe airport -- from the outside at night, anyway -- bears a strong resemblance to KBL. Same bright blue illuminated block letters announcing the name of the place. The consulate was a hoot: the Res Rep's office (HH's ambassador) had sent along an official letter of invitation so I was all cleared and ready to go. But it turns out the visa costs $58 and I, unbelievably, had talked myself out of needing to withdraw cash in DXB. Anyway, I was sitting there pondering my options when who should appear through the window (and I do mean right through the window, as if we were sitting inside a drive through bank teller's office and she popped up ready to deposit some checks) but OM! I guess she'd been assigned to come collect me from the airport at 3 AM. The staff at PE are nothing if not dedicated, about which more later.

Anyway, she talked briefly to the guy who seemed like he was in charge. By the way, all three consular employees were skinny guys in their early- or mid-20's dressed in jeans and polo shirts. The blank visas were in a stack in an unlocked drawer. And I was accompanied in the visa room by an Indian guy from ADB, an American tourist in his 50's, and 12 Nigerian soccer players, here to join Tajikistan's very, very low-level pro league. The head consular guy told me to just go out through immigration, go to the other terminal, where there's an ATM, get some cash, and come back and pay. So that's what I did! Just waltzed right out with my stamp and everything. OM led me over to the arrivals terminal and sure enough, there were three different ATMs all in a row. We went back, I paid and got a handwritten receipt after OM reminded me that I'd probably need one, and drove off to the Serena.

Check-in was fine, I had taken a Benadryl earlier, on the plane, so I fell asleep basically as soon as I lay down in the excellent bed. Comparing this Serena to Kabul and Islamabad is a boring but somewhat inevitable game. The bed is notably nicer here. The breakfast notably less nice. I'd better stop there for now. Part 1A: Saturday: The Day and the Night will follow.

terminal two

I'm sitting in Terminal Two at DXB, waiting for my flight to Dushanbe. About three hours to go until boarding. This terminal is just for use by FlyDubai, the emirate's budget airline. People in Kabul complain about it a lot because it's apparently often late and you have to pay for anything on board, including pillows. But the plane was new, the staff were pleasant, and the flight was on time. Maybe I just got lucky but based on that one experience I'd take it over Safi any day.

The terminal is kind of a Terminal One in miniature. Even the weird juxtaposition of the branding (utterly generic and global) and the people (god only knows how many languages are being spoken in my immediate vicinity right now) is the same. The destinations are smaller, though. Some I haven't even heard of: Where is Mahsad?

I finished Liar's Poker and left it in Kabul for Liz to read, and then read the entirety of The Places In Between between last night and today. More thoughts on those later. For now I'll just say that they were interesting books to read back-to-back. Had to pick up a new copy of the Economist and a copy of The Hobbit from the truly, somewhat depressingly pathetic newsstand in the duty-free. They had 18-20 different books, of which two or maybe three seemed like things I'd ever want to read.

The time in Tajikistan is going to be a little nuts. I just set up one meeting but the rest of my non-PE meetings there are going to be completely ad hoc. A woman from Focus Tajikistan just told me that there is apparently a habitat improvement conference next week in Khorog, which some donor-unit colleagues are attending. Who knew? Maybe I'll go to it. It's nine days until I'm home and right now that seems like a ways, but I know it'll rocket along. 

last night in kabul

Today was good, a little more relaxed than it's been here. What an intense few days, it's hard to believe that I haven't even been here a week. Talked with Dad early this morning (Mom was at an event), which was very nice as usual. Did work all morning in my room (in the quiet! with no one around!), ate lunch, then went to the office for a meeting with the AID environmental guy. That went fine, then did some more work, then met with Akhtar to debrief about the week. He got excellent feedback about the workshop, which was great to hear and very nice of him to volunteer to me -- I didn't even ask, it wouldn't even occur to me to ask a CEO. He just told me.

Was at the office later than I meant so no chance for shopping, but that's alright. I'll try the terra incognita of Tajikistan next week. I can't wait to go, although it's going to be a bit crazy with work the first three days. Tajikistan is so similar and yet so, so different from Afghanistan. Historically northeastern Afghanistan and southern Tajikistan are of a piece -- same language, same terrain. But Tajikistan was a Soviet Socialist Republic. The Soviet foray into Afghanistan, well, we know how that went.

Tomorrow morning I'll take it easy, pack, and then head to the airport at 11. My next post will probably be from Dubai, then hello, Dushanbe!

workshop over

And, deep breath. The workshop finished up today with the first Steering Committee meeting. I was, blessedly, excused from attending, so I used that time to continue helping with the research and learning agenda and to do some other work I've been putting off. The workshop went about as well as could be hoped, and it sounds like the SC went really well, but it's a relief for it to be over.

In fun news, I actually met the governor of Badakhshan today, along with the Deputy Minister for Rural Rehabilitation and Development. Very cool, they both seemed like nice and humble men.

Tired now, so going to take half a Benadryl and hit the sack.

oversleeping

I've done it the past two days. I think if Benadryl is going to work properly I need to go to bed on time and take it on the early-ish side. Otherwise it knocks me out too thoroughly and I can't get up. It hasn't been catastrophic from a work perspective but I missed my date with C this morning and am sad. Hadn't had that problem with it before so lesson learned.

ventriloquism

This post will not discuss work, except to say that the day went well and I spent the evening with work people. At, first, a nice dinner at some people's house and then at, of all things, a ventriloquist show. The woman was really talented and very funny. Not something I thought I'd ever do in Kabul, although it was completely natural at the same time. She does cruise ships and the like, and apparently met some guy who works here on a cruise out of Dubai, he invited her to Kabul and she said what the hell. She was followed by a woman from Houston who played traditional Irish music on violin, and sang, and then was joined by an electric guitar, electric bass, cello, and drums and played some really fun jammy music. I had the single most expensive drink of my life, a $20 vodka tonic. Supply and demand, an inexorable law.

It was a really nice evening, all in all, and the great thing about having a (loose) curfew is that it's over and it's not even that late. Barely past 11. Tomorrow morning we're going to try to finish the program monitoring plan and then the afternoon brings the Steering Committee. Big news.

Alright, so I lied. I will talk about work. Other exciting news: Yesterday afternoon our humble workshop was joined by the governor of Badakhshan (!!!) and a (female, and apparently quite controversial) member of Parliament (!!!). They came and sat in as we discussed the results framework and then we went outside and had photo-op time. Very cool. The governor will be on the Steering Committee of the project, so it was neat to have him there at this very detail-oriented meeting. A bit like having Martin O'Malley at an IMPACT Silver Spring meeting. You might not be sure what you think of the guy, but it puts a spring in your step that he showed up.

fresh air

I have literally gotten no fresh air today. Not a single breath, even from passing a slightly open door. The workshop went pretty well I guess. The room is set up wedding style, with round tables and 8 or so chairs per table. Just enough seats. Someone pointed out this morning that there's a disconnect between my table at the front (the expat table -- me, Lydia, Liz, Jack, Jayne, Dilovar, Lisa) and the rest of the attendees, who are almost all based in Badakhshan and are almost all Afghan. So if nothing else it's really valuable just to have everyone together, to make sure that our visions of what the project is going to be like align.

My time to shine part 1 came at the very beginning, when I gave a presentation to open the workshop by going over the objectives and the background of the project. I think I botched it by talking too fast. Odd, I do not normally get nervous in front of groups, but I had drymouth and everything. No one ever tells you you sucked after you give a presentation but I did. That's okay, it was just covering territory everyone is familiar with anyway. And I made up for it later. On the other hand, the most senior-level Network person in the country was sitting front and center and had immediately preceded me. Oh well.

Time to shine part 2 was at the end, presenting and answering questions about reporting and compliance. On this I was much more comfortable and did very well. Yeehaw.

And I participated very actively and, I think, constructively, in the other two main components of the day: Reviewing the implementation plan and completely overhauling the project monitoring plan. At several points I noticed how focused and un-bored I was, and was amazed by that.

This post has been very self-centered, but whatever, this blog is about me, damn it. I do think the day was productive for everyone involved, and hopefully it will help make the rest of the workshop more productive, as well.

My brain has hurt for the last three to four hours, and I am very tired despite another decent night's sleep last night. The loose movements were back this morning and early afternoon with a vengeance but I don't think that's it. I hydrated well. It's after 7 PM now. I should force myself to go to the gym and at least hop on an exercise bike and get my blood flowing a little. And go outside. I'm not hungry.

end day 2

Not a huge amount to report. Slept about 9 hours last night (SO GOOD). Lots of meetings today, I spent a total about about 20 minutes outside although it was gorgeous outside. Wanted to go shopping this afternoon with a colleague but had too much work. See previous post for gastrointestinal status, although that seems to be getting better. My toilet flushed for a solid thirty minutes while I was on Skype with C -- the connection is so uncertain that I didn't want to interrupt to go fix it, although eventually I was able to. Very vigorous flushing. The conversation with C was the highlight of the day, technical difficulties and all.

I did finally manage to finish the damn concept note rewrite I was working on, so that's good. And the meetings today were productive if overlong. I'm nervous about tomorrow. Don't feel especially nervous my legs have been twitching for hours and I can tell I'm going to have a hard time going to sleep. It will be what it will be, I'll just get up early tomorrow and go through my slides again and go over the agenda again and hopefully be ready.

Now it's time to eat something (still haven't eaten dinner; it's 10:05 PM) and read my book and take some Benadryl and sleep until at least 6:30.

Last thing before bed: After the gym yesterday I took a 15- or 20-minute shower, which is three or four times as long as usual. The showers here are absolutely fucking terrific. Wish I got pressure and heat like this at home.

loose movements 2: the re-loosening

It begins...

kabul groggy

It's about 20 to one PM here in the Serena. I just woke up from a 1.5- or 2-hour nap, with great reluctance and much snoozing. Thanks to the anonymous front desk person for not getting impatient when I kept asking him to call back. Arrival this morning was uneventful, although we did have to walk to parking lot A to find our ride instead of seeing him right after coming through customs -- annoying but really no big deal. Actually little things have gone wrong logistically from the get-go. There was that; someone at AKF got the billing info wrong vis-a-vis who's paying for our consultant, NM, and who's paying for me, so now I'm paying for him instead of myself; my credit card didn't work on two machines and I had to spend 15 minutes on the phone with Chase only to find out that they have their ducks in a row and the problem is over here with the hotel. All in all nothing really serious, just whining.

NM seems fantastic (initials are his and those of his home state, incidentally). In a move that would have been more disconcerting coming from a less pleasant individual, he made eye contact with me as I was walking toward my seat on the DXB-KBL flight and said, "You're Luke, aren't you?" Slightly floored, I said, "Well, yes." Turns out we were seated right next to each other! He's had a pretty fascinating career, it sounds like, starting in academia, moving through a phase of being a personal adviser to a former president of Ecuador, whom he'd hired as a professor when he ran an academic institute in Quito (!), and then many years in capital-D Development.

While we were waiting for his bag to come down the carousel in Kabul, I asked him how he'd known it was me, and he said, "Well, you know, development people tend to have a certain look, and I was looking at everyone and none of them really looked like a Luke until I saw you." He's right, development people are easy to pick out on these flights -- I'd have pegged him, too, without difficulty. They're separate from the ISAF people, the security contractors, the diplomats, and the Afghans. All pretty easy to distinguish. And I was probably the only or one of the only youngish white development-looking (as opposed to security-looking) men on the plane. So maybe it's not as impressive as all that, but still! Adjacent seats.

Made my way through the entire most recent issue of the Economist on the two flights and started reading Liars' Poker. As a rule I'm too embarrassed to read country-specific books in public when I'm traveling. Michael Lewis is definitely an easy writer, I'm going to finish the thing in days. The Economist is a brilliant newspaper but the more I read it the more sensitive I am to how wrong it can be. Never less than stimulating and thoughtful, though.

Now time to go to the gym to get the juices flowing a bit. I'm still stiff, especially in the old IT bands. Then, work. Giddy up.

new books to the list

From here:

The Hired Man, by Aminatta Forna
The Liars' Gospel, by Naomi Alderman

NPR has a pretty solid and eclectic set of summer reading lists. These were on one called "Female Perspectives: Five Novels That Bring Outsiders In." 

marhaba

Chilling in Dubai in the business class lounge, which I'm entitled to because my layover is long and includes part of a normal sleeping time -- the flight to Kabul is at 3:30 AM. That means I can get reimbursed for a hotel, but my two readers may recall that the DXB airport hotel is offensively expensive and I don't really feel like leaving the airport. On the way back the layover is almost 24 hours, so I probably will leave the airport and get an actual hotel room.

Sitting next to me is a group of sub-Saharan African dudes who are many Heinekens in (free beer and wine in here). Not sure what they're talking about but they're definitely tipsy. Plus they're playing some cool music through someone's iPhone. Sounds like high life so...Ghanaian? I don't know.

On the flight over I watched Chile's annual good movie from last year, which is called "No." It's about the advertising campaign that helped shift the tide against Pinochet during the run-up to the plebescite that ended the dictatorship in 1988. Really an excellent movie, I thought. Also I re-watched "Michael Clayton" for the fourth time. I pushed play kind of reluctantly because four times is a lot to see a movie, but man I loved every minute of it. So good.

Not much else to report. Have started to do some work and will keep that up for a while. Need to rewrite the intro for a concept note that I wrote and then was rewritten by someone else. Evidently my version was better. And I'll read some. Brought the book that Mom gave me about a guy hiking across Afghanistan and also picked up Michael Lewis's Liars' Poker in IAD. Needed something else easy for the trip and everything stacked at home is intense. I wasn't about to bring Through the Eye of a Needle, which, though I'm enjoying it, weighs about 7 pounds.