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.
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.
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