wifi

Turns out having wifi is pretty important. I didn't have it in the new place for the first couple of days because my landlord doesn't know how it works and his 17-year-old son was out of town. Son came back today and all is well.

I'm slowly settling in. The house feels bereft of stuff, still, because it is. My boxes are still in Lahore (come on Wednesday, come on Wednesday, come on Wednesday) and I haven't been able to do a big shop. Went to the chemist (pharmacy) and grocery store in Super Market to pick up some essentials -- shampoo, hand soap, coffee, something to eat for breakfast, etc. -- and, funnily enough, ran into TR at the chemist. I was trying to explain to the guy behind the counter that I was looking for dish soap, and doing that excruciating we-don't-speak-the-same-language thing of pantomiming washing dishes while I spoke. Heard a voice say, "Hey," turned to my right, and there was TR. He's half-Pakistani so he was just standing there smiling as I struggled. Then he interpreted, confirmed that I had to go to the grocery store next door, and offered to come with me and then drive me home. It's a five-minute walk but I wasn't about to turn down a ride or company.

Have I mentioned that people here are friendly as hell? He came grocery shopping with me, and then when they didn't have anything to make coffee with at the store, drove me to another market about a kilometer away and helped me there.

So anyway I can't get some of the stuff I want without a car and I am not going to press anyone for favors, least of all people who are already being generous. So vegetables (best place is in the next sector over), meat (best place is in that other market in my sector, Kohsar), a proper trash can for the kitchen, a coat rack, a rotisserie oven, all that's going to have to wait.

The rest of the weekend was good, continued making friends and wishing the election would just be over already. I am American, there aren't many Americans around, everyone wants to talk Trump. Interestingly, one of the people I hung out with on Saturday night -- the one with the servant from a few posts back -- is pulling for Trump. Her reasoning: American interventionism in Pakistan (and other countries) has caused a huge amount of harm, and there's every reason to believe HRC will continue that legacy at best, and deepen it at worst. Trump is a wildcard and will be too preoccupied with stuff at home to bother with Pakistan. This is a deeply flawed theory, not least because Trump being preoccupied or, well, Trump, could very well mean that the people he enables just go off and do whatever the fuck they want. And he's not going to hire isolationist doves. Also our foreign policy isn't uniformly bad, so there's that. Tried to convince her, but in the end she stuck to her guns: The chance that Trump could be better for the rest of the world is worth a bet against the certainty that Clinton will be more of the same. Very interesting conversation. Thank god she's not a US citizen and can't vote.

Today I got to accompany a few diplomats to upper Chitral, about 15km from the Afghan border. My new team member LNT also came. I continue to be a fan of hers. Trip was good if ludicrously quick: we had little more than 3.5 hours on the ground. Thanks UK diplomat security. Managed to pack quite a lot into that time, including scrambling up a rockfall channel to inspect check dams that the community had built with our help over the past two years. The check dams are there to slow and redirect flash floods and landslides. Talked with a gathering of the villagers. Visited the oldest house in the village, which is more than 100 years old and has survived several major earthquakes. The people in the village we went to use very sound traditional construction techniques, unlike their neighbors in nearby valleys. Curious why that is. One of the Brits and I talked in the morning before we boarded the helicopter about positive deviance and how to explain and take advantage of it, and then by golly there was a perfect example right in our faces.

An interesting side note: The village is Kalash, which are a very small group living predominantly in a few valleys up there. They are animist (!) and speak their own language and exist mostly in harmony with their Muslim neighbors. We saw the outside of the village's temple, which had carved sheep heads by each door and some drawings on the outside depicting, among other things, a man milking a goat.

Now I'm back at home, have wifi, and have eaten a satisfyingly greasy dinner from one of the places in Super Market, just the first one I saw. Three parata rolls: one beef, one chicken, one veggie. Just what the doctor ordered. Oh and with milk that doesn't even taste weird. Can't express how much of a relief it is to have found drinkable milk. 

i can haz house keys?

Just got back from signing the lease for my new place. Picked up the keys and the wi-fi password, did an inventory walk through with the real estate agent. The power goes out every day between 6 and 7 PM so no pics yet. But tomorrow afternoon I'll drag my suitcases over there and start to settle in. I may replace some of the furniture, but one thing at a time. First I have to wait for my dang stuff to arrive from Lahore. Adeel the operations guy said he thought it'd be here on Wednesday or Thursday.

Gotta run now, meeting a guy from the British Council for dinner. 

high security

Got my first real taste a few minutes ago of the downside of living in a place where security, especially for diplomats, is over the top. There's an ultimate game at the British Club on Wednesday nights that I got invited to join. Great: the entrance to the diplomatic enclave nearest the Serena is less than a ten-minute walk away. Some guy has volunteered to sign people in who don't already have access cards. I've been in and out of the enclave a few times so far so I think I know the drill. But. I have forgotten a step. Signing people in happens at the individual embassy, in this case the British High Commission. You're on your own to get into the enclave in general. Until a few months ago, you could do that by just flashing a foreign passport at the guards. But recently they've tightened up and you need either (A) to be entering in a car with diplomatic plates; (B) to be entering accompanied by a person with a membership card that allows them to bring guests inside; or (C) to have a membership card yourself. Membership, in this case, means with one of the embassy clubs: French, British, Australian, American, Canadian, probably others.

After waiting for five minutes or so by the main gate, I called the guy who'd invited me, and after talking with him for two seconds realized my error: I was stuck at the outer gate, and passage through the outer gate is assumed. He was apologetic but not about to come fetch me himself: The game was about to start.

So, deflating and frustrating. I'm fucking American! Can't get to my own embassy without a stupid card that I have to pay for! Needless to say, getting one of those damn cards is high on the list of things to take care of posthaste. Might even just join the British Club tomorrow to get it out of the way: I'm meeting one of my new friends there for dinner (he'll come fetch me) and they have tennis courts.

Bah.

Otherwise the day was good. Found a place to live, in fact the one place I liked the first day. Liked it even more on the second visit, after seeing a bunch of other places, including a couple today that were pretty nice. It's cozy and private, in a great location, has a good-sized backyard, gas stove (but no oven), overhung with trees and covered in ivy. The main house, which faces the street, is disconnected entirely. The owner works for some oil and gas company and lives there with his family. Very pleased, although I think I will be replacing some of the furniture. Now the broker is negotiating with the owner over rent, and once that's done I'll sign the lease, pay three months' rent, and move in. Hopefully the timing of that will dovetail with my stuff arriving from Lahore. Next step: buying a pots, pans, sheets, and a car.

Also, I got my clearance to travel to KPK, which means that I can fly (helicopter wheeeeeee) up to Chitral on Monday with some senior people from WFP and DFID. It's a quick trip, up and back on the same day, but a great opportunity to see some work and spend time with one of our major and hopefully growing donors. 

rush hour

There is a simple pleasure, when alone in a hotel, in finding that a funny, stupid movie just started playing on TV. For example, "Rush Hour."

Worked 11 hours today.

Had my welcome lunch at Tuscan Courtyard, at the Kohsan Market in F-6. Red snapper, mixed vegetables, and a lot of political talk with some of the senior members of staff. Many obvious comparisons between Trump and Imran Khan, although it's not 1:1. Imran isn't as sexist, for instance. But the appeal is similar: a volatile, charismatic, arrogant outsider pokes the establishment in the eye.

Now bed.

stuck in customs

My two big boxes of stuff have been stuck in customs in Lahore for more than a week, and just today I found out why: There's an import restriction on items with a value over PKR 20,000, and because the dollar is so strong right now, the $200 valuation FedEx told me to put on the packages is worth PKR 21,000. So I had to print out and sign a form authorizing FedEx to pay all the relevant duties and fees, for which of course they'll turn around and charge me. Slightly irritating, but also relieving. Also another item on the list of "things about which the HR/admin department has been helpful but not particularly organized."

In the objectives I drafted last night, one is about improving the P&P team's systems. That is a big enough chunk to bite off for the next nine months. But it was a little hard not to expand it to include other systems, given how (seemingly) easy it would be to improve new-staff processes. For example, the creation of a standard checklist would help. And while I have a phone extension list, it would be really helpful to have an organizational chart showing who does what, with whom.

Anyway I'll cross that bridge if and when I end up hiring someone.

marching and sit-ins

Well, the run-up to the sit-in is officially underway. The police have sealed off several roads around the red area, where the office is, as well as the trunk road from Peshawar, which is the capital of the one province where the main protesting party, PTI, is in power. That's no inconvenience for me since I'm living right out the back door and across the driveway. But it's a major inconvenience for all of my colleagues, not to mention hundreds of thousands of other people. It'll be interesting to see how things play out over the next few days. Will the protesters succeed in removing or going around the roadblocks and through the tear gas and rubber bullets that the cops are already using closer to Peshawar? Will transportation within Islamabad be affected, or just on the roads connecting it to the airport and Rawalpindi? How long will all this last, given that winter is coming? Will the PM or Supreme Court make a move that mollifies the protesters?

Nobody seems to know. Anyway, the security threat to me is nil, so the only things I'm worried about from a selfish perspective are being able to find a place to live and a car to drive. Also, finding out when I'm going to get the rest of my stuff, which is apparently stuck in customs in Lahore.

Today was pell-mell: I had back-to-back meetings almost all day, and at the end AI told me to write my objectives and send them to him tonight. One thing that's dawning on me is the sheer volume of (digital) paper that I'm eventually going to be responsible for reviewing and signing off on: every single concept note, proposal, communication item, and internal strategy or report. Also, the SPO for health gave me an introduction this morning to our health portfolio, and one of the things he said at the end was that no one is going to give me a budget, but everyone acknowledges that my department's work is critical. So it'll be up to me to build funding into every proposal, and to build my team that way. I knew that, but him saying it so plainly brought it home in a good way.

Now it's time to leave the office and go to the gym. Enough work for one day, there's always tomorrow.

halloween part 2

Last night turned out to be my Islamabad scene debut. I joined TR at a high school friend of his's house in E-7, the richest sector, for a pre-party drink. The woman's mother is a big-time politician -- the girl had a picture of herself as a ~12-year-old with Musharraf in her room. It's a strange picture, he's holding one of his hands in front of her neck at an odd angle. We played music and danced a bit with the small group that was there, mostly this high school crew but also two people from the Russian embassy who I'd met on Thursday night. 

As we were getting ready to leave I got my first real glimpse of Pakistani domestic master-servant relationships. Quite unlike anything I've ever seen in the States, or pretty much anywhere I've been, in the raw and open inequality of it. A servant, also a young woman, came to put our host's sweater on, and host accepted it without acknowledgement. Then host pretended to ash her cigarette on the servant and pantomimed slapping her, all while laughing. The servant laughed, too, and I tried very hard not to project my assumption about what was going through her mind onto her. Everyone else stood there half-watching and finishing their drinks, and then we left. The staff at the Serena are solicitous, sometimes extremely so, compared to a place like Dushanbe or Kabul, and I've always chalked that up to the colonial/feudal legacy of this society. But I never lose the sense that they're employees and I'm a guest; there's no intimacy. This interaction was weirdly intimate.

Anyway off we went to a rooftop party in F-6, the sector where I'm likeliest to live. They'd gone full-out with the decorations: skeletons, cobwebs, lights, the works. And pretty much everyone was dressed up. There were two other people who'd done the same Google search as me and had variants of the Error 404 costume. I got my picture taken with one of them, a nice guy who works for a company that manufactures MMA equipment. Several people told me throughout the night that I'd met most of the Islamabad party scene there, hence the comment with which I started this post. It was a mix of Pakistanis and expats, including only 3-4 Americans. A couple of people insisted to me that I could not be American because I don't have an American accent, including a woman from California who's even fresher off the boat than I am. Pretty much everyone reacted positively when I say I work for AKF, which is a nice discovery. They expect me to be a diplomat. Anyway there was music and dancing and then the cops came (to the gate downstairs, they would never enter) to tell everyone to be quiet. Very college. 

We trickled out and went to the next party, where I met a few more people and watched various little dramas play out from a vantage point on the arm of a couch, next to my new friend Jennifer, from Iowa by way of DC. She knew or knew of NR's mom, naturally. It is a small world. Spent some time talking to a Pakistani guy who'd been a US marine and is now walking the length of Pakistan to raise money for disaster risk reduction supplies for communities in the north, and to raise awareness of an ecotourism company he's started to bring people up there. 

Eventually the group that I've been inducted into (at TR's invitation, including MM the morning-TV host and a couple of others) decided it was time for very early breakfast at a 24-hour place nearby. We ate paratha (flat bread that's somewhere between naan and a soft taco) with spicy chickpeas and slow-cooked beef. It was all greasy and delicious, although I got hiccups from the spiciness. And it was nice to sit on this little patio in the small hours of the morning and chill out after the loud parties. 

All in all, a long but fun evening. Agreeing to speak on that panel in September is looking like one of the best decisions I've made all year because it's where I met GM, who introduced me to TR, who has been an incredibly friendly and generous host. I thanked him for inviting me out last night, and he said that after the time it took him to get access to the scene after being away (he's Pakistani-Dutch and lived in Europe and the States for a time after growing up in Islamabad), he was glad to help me out. Always easier to have someone make introductions than to try to force one's way in.

Woke late today with a bit of GI trouble, I suspect from the 24-hour breakfast. Debated whether or not to go to ultimate but decided it would be wiser to stay near a bathroom than to run around. RF came by the hotel a couple of hours ago and we hung out for a bit in the cafe. He's also very friendly and someone I'm glad to have met so quickly.

I've got a bit of work to do now, and then I may see if my Canadian colleague CK is interested in dinner somewhere other than the buffet restaurant. Or I may just get room service and watch a movie. 

Tomorrow it's back to the office, and, if Adeel can manage it, a few more potential-home visits. I started the process of opening a local bank account on Friday, apparently it takes a few days. If we ever do hire another expat while I'm here, my experience will be a useful reference point for making sure their onboarding is a bit smoother and better-organized than mine has been. 

halloween

Last night went to one of my new acquaintances' apartment in the diplomatic enclave, where he'd put together some food and what turned out to be a pretty impressive amount of beer, wine, and vodka. Not particularly interested in getting super drunk, so I kept a lid on and just enjoyed meeting a bunch of new people, including a guy with whom I bonded over having first names we share with unfortunate historical figures -- in his case, the last Shah of Iran.

It seems I could party pretty hard in Islamabad if I wanted to. I don't, but for the time being I'm sticking with my resolution not to turn down social invitations. My commitment to that is such that in a minute, I'm going tear myself away from the UM-MSU game and head to a Halloween party. Only managed a pretty lame makeshift costume: a white t-shirt on which I've written "Error 404: costume not found." Oh well, better than nothing. Plus I ruined a shirt to make it, which counts for something.

Go Blue.

loose movements

Possibly my all-time favorite euphemism is "loose movements," learned years ago now from a colleague at Focus in Kabul. After nearly a week, they have begun. Not sure what to credit. I ate some home cooking at lunch on Tuesday with my new colleagues -- they all bring food from home and then share, which is a tradition I'll have to join fully once I have a kitchen. But I assiduously avoided raw veggies and fruit and no worries. Yesterday I had some nuts in AI's office while we were on a call, so maybe that was it? Dinner at the French club was all cooked. Survey says: nuts.

Anyway it's alright, I've had much worse in the past, and it was bound to happen eventually. Let the gut microbiota adjustment begin.

Also, the office has begun to clear out a bit early, because one of the opposition political parties is starting to block a few of the roads leading to Rawalpindi. AI and the security guy, WA, decided to let the Rawalpindi-based staff go before it gets too bad. The protests weren't supposed to start in earnest until next Wednesday but I guess some people got excited. The protesters, led by a cricket-star-turned-populist-politician named Imran Khan, hate the ruling party and its chief, the current PM, Nawaz Sharif. And he's been embroiled in the Panama Papers scandal, which gives a lovely justification for demonstrations. I don't know nearly enough about the politics or backstory here to have much of a view on whom to root for.

No one seems especially worried, even though the last time there was a dharna - sit-in - by Khan's party, PTI, in 2014, it lasted four months. It shouldn't affect me too much, as my whole orientation in Islamabad is in the other direction from the road blockages.

Now, to put the finishing touches on the concept note we've been working on all week, send it in, open a bank account, and decide whether my GI tract will permit me to go out tonight. At the very least I'm going to the Argentine embassy event at the Serena that I was invited to, unless of course it's been canceled because of the protests. Fingers crossed.

the coolabah club

Tonight I went to my first Islamabad party. One of the Pakistani women I met just before leaving the States introduced me, via Facebook, to her best friend's younger brother (the siblings are half-Dutch, half-Pakistani), who lives here. I got in touch with him once I arrived and he invited me out tonight to what is apparently a monthly gathering at the Australian High Commission's bar, aka the Coolabah Club.

He and a friend of his picked me up at the hotel and we drove to the diplomatic enclave here. Took a couple of tries to get in because I don't have a credential yet -- it's not enough anymore to be foreign, apparently, they've tightened security around the bigger embassies. But we got in and went first to the French club for dinner, where a couple other friends of theirs met us, and then drove a short distance to the Australian party. As a generally friendly and extraverted person, it's fun to be the new guy. Like in Kabul, expats here are curious and outgoing, and I spent the night being introduced to this person and that person and being invited to various parties and events, including a weekly ultimate frisbee game. Plus I found out there are pork connects, which is just the best kind of news.

Tomorrow is going to be really busy at work, and then I've been invited to two things: the first is an opening reception for an art show by an Argentine artist, hosted by the Argentine embassy (helloooo, opportunity to speak Spanish!); the second is a vodka-and-cheese-tasting party hosted by my new acquaintance RF, who gave me a lift home tonight and is from the UK.

Promising start to my social life here, I have to say. 

jet lag awake is the worst kind of awake

Barely slept last night, seems my jet lag is getting worse. Lame. Late morning today I went out with AS, the operations/admin guy, to look at places to live, and by the end I was barely awake and my head hurt so much that I was nauseous. Not a migraine, just my body saying, LIE THE FUCK DOWN ALREADY. So I listened, and took a nap. Wise choice. Ended up having a productive afternoon/evening.

Some comments on the houses: The standard of workmanship and care in this country, in the richest neighborhoods in the city, is straight-up shoddy. A couple of the places were gross-dirty, lots of exposed wires, horrible light fixtures, broken steps. But the last place was quite nice, which was a nice surprise, and it was the cheapest one. It's an annex (a guest house, more or less) behind a large house in one of the two neighborhoods I'd been considering. Living area and kitchen on the first floor, two bedrooms and bathrooms on the second floor. Huge backyard, tons of plants, and a big dog named Simba. So that's promising. Will probably look at a few more places before making a decision but that one looks solid.

Highlight from today: AI took me down to the little gallery area at the hotel in the late afternoon for an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the ADB. So I met the German ambassador, Danish deputy ambassador, head of DfID, head of European Union cooperation office, and head of KfW, all in a span of about 20 minutes. That part of the job is going to be really fun. The internal coordination part of the job is going to be the draining part.

And now, to vegetate in front of the TV, call M&D, and sleep (I hope against hope).

in the books

Ended up awake later than I hoped last name, but I think I can still chalk that up to jet lag, and also deciding to plow through the rest of Managing to Change the World, which is fabulous and which I will be returning to frequently, probably for the rest of my career; also recommending it to everyone. Still wasn't really feeling any nerves throughout the day today.

The day ended up being a little disjointed, which is both fine and something for me to work on, at least with my own hiring. How an organization brings new employees on board says a lot about its systems and priorities. Folks here know all the things they're supposed to do, and they'll get done, but it all feels a little seat-of-the pants. Still, took care of some key stuff today: got a local SIM, signed some documents, met with AI, got introduced to most of the office, met with HR. Still not sure exactly what my day-to-day will look like but we set a timeline to create objectives for my team and myself (Friday) and it'll all become clear in time.

Went to the gym, which felt very good, and then had dinner with my Canadian colleague CK, who's here for a couple of weeks running the aforementioned workshop. He's nice and knowledgeable and we talked candidly about Issues We Have Seen Or Continue To See in our time in the Network. For example, the marginalization of women at the senior leadership level, which we agree is (1) shitty and hypocritical and (2) our (CK's and my) responsibility to do something about, even if in small ways.

Three side notes:

• I have been practicing my card handling skills. Getting much better at color change and starting to learn the double lift. Almost ready to start learning my first sleight-of-hand trick. What I should do is learn a few of the Giobbi non sleight-of-hand tricks, but they're just not as sexy.
• Currently thinking through what my training goals should be while I'm here. I will be on the road more than before, so while I'll join a gym, I won't always have access to one. Under consideration: gymnastic skills like handstand and planche, jump rope skills/endurance, C2 rower for time.
• Also it would be fun to learn some dance steps that I can do on my own. I like dancing and have rhythm (or at least am not rhythm-deaf), but have never been very good at it. 

We shall see how all these hold up as the job starts to take over, but if I could spend an hour or two a week practicing c walking and cards I bet I could get from novice to basic pretty quickly. 

Now to drink some mint tea, brush my teeth, and go to sleep. Tomorrow is more meetings with sector heads and heads of partner agencies, and then in the afternoon going with the head of administration (who also oversees security) to look at places to live. 

first-day jitters, or lack thereof

I accidentally slept until 1 PM today, after ignoring my 8:30 alarm with an "oh I'll just doze for a minute." Only woke up to a call from my new colleague SCK, who was in the cafe with her husband, having lunch, and wanted to know if then was a good time to meet about the LGL concept note that's due on Friday. We'd agreed yesterday that we should meet up today. So I scrambled into some clothes, put my laptop in my backpack, and went downstairs.

We chatted for a bit while I ate a sandwich and drank some coffee, and then who should show up but AI, the bossman himself, looking very stylish in a brownish shalwar kameez and fancy vest. He had planned to meet MU, who's the head of AK Rural Support Prog, before going together to a meeting with the Chief Minister of GB. But he was early or MU was late, so he sat down with us and talked for a while, mostly about politics -- I listened for the most part. Then SCK's husband left and MU arrived, and we talked about LGL.

After parting ways SCK and I went up to the executive lounge, in a part of the hotel I'd never been to, to get into some more depth. It's a frustrating project because the solicitation is uncommonly vague and unclear: as SCK pointed out, it even confuses what are normally different levels of a results framework or logic model (e.g. some objectives look like intermediate results, some objectives look like outcomes). Anyway we got our next steps together and that's good.

AI was supposed to come back to the hotel after his meeting but never did, which is fine. Canada colleagues arrived tonight and we were supposed to meet but they never got in touch; also fine. I worked out and then ate dinner in the buffet dining room, wrote up my notes from the trip, and did some research about opening a new checking account and an investment account. Things I started to do but could not bring myself to finish before leaving the US. Would have been wiser not to procrastinate but oh well. Need to call the banks and also Vanguard tomorrow because I'm employed overseas and apparently that makes things more complicated.

I'm not really nervous for tomorrow, at least not on the surface. The meetings I've had over the last week have been both energizing and confidence-boosting to some extent. I really do know what I'm talking about in some ways, and how to do at least some of the practical aspects of my job. There are certainly things that I will have to learn as I go, such as managing a team of people. Being responsible for the overall performance of other people is, if not really intimidating, then a little bit of a black box.

Plus, I've made my choice. I've taken the opportunity that was presented to me and there's really no going back. So what's the point of being nervous? I'll find out tomorrow, and next week, and the week after that, and the month after that whether I can do the job or not. Fingers crossed.

All those brave words having been said, let's see how easily I fall asleep tonight, haha. I think "haha" in that sense -- in the text message sense -- should be in the dictionary. Haha: interjection: 1. (used in written communication, primarily in internet- or mobile-based messaging services, to signal to a reader that a sentence or clause is meant humorously.)" It's already in the dictionary.

moving, part 1

After spending at least part of five of the last six days in the air, with a fairly packed meeting schedule on the ground, I arrived in Islamabad around 3:45 this morning. Took 45 minutes or so to get through immigration and get my bags, which is not bad. Arriving here has never actually been that much of a pain, it's leaving that's a mess. Will be interesting to see how well the new airport works whenever it finally opens.

Check-in was uneventful, except that the Serena is practically full at the moment so there were a lot of people at the desk. That makes me glad. Wrote a quick email to the fam to let them know that I'd arrived and passed out around 5. Woke to my alarm at 10 -- the harder I fight jet lag, the quicker I get over it, so didn't want to sleep until 2 or something -- and after lounging around for a bit dragged myself to the gym, showered, and then ate lunch. Now it's just after 3 and I'm at loose ends for the rest of the day. Will spend some time writing thank-you emails to the seemingly dozens (possibly literally dozens, I'll have to check) of people I met with between Monday and Thursday, writing up notes from the week, and starting to develop objectives for myself in preparation for talking about them with Akhtar soon. A couple of AKF Canada folks arrive tomorrow for a proposal workshop this week, part of which I'll help lead. But really I have no idea how much time I'll have for it: there is already an unholy amount of stuff to do. Here's hoping Akhtar's right about the people he's hired this year, because I'm about to get a crash course in delegate-or-die.

A few quick thoughts on Ottawa and London:

• Poutine is overrated.
• Ottawa is bilingual to an extent that surprised me.
• The Delegation building (where our office is in Ottawa) is beautiful.
• Canadians are friendly and our colleagues there really do have it easier than the other two donor offices, for all the reasons I suspected. That said, pressure is high to keep up and even expand what has been a spectacularly good relationship with the Canadian government.
• British people drive on the wrong side of the road but walk and use escalators properly, and their revolving doors go clockwise. I feel they should be more consistently wrong.
• It was lovely to see Jen in London after more than two years. We walked along some old canal from St Pancras to Camden -- which is gentrification-hip -- got a couple of beers/ciders and had fish and chips. She seems pretty happy, which was not the case as her time wound down in DC. 
• London, like New York, seems like a place I will be happy to continue to visit but not live. Just looked at real estate in Camden out of curiosity and it's actually cheaper than I'd have expected. But not cheap.
• Got some QT with three consecutive people who reported to Akhtar in Kabul, all of whom I was friends/friendly with from that time. It was really great to see them, and also to pick up a few tips. 
• I'm even more eager to get started on this job now than I was at the beginning of the week. The pace is going to be berserk but there is so much potential and so much excitement. 
• The US dollar is very strong right now.

Now, off to set up my Kindle (I finally caved on that front) and write some emails.

EDIT: Also, got a little pang just a minute ago when I remembered that today is C's birthday. We haven't spoken since April or May; I stopped reaching out after the last time for a couple of reasons that I won't get into here. But I might send her a message today. Feels weird. 

tinker, tailor

Just the best. 

introduction to card magic

What can I say? I've become fascinated by sleight of hand. This book inspired me to buy a few decks of cards and start practicing basic card handling. Fun.

the givenness of things

Much to wrestle with. It's easy enough to not along when she's criticizing contemporary American "Christian" society for its lack of Christian ethics, or when she's admonishing us all to be more compassionate and imaginative in the way we relate to those of us who are different from us in ways that make us angry. But among of Robinson's betes-noir are positivism and materialism and what she views as a reductionist way of looking at the world -- one associated with, for instance, neuroscientists who believe we can describe consciousness through imaging the brain. My own natural tendencies are positivist and, much more strongly, materialist. But, if I'm honest, I arrived at a materialist worldview without much in the way of critical engagement with the issue. It just feels right. Her confrontations, throughout the essays, of materialism, were both satisfying and frustrating, sometimes at once.

At the same time, I have to admit a couple of things. First, this is one of those books that I don't feel I'm ready to read: not old or wise enough to really understand some of what she's trying to convey. Second, Robinson's language is formal and arch and sometimes difficult to follow -- just a step below the technical-writing opacity that she disparages, if I'm feeling uncharitable or perhaps a bit sour-grapey. I don't often encounter books, other than books of poetry, that force close reading in order even to understand each sentence, and this book was challenging. Glad I decided against a philosophy degree in undergrad.

Verdict: not a book I will readily recommend unless I get into a deep conversation with someone about metaphysics. But one that I will reread before too long, in order to help myself understand her arguments, and whose ideas I will continue to turn over in my mind for the foreseeable future.

the once and future king

How on earth did I not discover this book before this year? What a masterpiece. Feels almost shockingly contemporary for a book that began to be published in the 1930s. Morally powerful, beautifully written, almost postmodern in its use of anachronisms and shifting authorial voice.

Goes straight onto the list of books I'll read to my future kids, along with His Dark Materials, Lord of the Rings, and the Earthsea novels. 

the memoirs of sherlock holmes

A lot of these are weirdly bad. There are a couple of classics but most of them are just Holmes telling Watson about something after the fact and narrating the whole thing from start to finish. Way too much expositions. It's almost like ACD was mailing them in, or kind of half fleshing them out and then calling it a day. 

the structures of everyday life

FINALLY finished. Fascinating, will require much reflection. Took me a long time to get through. Will also bear referring back to.

the spirit catches you and you fall down

Enjoyed. It's good to be reminded, as a pretty sure atheist and pro-science person, that there are systems of belief that are incompatible with mine but that have no less power for the people who hold them than mine do for me.

And an interesting, insightful reportage of the problems that can arise from committed altruism when that commitment, that moral clarity, is not tempered by humility. Maybe that's just my own baggage that I'm bringing to it but one of the most resonant passages for me was at the end, when Fadiman is talking to the Harvard professor who chides Lia's doctors (indirectly) for their arrogance. Much more satisfying than Strangers Drowning.

Some kinship with the meditation at the end of Awakenings, as well, in that illness-as-more-than-sum-of-medical-charts sense. 

wicked

Loved it, much to my own surprise. Great characters, great story, excellent prose, real moral ambiguity, real feminism and support of direct action for social justice, condemnation of racism and unfettered capitalism. Was not expecting any of that, especially not the out-and-out sexuality.

So to Katie and Anita and Hannah and anyone else I mocked 10-12 years ago for loving Wicked before I'd even attempted to read it: I'm sorry. 

the red tent and neverwhere

For some reason, the word that kept coming to me while I read The Red Tent is "cute". There's just something overly smooth and pat about the whole thing. Glad to have read it, anyway, I'd been curious about it for a long time.

Neverwhere is absolutely wonderful, I read it in a day. AK recommended it to me over my objections that I did not like the other Gaiman book I'd read, Good Omens. Will pay attention to her recommendations in the future.

what's happening at home

The Orlando nightclub shooting last night put another weight on the scales of wanting to work at home versus overseas. I'm really excited about the move to Pakistan, it's going to be amazing. But there is so, so much to be done here. Like banning assault weapons and handguns.

real estate

Kind of wishing that I'd gotten my act together this year to buy a studio or 1BR somewhere in DC. Not going to beat myself up about it because (1) that's silly and (2) everything this year has been up in the air so not only is hindsight 20/20, sight as it happened was like 20/400. But man, I could be paying off a mortgage and earning a bit of rental income while living abroad, and then have a place to move back into whenever I want to come back to DC. Blows my mind that colleagues and friends who make more than I do don't buy.

For example: At my upcoming salary I can afford up to $2000 or so a month in home ownership costs (mortgage, insurance, taxes, etc.). No need to pay that much, if I bought an apartment for $280,000 I'd be looking at $1100 or so per month. Add on $100 for a management company and $250 for maintenance and it's $1450. A nice 1BR in Columbia Heights or Lanier Heights rents for easily $2000, and it's normal to add utilities onto that, so that offsets. Conservatively, then, I'm covering the mortgage and management costs and probably earning a little bit extra. That may be overly sunny and I'm clearly not an expert but it seems like a no-brainer on paper. And it doesn't need to be a money-maker. Even if I'm just breaking even, it's appealing.

Might be something to consider once my feet are under me in Pakistan. Maybe in 2017. The only thing I'm really short on is cash for a down payment but I can save a lot in the next year. Then again interest rates will have gone up by then. Damn!

the sixth extinction

Deserved the Pulitzer it won, a masterwork of long-form journalism. Riveting, illuminating, sobering. Will recommend left and right.

aaaand i'm back

What a packed week. The meetings were a bit inconclusive, for the most part, but it was good to finally get in the room and spend some time with so many people that I'll be working with over the next couple of years. Most of them I'd met or at least worked with remotely already, but there really is no substitute for talking face-to-face, or for going out for dinner and a beer after the meetings are over. And I got some time with AI (new boss), which was great because he's hard to pin down over email.

Home now to the humid rain, so-far-moderate jet lag, and a need to go to the grocery store.

geneva

Well, after 6.5 years, they finally sent me to Geneva. I'm sitting in a meeting room on the sixth (or seventh?) floor of the office here, overlooking the lake. It's cloudy and the ceiling is low: I can't see the top of the hill across the water. The trip over was not great but could have been worse. I didn't sleep much but there were no screaming babies. Two colleagues were on the same flight, my old boss JT and a woman from our Afg office whom I'd spoken to on the phone but never met. Didn't realize we were colleagues until we got to the office (separate taxis) and realized we'd seen each other on the plane.

The meetings this morning were good, learned a few things and got to shake a lot of hands and say hello. Most people I'd met before but a few I hadn't, and in any event it's always good to reconnect face-to-face. The Afg person and I have been excluded from the two meetings this afternoon because they wanted to have a smaller group. This is disappointing on the one hand, because the themes were both interesting and relevant (the second one is about Pakistan!) and it never feels good to be relegated to the kids' table. IOn the other hand jet lag is a bitch and it's rolling over me in waves and I'm not sure I could have kept my eyes open the whole time. In here there's no one to see my lids close. And, truth be told, in a way I've kind of started over my seniority: I would have had much to contribute in my old role but this is day one in the new role and I'm in pure listening mode. So it's okay. I'm also not participating in the meetings tomorrow morning -- although I think a bunch more people will be excluded from those -- because an eminence grise (not the main one, a slightly but not much slightly lesser one) will participate and they didn't want to have a packed house. That I do not begrudge at all.

In other news, I took a deep breath and tried to open my work email for the first time in nearly a month. Password expired! Oops. Emailed the IT people to see about resetting it remotely. Fingers crossed.

The meetings should wrap up in about an hour and then I guess we're all bussing over to the hotel, which is in France. Evidently there are several conferences happening in Geneva right now so rooms were at a premium. Not sure what's on the docket for tonight.

kindred

The writing is kind of clumsy and obvious sometimes but it's a great story, gripping and disturbing. I read it straight through last night after getting in bed, then stayed up thinking about it for a while. No idea when I went to sleep. 

travelin' books

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders was very good, reminded me of Morning and Evening Talk. Preferred the earlier stories to the later ones but all good.

After the Prophet is solid pop history in the Simon Winchester vein. Great narrative, educational, and what a story.

Endzone really needed about three more rounds of editing but what can I say, I'm an insane homer and couldn't put it down. Dave Brandon, what a sad, moronic asshole.

Call for the Dead is a trifle, Agatha Christie masquerading as a Smiley novel. Blah. 

the killer angels

Like hot chocolate and a fire in the fireplace on a cold night.

in persuasion nation

Overall okay. A couple of the stories -- the first one, the title story, and one at the end called "commcomm" -- were really good. But a lot of them just gave me the same feeling I had reading Where'd You Go Bernadette: I got that I was being joked at, but the jokes felt too obvious or heavy-handed to be funny.

mottled dawn

A collection of short - in many cases very short - stories about partition by a Pakistani writer named Saadat Hassan Manto. Unrelentingly dark, full of irony. The style reminded me frequently of Roald Dahl, and I wonder how much of that is in the original and how much is just the translation. Glad to have finally read it.

a place of greater safety

Liked it, but took me a long time to get through. It's interesting to see the seeds of the Cromwell books in the way she builds the characters and the story, almost like watching footage of LeBron as a high school basketball player. The talent is there, he's bursting at the seams, but he's unfinished, unpolished somehow.

And by god, the French Revolution was a mess.

Also, the book cements for me that one of Mantel's lifelong themes is that of men whose ambition carries them to the top of the mountain and then casts them down. Cromwell is obviously like that, but so are Desmoulins, Danton, and Robespierre (and the dozens of others who got guillotined during the Terror). And so is O'Brien, the giant.

The Mirror and the Light can't come soon enough.

the assassination of margaret thatcher

I will read basically anything Hillary Mantel writes. She is the queen. These stories were mostly not as memorable as the peaks she reaches with Cromwell, but I thoroughly enjoyed them. And there is the occasional "Oh!" turn of phrase or observation. Good stuff, would recommend to a literature-minded person for the beach or a trip.

where'd you go, bernadette

Clever, enjoyable, quick read, but ultimately kind of of whatever. Made me sad at parts and the only time I remember laughing out loud is a throwaway dick joke. The rest of the humor I get but just isn't that funny. Semple is too compassionate to do the Tom Wolfe thing of creating characters for whom she has total contempt, but there's a little bit of cheap-shotting that's a turn-off for me. Bill Bryson does the same thing in some of his books, like the one about small towns. 

the yiddish policeman's union

Loved it. Wonderful world-building, Chabon never overplays Sitka and consequently it's a completely believable alternate reality. And on top of that it's a really good murder mystery with excellent antiheroes and excellent villains. 

euphoria

Enjoyed but wasn't blown away. Kind of overdone ending, not all that memorable even a week after finishing it.

the name of the rose

Eh, whatever. 

strangers drowning

Interesting but oddly unsatisfying. Not sure what more I could have wanted, perhaps a bit of a deeper reflection on how cultures have viewed do-gooders or saints over the centuries and why that might be different now. That said, Macfarquhar's refusal to overanalyze her subjects was probably the right choice. Also, I appreciated that some of the people she speaks about are well-known modern-day saints, like the guy who founded the leper colony in India or the nurse in Central America, and others are not famous but struggle with the same overwhelming drive to do good for others at their own emotional, psychological, financial expense.

Macfarquhar does discuss throughout (in chapters alternating with the essays describing her do-gooders) of the role of saints in society, why not everyone can be saints, and so on. Those parts felt tantalizing but short of real exploration or insight. Contrast with Awakenings, which is devastating.

little failure

Laugh-out-loud funny. I'm not a big memoir reader but I enjoyed this. There is something strange about reading someone's self-excoriation, a tension between what seems like real raw honesty and the self-love that has to precede writing about yourself in public. Similar to confessional stand-up, maybe.

books read 2016

1. Little Failure, by Gary Shteyngart
2. Strangers Drowning, by Larissa Macfarquhar
3. The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco
4. Euphoria, by Lily King
5. The Yiddish Policeman's Union, by Michael Chabon
6. Where'd You Go, Bernadette, by Maria Semple
7. The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, by Hilary Mantel
8. A Place of Greater Safety, by Hilary Mantel
9. Mottled Dawn, by Saadat Hassan Manto
10. In Persuasion Nation, by George Saunders
11. The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara
12. After the Prophet, by Lesley Hazleton
13. Call for the Dead, by John Le Carré
14. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, by Daniyal Mueenuddin
15. Kindred, by Octavia Butler
16. The Sixth Extinction, by Elizabeth Kolbert
17. The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant
18. Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman
19. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire
20. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman
21. Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, volume 1: The Structures of Everyday Life, by Fernand Braudel
22. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle
23. The Once and Future King, by T.H. White
24. The Givenness of Things, by Marilynne Robinson
25. Introduction to Card Magic, by Roberto Giobbi
26. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, by John Le Carre (nth time)
27. Managing to Change the World, by Alison Green and Jerry Hauser
28. Mr. Mercedes, by Stephen King
29. The Invention of Nature, by Andrea Wulf
30. Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi
31. The Trespasser, by Tana French
32. The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen

i'm gonna pray for you so hard

Read cousin Halley's play, having bought it for myself when it came out a few months ago. It's very dark and painful, which I suppose I knew already. It's also the first play I've read in a long time, and maybe the first contemporary (i.e. non-Shakespeare, non-Greek) play I've read since high school. The closeness of alignment between the script and the production surprised me, although I'm not sure why it did. Perhaps because in reading a work of prose, or even poetry, the way you're challenged to imaginatively invest in a scene is much more a collaboration between the author's writing itself and your own imagination. A play script is spare. 

strong poison

My first Dorothy Sayers. There is something very satisfying about a detective story well-told. This one isn't on the level of Holmes but it was fun to read all the same. 

the gap of time

Cute, enjoyed it. Wouldn't throw it to the top of anyone's list unless they were on the hunt for Shakespeare fan fic. The Winter's Tale is a pretty fucked-up story.

SPQR

Shockingly efficient overview of Rome from Romulus and mythical early history through the expansion of citizenship to all free residents of the empire by Caracalla in the early third century CE. Very informative. Still not quite sure why I read it.

the moor's account

Amazing story, meh book. Lots of telling rather than showing and narratively convenient coincidences. And heavy-handed foreshadowing. Still, I wanted to know how it ended.

I'm now at 17.5/37 books this year by women authors. Not quite 50% but pretty close.

the tombs of atuan

Pretty good, not great. Would recommend to any teenager. Nice, thoughtful commentary by Le Guin at the back.

room

Just finished this wonderful, gripping, creative book by Emma Donoghue. It's a bit like a much darker The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, in that it's a thriller told by a child narrator with an idiosyncratic way of looking at the world. The book is in two halves, both are good but the first was ultimately more satisfying to me than the second. 

rum punch

Also, I'm not done with Rum Punch yet, but my assessment so far is that it's what a Carl Hiaasen novel wants to be when it grows up. Don't get me wrong, I love Carl Hiaasen. But Leonard was on a different level.

Makes me want to watch Jackie Brown again.

last day

I'm sitting at an unoccupied desk in the office this morning, going through a backlog of red-flagged emails from the last two weeks and waiting to head over to the Ismaili Center for the Steering Committee meeting at 2. After that's over AV and I will go back to the Serena to talk about two things that have taken a back seat in year one of the project because he's been getting everything else rolling. Those things are: (1) the trust, which is the main innovation in the partnership and which we're finally starting to grind into gear in Afghanistan; and (2) the research and learning agenda. Output-level monitoring seems to be doing alright, but we set aside money for some higher-level work and we need to figure out what the heck that's going to be.

Then either one last quick workout and stretch before I fold myself into 15 hours of coach seating, or, if there's no time before dinner, just dinner. Then pack, then a few hours of sleep and hello DYU. My flight leaves at 5:45 AM so I'll leave the hotel at 4.

EDIT:

Ended up doing a quick workout, showering, and going to the Ukrainian place with a big crew. Nice place, although for all its apparent Western-ness, they only have squat toilets and to be honest I've never shat in one of those before. It was an experience. I'm sure I was doing it wrong. But after some arranging and some bracing, I made it work. Now sleepy even though it's only 10:15. Must pack, then must awaken at 3:50. Change money first. Yes.

disappointed

The helicopter got cancelled at the last minute due to rain in the mountains, so no trip to Khorog, no opening ceremony. Stuck in Dushanbe, doing ordinary work. It's okay, I expected that this would happened, but it's still a bit of a blow. Oh well, we really did everything we could to make it happen and the weather just did not cooperate.

The last couple of days have been productive, in particular the compliance review and planning process I went through with Focus Afghanistan colleagues yesterday. They'd flown up especially to meet with me, so I'm glad it went well and that we have some concrete action items to follow up on on both sides. I'd been planning to run the session with them based on the "working with USAID" PowerPoint that CS and I developed lo these many years ago for Pakistan and that I've used several times since. But then I remembered my adult education training from earlier this year, and thought harder about what we should really be getting out of our time together, and at the last minute I completely scrapped my prep and started over with a new plan. Good call on my part.

Last night we went to dinner at Salsa, the Mexican-and-whatever-else place that's a bit farther down from the office. It was surprisingly good -- I had a smoked salmon panini with pesto and cheese, the only decent fries I've ever eaten in Tajikistan, and tomato soup -- and they had Hoegaarden! Lovely time and because we left straight from work dinner was over by 8:30. We hopped in a taxi that was just parked in front of the restaurant and in very limited and broken Tajik got him to drop each of us off in turn. Me last. We were five and he had a buddy with him, so the buddy got in the trunk (hatchback) and we went four across in the back seat. No problem, except buddy had to get low when we drove past a couple of cops at one point. Total cost: TJS 30, or about $4.50.

Now I'm going to go run a little bit and stretch, then eat lunch (famished, did not eat a full breakfast because I was rushing to get out the door for the airport), and then knuckle back down to the emails that I've been slogging through this morning.

Only big thing left is the steering committee tomorrow, and then it's home again, home again, jiggedy-jig.

the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy

Cute. Whatever.

well, then

Just finally had a call with our CEO in Pakistan. I was a little nervous as I've been thinking about it as a job interview, and we hadn't talked in a while. It was not a job interview. He's decided already that he wants me to be Director for Policy and Partnerships, overseeing a team of four or so. He just wanted to talk to me about the challenges he's facing, his vision for how to address them, and the timeline for strategy development. It's funny because a month or so ago the big-big boss told me that a job in Pakistan was in the bag for me if I wanted it, but I was not thinking Director. That's a VP-level role for us.

Now I'm sitting here just laughing and shaking my head.

Anyway, no promises from me, and I mentioned the turmoil at home and the likelihood that I'll need to stay there for a few months at least while things settle down post-MJ. He said of course, he understands, no problem. Then he asked me to start brainstorming questions to ask about structure, strategy, staffing, etc., so that we can get into all that the next time we talk. Which will be November, after his overall organizational structure and budget is approved. He wants me to come to ISB before the recruitment process is over to talk things through.

Wow.

coming into the country

A masterpiece. John McPhee is the jam. 

michigan - michigan state

It's 1:30 AM. I've watched the first quarter and a half or so and I am making the executive decision to pack it in. Work to do tomorrow. No alarm, though.

Go Blue.

back in dushanbe

After a half-fine, half-miserable 13.5-hour drive from Khorog to Dushanbe, which featured a flat tire, a splitting headache (not a migraine, though) and some nausea that peaked with me throwing up into a triangular hole in the ground in the bathroom of the restaurant where we stopped to eat dinner in Kulob, I woke up this morning feeling fine.

The days since my last post were filled with visits and conversations with people in villages along the Panj and up and down the tributary valleys. We had tea, dried fruit and nuts, and some of the purest, most delicious honey I've ever eaten with the head of a village that lost 80% of its farmland to this summer's floods. We were treated to poems, number exercises, and a dance by preschool kids in a village where we are going to help build a seven-kilometer-long irrigation and drinking water pipe. We talked to a group of women who have begun packaging and selling dried mulberries and apricots, and one woman who is putting the rest of them to shame in terms of the volume of her production. We walked through a dairy processing plant in Khorog and learned about the major supply and storage problems that the company is facing. We ate enough Tajik food to be polite along the road -- Tajiks are extremely hospitable and it's unthinkable to take up their time and then refuse tea -- and then a ton of Indian food once we got to Khorog and checked into the Delhi Darbar Hotel and Restaurant.

The weather was cool and crisp and the valleys are gorgeous, green oases beneath the steep brown mountains. Poplar trees are everywhere, turning from green to bright yellow. Then the weather turned on us at just the wrong time, as we were supposed to fly back to Dushanbe on Friday but switched to Land Cruiser at the last minute because the flight had been cancelled. It doesn't take much for that to happen, unfortunately, just low clouds through the mountains. And because the weather is supposed to be spotty through the beginning of next week, our return trip to Khorog for the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the cross-border transmission lines that is one of the two anchoring events of my trip had to be postponed again. Our AID colleagues can't do the one-day drive that we do all the time because of security regulations, and they're not allowed to fly commercial on the Dushanbe-Khorog route. So AV and I (mostly him) spent some time in the car trying to figure out what the hell to do and playing phone tag with the key players on each side. Mobile phone service is not great in big chunks of the Panj valley.

In an hour and a half AV and I are going to meet with the owner of a fruit bar processing company whose Khorog facility we visited the night before last. Then I'll go to the gym, eat lunch, and get cracking on the work that's piled up over the week.

Here are a few photos from the trip.

Breakfast with a side of bodybuilding in Kulob

Hundred-year-old graves exposed when this hill washed away in July's flash floods; the black line was the former level of the ground

A waterfall across the Panj River in Afghanistan

School kids on their lunch break in Yazgulom village

A typical Tajik lunch, for guests anyway, in Yazgulom; lunch is served on a topjan, a raised platform with cushions on it that are ubiquitous in the Tajik countryside; boiled goat and turkey not shown (the goat was surprisingly delicious but I did not sample the turkey)

Dried fruit storage facility under construction

This is what 12.5 metric tons of dried mulberry looks like

The awesome promotional poster for Delhi Darbar in Khorog

Dairy processing plant in Khorog; I sampled some strawberry yogurt, which was delicious

Replacing a flat somewhere between Khorog and Darvoz

feeling more chipper

Looks like I'm going to be able to come back to Dushanbe on Friday instead of being alone in Khorog over the weekend, which is good. I can get on the day trip (helicopter-style) back over to Khorog on Monday. That means both a less lonely, less logistically complicated and burdensome to others, and likely a more productive weekend ahead. Good.

Also, today was fun. We drove around -- AV, Parviz, and I, along with Ahmad the driver and Jeonjon the regional market development guy -- to visit people all over Kulob and Shuroobod. We went to a micro-lending organization; a business development service center, where we heard an oddly unambitious business plan (more on that in a sec); and a couple of common interest groups, which are like proto-coops: one for honey and one for apples and pears. I got some stuff on video and took some photos but will need to be more proactive tomorrow about getting good quotes and keeping stray hands and shoulders out of the shots. And it's nice to talk to people about the work that they do, and what they appreciate about the help we've given them, and what more they need to expand or solidify.

About that business plan: The director of this BDSC told us he plans to start a sewing workshop with 12 women who have been trained at the BDSC. He plans to pull in revenues of 62,000 somoni a year, which is less than $10,000. His profit he expects to be about 23,000 somoni, or about $3,700. We pushed a little to try to make sure nothing was getting lost in translation, but it seems not. And then AV, Parviz, and I puzzled over it for a long time afterward. The math doesn't make sense. After figuring in equipment costs, taxes, and all that, you're talking about paying your employees something like $600 per year. This is a poor country but that is really, really low; the median per capita income here is just under $3,000. So he's talking about roughly the equivalent of paying someone $4,500 a year in the US.

Anyway, I'm wiped out now. Going to try to stay up a little while longer just to make sure I sleep through the night. 6:50 wakeup tomorrow and we're on the road again.

frustrated

I really didn't have to come this week at all. The anchor event that was scheduled for this week got pushed at the last minute. That is frustrating. All the riding around this week will be fine and dandy, and I'll get to film some stuff that will be useful for comms and that will be appreciated. But overall the planning for this trip has been haphazard and last-minute, and that's partially my fault. Didn't have time to think about it with all the turmoil in DC. Once I found out that the opening ceremony had been postponed I should have changed my ticket.

It's still a privilege to be out here and it'll be cool to talk with people and look around. And I surely have plenty of work to do and will try to find some other ways to be useful while I'm here. Maybe I'll try to take a day trip out to the hot springs next weekend or see if there are any other day trips to be made. Or maybe I'll go to Afghanistan, if I can get a visa. We shall see. 

sunday

Body decided to wake up a little before 6. Not ideal but miles better than 4:30. That hour and a half is the difference between functionality through to a normal bedtime and light misery. I spent the first couple hours of the day gleefully reading recaps of Michigan's destruction of Northwestern and wishing that I'd been able to watch the game.

On the elevator down to breakfast I ran into a consultant that's visiting PE right now to help them with their insurance claim after the flooding this past summer. He joined us for dinner last night so we ended up eating breakfast together. Very interesting guy, insurance is one of those Very Important Things that I don't know nearly enough about.

I got in a decent workout, read a bit, watched a little TV (BBC interview with Edward Snowden), and have been working on the compliance training that I'll give next weekend in Khorog. Need to figure out a way to make it less dry, some kind activity for people to do. And now I'm procrastinating by writing this and doing other work-related odd jobs, such as thinking about whom should be notified of the recent management changes.

omar khayyam restaurant

Much more pleasant than the Hunting Lodge. There was moderately loud music, and then a band that was also moderately loud and smoove but not awful, and then slightly louder music. I was able to converse without quite shouting the whole time. God help me but I ate some salad, here's hoping my gut can handle it. Now I'm exhausted and gonna take some benadryl and read until I pass out. No alarm tomorrow but I'd be shocked if I sleep much past 7 AM. Here's hoping I make it even that far.

Also, I truly love David Bowie's song "Sound and Vision." It has been stuck in my head since I left for IAD on Thursday night. A good one to have stuck up there.

c

Back in Dushanbe, just got up from a non-nap (eyes closed, no sleep) of about an hour. I'm groggy but not sleepy, which isn't surprising because my body thinks it's the morning and a good time to be awake but also hasn't slept more than two hours at a stretch since Wednesday. Pleasant business breakfast this morning with DJ and AV and one of DJ's employees, who was mostly quiet during the meal. Many topics to discuss and some progress made on a couple of things, at least in terms of knowing what we each need to do on them. AV and I caught up a bit more after breakfast and then he left to do work and I came upstairs to clear my inbox and rest.

Now it's about 5:15 PM and I'm going to head to the gym to get a sweat up, take up some time, and wake myself up for dinner at 7. Would prefer to stay in tonight but DJ was insistent and it's rude to turn down such friendly hospitality. Hoping to at least be back at the hotel by 9.

Later:
Over the past couple of weeks I have missed C desperately, felt more strongly the heartache (such a physically apt word) and longing and regret and worry that I've felt since the day after Memorial Day. The intensity of that feeling is strange to me: I am not used to being unguarded, to feeling my emotional defenses being stretched thin enough to see through. But here I am, feeling just that. And also feeling that losing her is a terrible blow, an even more painful one now than when it surprised me (my willful blindness, not her sneak attack) in May.

She and I talked just now and I unloaded all that on her: the heartache; my regret at holding back from her, which I always did a little bit; my immaturity as represented in my inability to bring up concerns about our relationship with her, waiting instead for her to be the adult and bring them up herself; my desire to be intimate with her in a way that I couldn't or just plain didn't before. She was taken aback, I think, and did not know how to respond. I'm not sure what I expected, or whether I really expected anything. She said the same things she said in May, which makes sense as she is thoughtful and resolute. The difference now is that rather than being unsure of myself I am sure now that I want to commit to her, if she also wants that, and I said so.

Leaving open the possibility of an expat life -- something I don't even really want anyway, with or without C -- is not worth the cost if the cost is being without her. The itch is still there to be scratched, I have to go for a little while, but I want that scratch to be temporary if it means we can be together. It sucks a great deal that I'm only realizing this now, only telling her this now, and she pointed out how much better it would have been to say those things a year ago. But my brain and heart took their own time, and that time was long. I hope not too long. In any case at least now we've talked about it and she knows how I feel and can take some time to think about it, and maybe I can breathe a little. The sadness has been suffocating.

Now I've got to rally, get dressed, and go to dinner. I hope the music isn't too earsplitting, the last place DJ took us out to was unpleasantly loud.

jk jk jk

I fucking love John McPhee. Coming Into the Country is wonderful.

Brought that, Elmore Leonard's classic Rum Punch (on which "Jackie Brown" is based), and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (which I've inexplicably never read) on this trip. Plus per usual I bought The Economist at IAD. Always good  to catch up on tidbits from random countries I never think about and to get a (Euro-style) liberal view on the dollar as a global currency and whatnot. 

keeping track

Three-quarters of the way through 2015 and I've read 31 books. Just started number 32 (Coming Into the Country, although I may sub it out for something that lends itself to more stop-start reading than McPhee unleashed). Of those, 15.5 are by women (one co-authorship, Law and the Rise of Capitalism, I'm counting as 0.5), and nine are by people of color. Doing pretty well on the don't-just-read-books-by-white-men score.

paradise

Loved it, although I'm certain that plenty of the references and nuances went over my head. Morrison is an unbelievable writer and at times she can go word for word with pretty much anyone else, ever. The story is spooky and sad and somehow easier to understand than Beloved, which I also loved. It meanders and builds slowly and by the time I was 70 or 80 pages of the end she'd tightened the noose and I could hardly put the book down. Took longer to read than novels usually do because of the quality and density of the prose.

between the world and me

Yes. Toni Morrison is right. Brilliant. 

the warmth of other suns

Gripping and enlightening.

beach books - update

Well, it turns out serious history is not the best beach reading. I knew that and got all ambitious anyway. Replaced my planned books with some Agatha Christie and Carl Hiaasen. Much better. I liked the Hiaasen book - Tourist Season - a lot. 

beach books are gonna be

The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson
Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Midaq Alley, by Naguib Mahfouz
and something else TBD

the amber spyglass

Weakest of the trilogy, in large part because it's so heavy-handed. There's an epigram for every chapter, which is absurd. And then the characters get real, real preachy at the end as Pullman drives home his points about the Fall being essential to wisdom and maturity and about the Church being bad bad bad.

Still a great story, with great adventures and full of imagination. He's up there in the top tier of world-building writers.

Also, because of the way the book ends, I've been thinking about my daemon (roughly, my inner self) and what form it would take if I could see it and interact with it. I kind of want to say it'd be a raven.

the subtle knife

Re-read in 1.5 days. Lost some sleep this weekend over it. What a story!

the blind assassin

I've run out of steam. Seems to be the same problem I have with Alice Munro: I just can't figure out how to care about the plight of early-to-mid-20th-century Canadian women to whom nothing interesting happens and who do nothing interesting. "Oh no! I was married off to a rich guy because Father's business was failing, and his sister is really mean! Also, my sister is very mysterious and a sad figure who mystifies me." SO WHAT.

However, the secondary story is still fun and interesting, so I will probably read the rest of it and just ignore the main narrative. Counting it as a half-read book when I get to the end.

EDIT: 3/4 read. BOOOOOOOORING. And badly written.

beautiful paragraphs

Someone on FB shared a Reddit thread of people posting their favorite sentences or paragraphs from literature. I don't know that I have a single favorite, but the first thing that jumped to mind was the opening of Primo Levi's story "A Tranquil Star."

Once upon a time, somewhere in the universe very far away from here, lived a tranquil star, which moved tranquilly in the immensity of the sky, surrounded by a crowd of tranquil planets about which we have not a thing to report. This star was very big and very hot, and its weight was enormous: and here a reporter's difficulties begin. We have written "very far," "big," "hot," enormous": Australia is very far, an elephant is big and a house is bigger, this morning I had a hot bath, Everest is enormous. It's clear that something in our lexicon isn't working. 

If in fact this story must be written, we must have the courage to eliminate all adjectives that tend to excite wonder: they would achieve the opposite effect, that of impoverishing the narrative. For a discussion of stars our language is inadequate and seems laughable, as if someone were trying to plow with a feather. It's a language that was born with us, suitable for describing objects more or less as large and long-lasting as we are; it has our dimensions, it's human. It doesn't go beyond what our senses tell us. Until two or three hundred years ago, small meant the scabies mite; there was nothing smaller, nor, as a result, was there an adjective to describe it. The sea and the sky were big, in fact equally big; fire was hot. Not until the thirteenth century was the need felt to introduce into daily language a term suitable for counting "very" numerous objects, and, with little imagination, "million" was coined; a little later, with even less imagination, "billion" was coined, with no care being taken to give it a precise meaning, since the term today has different values in different countries.

Not even with superlatives does one get very far: how many times higher than a high tower is a very high tower? Nor can we hope for help from disguised superlatives, like "immense," "colossal," "extraordinary": to relate the things that we want to relate here, these adjectives are hopelessly unsuitable, because the star we started from was ten times as big as our sun, and the sun is "many" times as big and heavy as our Earth, whose size so overwhelms our own dimensions that we can represent it only with a violent effort of the imagination. There is, of course, the slim and elegant language of numbers, the alphabet of the powers of ten: but then this would not be a story in the sense in which this story wants to be a story; that is, a fable that awakens echoes, and in which each of us can perceive distance reflections of himself and of the human race.

the golden compass and a poetry handbook

Mary Oliver's book is a paragon of clear writing. Makes me want to write poetry but evidently not enough to practice every day. Perhaps it's time to change that.

The Golden Compass is such a terrific story, with such vivid and wild characters. I read it in about three days this time around (I've lost track of how many times I've read it since Dad first read them out loud to us 15+ years ago) and, even knowing just what's coming at each twist and turn, I could hardly put it down. A few times, reading in bed, I said, "Oh fuck yeah!" or variants thereof, aloud to myself.

Taking a break now to read The Blind Assassin, which is okay so far if a little slow. Debating whether to leave Subtle Knife and Amber Spyglass for the beach and start into The Warmth of Other Suns and then Between the World and Me after I'm done with Atwood.

a favorite poem, which i come back to over and over

Musee des Beaux ArtsW. H. Auden About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

the remains of the day

Brilliant, a work of genius. To so profoundly inhabit the mind of an invented character that you can convey the character's lack of self-knowledge without beating the reader over the head with it, and while remaining humorous and enlightening throughout, is an astounding feat. Hard to believe the same man wrote this and The Buried Giant, which is both totally different and a messy mediocrity.

the tremor of forgery

Enjoyed. The event that shapes the book doesn't happen until well into the action so there is a lot of time to develop the characters and the scene, which Highsmith does well. And once the key event happens, the full impact takes a long time to land. Very, very subtle.

orlando

I keep wanting to type "Orlanda" for some reason. Enjoyed, more accessible than I was expecting, although that may be because the last time I attempted Woolf was in high school with To the Lighthouse. I am probably better equipped to read challengingly dense prose now than I was at 16. Woolf could write the buhjeezus out of a metaphor, a sentence, a paragraph. Not gonna go around casually recommending this to people but if someone is interested in a hundred-year-old masterpiece of gender-nonconforming art, Orlando is pretty great. 

notes of a native son

Arch, brilliant, startlingly timeless. Some of the essays could, with minimal editing, be published tomorrow as contemporary commentary on American life. 

snow white

Borrowed from C. Loved it, what a playful genius Barthelme was. His writing reminds me of action painting, in the sense that it looks easy but was (1) surely not easy in practice and (2) in fact never done until somebody came along and thought, "Why don't I try this?"

Now C and I are on indefinite hiatus and I am very sad. Weight on (in) my chest. At least I gave her the book back first. She still has a couple of mine. 

one of us

A page-turner. Gripping, horrifying. At the end of the day, an extraordinary report: Seierstad is a journalist and so she refrains from overt analysis. That's fine but I found myself wanting a little more -- I guess that's for a different book. Without saying so explicitly, she comes down on the side of those who don't think Breivik is/was psychotic. I followed the story a little at the time and so there were not a lot of surprises -- Breivik's early life was not happy, but there's no shocking revelation in there. The victims and their families that Seierstad highlights were also pretty normal in their context. One thing did take me aback, though: just how unbelievably incompetent the Norwegian police and military response to the bomb blast and then the shootings was. Seierstad clearly shares the anger of some of the victims' families that the response was botched so badly at so many points. 

good omens

Pretty funny, sweethearted. This is obviously impossible to prove but I think I'd have known it was written by two people even if the authors' names hadn't been on the cover. It feels like a collaboration, like two people enjoying themselves by going back and forth to create a book that makes them laugh. Which is, in fact, what it is.

bad feminist

Meh. Couple of interesting essays, including one about 12 Years a Slave. The rest, well, it reads like a lightly-edited collection of an intelligent and moderately funny person's blog posts. Lot of juxtaposition-as-analysis, not a lot of actual deep thinking or close observation about anything. That's fine, I just had higher expectations given the praise Gay and the book have gotten. 

the reluctant fundamentalist

Enjoyed, quick read. Probably won't stick with me very strongly. I wonder how someone who does not already accept that other people in the world have reasons to be angry at the US would react to this story. 9/11 was horrifying, but morally speaking I don't think it's that different from the CIA remote bombing a wedding in FATA. Group A has decided that Group B is the enemy, and must be attacked violently. Group A knows that civilians will be killed in the attack. Group A has decided that killing people who are minding their own goddamn business is okay. Group A is morally repugnant.

My guess is that many Americans, including some I know personally, would want to punch me for even raising that possibility. And most Pakistanis would nod.

Interesting to have read two books in such quick succession written in the second person (the other being, of course, Gilead). 

being mortal

A call to action at all levels, from the upper reaches of the health system to medical schools to individual doctors and health care workers, to every day individuals. I feel like it should be part of medical school curricula. C and I spent some time in the park yesterday reading and enjoying the sunshine and we talked a bit about how physicians have gone from being paternalistic deciders to informers who let their patient/customer make health decisions. This is a theme Gawande addresses throughout the book, and he confesses that he himself is most comfortable in the "informer" role. He brings up the Zeke and (??? forget her name) Emanuel piece where they describe a third way for doctors to be, in which the doctor's role is to find out what the patient most desires, and then guide the patient to that outcome to the extent possible.

System broken -- amazing the extent to which Gawande makes this case, he says outright that the medical approach to end-of-life care has "failed." Needs fixing. Fixes are simple but not easy. The end.

Written so much in the New Yorker house style. 

gilead

Finished late last night, after Duke beat Wisconsin for championship number five. Go Duke.

Gilead was wonderful, I'm not sure why it took me so long to read it. Beautifully written and so deep I couldn't quite make out the bottom. Very, very much to ponder with respect to god and religion and our place in the universe, without ever feeling pedantic or obvious. And what a device, to set the entire book as unaddressed letters from a dying father to his young son! How did she do it? More Marilynne Robinson in the future.

the buried giant

In the end, only okay. Enjoyed for a while but it kind of petered out and in the end was somehow both muddled and heavy-handed and obvious. I read James Woods's review in the New Yorker after finishing the book and while I liked it more than he did -- e.g. I didn't mind the kind of silly dialogue, which irked him -- I agree with some of his objections.

field work

Poetry is different from prose.

slouching toward bethlehem

To paraphrase myself in a recent email: Didion is an absolutely wonderful writer. The essays are so closely observed. And it's amazing to think that she was right about the age I am now when she was writing these. She seems somehow more mature and composed than a 28 or 30-year-old has any right to be. 

And boy, she sure did look down on the hippies.

Eula Biss and Didion are very different stylistically and temperamentally but Biss is also a tremendously insightful and thoughtful essayist so I'm finding it hard not to compare them. 

ghettoside

Fabulously well-reported and well-told, compelling, frustrating and sad, important. Makes the argument that black communities are plagued not just by intrusive and unnecessarily violent policing of small crimes, but also by massive underpolicing of violent crimes. Catching and punishing criminals who commit violent assaults, goes the argument, in effect creates law and order.

The state monopoly on violence does not currently extend to many majority-black neighborhoods in big cities, and so segments of those communities police themselves, as people living outside the reach of a strong state have ever since strong states became a thing. Violent gangs are a symptom, not a cause. To end the grip that gang violence has on places like Watts and Compton, the state must decide that it cares enough about victims of that violence to aggressively pursue and imprison perpetrators of major violence. It's very hard for it to do so now because its historical indifference and underattention to major violence and heavy-handed approach to minor crimes and policing, especially of young black men, has created serious and well-founded mistrust of the criminal justice system.

It would be really interesting to explore the parallel between the quasi-tribal/familial gang system in many US cities with the tribal systems in places like southern Afghanistan.