| 1 minute you’re on top of the world, the next some secretary is running you over with a lawnmower |
[Jun. 2nd, 2012|12:08 am] |
1. I went to a real live music concert for the first time in... years. It was a pop/dance music festival type show, with lots of hit artists coming on to do brief sets: Adam Lambert, Enrique Iglesias, Flo Rida, Pitbull, Carmen, and Dev. There was definitely a lot of waiting around as all the sets were broken down and the musical instruments carted off/set up in between acts, which made the concert run quite long (6 hours about) but thankfully I brought a ton of reading material, some snacks, and waited it out. All in all, I am happy I went since I will always love pop music unironically and without shame.
2. I also went to see another musical variety act of sorts in the form of Born for Broadway, which is a show put on by various Broadway theater actors and performers with all proceeds going to the Dana & Christopher Reeve Foundation. It was a good show, with rather sassy hosts and a good cause. I also ended up sitting a seat away from the current kid that plays Billy Elliot (who performed in the first act of the show and spent the second act checking twitter for mentions of himself with his girlfriend next to me).
3. In the vein of Broadway, I went to see Venus in Fur, which starred Nina Arianda and Hugh Dancy. Dancy was solid in portraying the prototypical neurotic Manhattan playwright, but Arianda was nominated for a Tony and rightfully so--she was an absolute dynamo and fantastic to watch. I used to only really go to musicals on Broadway, but now I'm glad I'm slowly expanding my viewing to include non-musical plays (mostly thanks to Audience Rewards tickets, admittedly).
4. I planted some new herbs in my empty herb pots. A few months back, I attempted to plant cilantro, thyme, and sage. The sage fought the good fight and managed to sprout a few sickly inches before succumbing to the wintry cold, the thyme never made it past the dirt, and the cilantro has actually managed to grow and blossom. I've tied to it a chopstick since it was dropping quite a bit before, but at least it has managed to stay alive. It doesn't smell like much though, which is a little disappointing, considering my basil plant (which is still enormous) is one of the most pungent plants I've ever encountered. Ah well.
But otherwise, my plants seem to be doing pretty well. I did a little cleaning up, trimming, and clearing away of dead leaves, so they're all ready to receive the warmer weather.
5. This blog: Tom & Lorenzo does a fantastic series of style analysis posts of costuming all the women on Mad Men, from the majors like Peggy, Betty, & Joan to smaller roles like Bobbie, Kitty, and the Sterling women. Really thoughtful and interesting posts, especially if you enjoy the fashion of the show. |
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| An end, but not to everything |
[May. 29th, 2012|07:38 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Odessa, Ukraine | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  jazzed | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Lenich & Kirya - Pinkie's Brew (Russian Gypsy Jazz Cover) | ] |
Odessites are marvelous people.
Well, that’s that. Traveled down to Zaporizhzhya on Wednesday, home of the Cossacks of legend, for one final meeting with my Kiva Coordinator. Conducted my exit interview and final debriefing over Skype on Thursday. Sent in my final surveys today, the last deliverable I had to complete. And just like that, I am now no longer a Kiva Fellow.
How odd.
I’ve been abroad for almost nine months at this point, over double the tenure of most Kiva Fellows. At training in San Francisco last August, I became fast friends with the amazing fellows of KF16; we all shipped out together, found our feet together, grew into our roles, rode the highs and surfed the troughs – and then I watched them all go home until I was the only one left in the field. In the back of my mind, it feels like the same is happening again now: that everyone else’s fellowship is coming to a close, but that those things don’t apply to me, that all the other names and faces are ephemeral but I will, as ever, remain. I still haven’t grasped that the curtain has dropped. You mean Kiva Fellowships end? You mean Kiva Fellows eventually have to go home?
Well, this one isn’t, at least not yet. I do believe I have a month’s worth of travel left in me. A few days each in Belarus and Moldova, followed by a plane back down to the Caucasus, my current most fascinating region of the world; a week and a half discovering western Georgia, from the Black Sea resort of Batumi to the absurdly gorgeous 20,000-foot peaks of Svaneti, followed by as much time in Armenia, the mysterious and beautiful country that was forbidden to me while I was working in enemy Azerbaijan but which I badly want to see. And then, on June 28th, the United States of America.
But no, I’m still beating around the bush, because this isn’t the heart of my trip. What I plan to do, really, is a Grand Tour of Disputed Territories of the Former Soviet Union: a circuit of all the breakaway territories and occupied zones that have seceded from their original countries and now exist as bizarre half-states with their own governments, their own currencies, and their own delusions of independence. Why? Because I am an abnormal person, and I find this more appealing than, say, a Grand Tour of Italian Art Museums, or a Grand Tour of London Pubs, or a Grand Tour of Anywhere My Travel Guide Told Me to Go. I try not to play by the rules.
First comes Transnistria, a narrow Russian-speaking strip of land that has seceded from Moldova and rejoined the USSR – yes, I said the USSR – a phantasmagoria of concrete apartment blocks and Lenin-glorifying murals and stores named “Meat No. 5” and “Milk No. 17,” where bribery remains a daily occurrence and service still comes with a snarl. Then beautiful seaside Abkhazia, once the equivalent of the Georgian Riviera, now a restive Muslim region that attempted to violently secede from Georgia in the 1990s and, in 2008, jumped at the chance to get itself occupied and de facto annexed by Russia. Then South Ossetia, the mountainous patch of land over which Russia and Georgia fought their 2008 war, now a Russian-occupied bulge of land only 30 kilometers from the Georgian capital (this is the only politically unstable territory on the list, and I pledge to monitor the situation and play it safe in deciding whether to go at all). And finally – Nagorno-Karabakh. The southwestern corner of Azerbaijan, currently occupied by Armenian troops. Epicenter of the destructive 1990s war that bears its name. Former home to many of my coworkers in Azerbaijan, nearly all of whom had to drop their lives to flee the Armenian advance and have been unable to return home for twenty years. The fairy-tale land, locked away behind a hostile frontline, around which my entire Kiva Fellowship in Azerbaijan revolved. The thought of finally getting to see it sends chills down my spine.
How many people have a list of Countries Visited that requires asterisks and footnotes that ruminate on the definition of a country? Mine will.
By the way, do you remember those Kiva blog posts I wrote about Nagorno-Karabakh that got rejected because Kiva didn’t want to touch that ongoing war with a ten-foot pole? Well, now that I’m no longer a Kiva Fellow, I’m free to put them up; watch this space in the days to come. But right now, I am in sun-kissed Odessa, city of jazzmen and gangsters and bathers and promenaders, and its streets are calling my name. I bid you farewell. |
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| Different Worlds: Two Perspectives on Borrower Privacy from Indonesia and Ukraine |
[May. 25th, 2012|08:48 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Odessa, Ukraine | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  accomplished | ] |
| [ | music |
| | DeVotchKa - How It Ends | ] |
Yekaterina, a HOPE Ukraine client and Kiva borrower from Melitopol, Ukraine, seems uneasy with the camera being pointed at her face.
Another one of my official Kiva Stories from the Field posts has been published! This one's a collaboration with another KF17 Kiva Fellow, Heather Sullivan in Indonesia, and it's a bit of a compare/contrast exercise between the two extremely different cultures we work in. Here's the intro:
Different Worlds: Two Perspectives on Borrower Privacy from Indonesia and Ukraine
When not sampling local delicacies or fording swollen rivers to visit borrowers, Kiva Fellows occasionally find themselves stuck in the office, chatting on Skype and sharing experiences (both raucous and ruminative) from the field. In one recent conversation, the two of us, Heather and Chris, discovered that we were facing nearly opposite sets of problems surrounding the issue of borrower privacy. While Chris’s field partner in Ukraine was finding it hard to convince suspicious borrowers that sharing their photos and stories on Kiva would cause them no harm, Heather was struggling to convey to her Indonesian MFI’s clients that perhaps they shouldn’t be so nonchalant about how their information might be shared. What follows is a joint blog exploring some of the roots of those cultural differences—and their consequences for Kiva and its partner MFIs.
It's significantly denser and less story-oriented than some of my past posts, but give it a shot! I think we've stumbled across some interesting insights into the historical and social factors that make Indonesians and Ukrainians so different from each other.
And for some lighter fare: Over the past month or so, I've contributed to several group posts on the Kiva blog that I haven't yet highlighted here. Check them out below:
Hello Spring: It's Time to Celebrate (compiled by Kiyomi Beach)
A bunch of Kiva Fellows got together and submitted our stories and pictures from various springtime celebrations throughout the world - including my own musings on the two Easters of western Ukraine (we celebrate both the Catholic and Orthodox versions here). I'm really happy with the three paragraphs I wrote for this one.
Lost in Translation (compiled by Philip Issa)
In this one, several of us from around the world engaged in collective laughter therapy by writing down our most embarrassing mistakes trying to conduct Kiva work in the local language. My own extended, actually kind of mortifying foot-in-mouth from Azerbaijan is second on the list.
Home Is Where the Fellow Is (written by Micaela Browning)
As Kiva Fellows, we generally get sent to our host countries for only four months at a time. That can make it hard for us to find housing... which means that we tend to get desperate and wind up living in some really weird places. I've spotlighted Micaela's hilarious writing here before, and her Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous take on my old apartment in Baku is just as classy as ever.
That's all I got! Go read something! |
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| Am I supposed to just scratch the surface of Channing Tatum's meteoric rise? |
[May. 20th, 2012|03:12 am] |
1. Had a beautiful day yesterday. Went to Central Park Zoo for the first time despite having passed it literally dozens of times over the years. It was small but featured some surprisingly nice exhibits: an aviary, a polar bear (hiding in the shade), lemurs, mongeese, puffins (so cute), and a eurasian eagle-owl. There were also some nice outdoor pools, one with a group of snow monkeys and the other in the center of the zoo with sea lions. I got to see a sea lion feeding which was quite fun, as the trainers all had the sea lions do tricks and the commentary was very interesting.
I also went into the "4D" theater to see a very brief BBC planet earth clip on polar bears and penguins. In addition to 3D glasses, there's also wind and snow and some water that gets sprayed on you during the show to simulate the harsh conditions of the arctic tundra. Interesting stuff.
2. I sat around Central Park Zoo for a while and then walked down to MOMA for Free Friday. Museums usually have excellent food and the MOMA's food is especially good, in my opinion. I got the cheese and salumi tasting plate that came with: 1 salted meat (prosciutto di Parma), 2 dry cured meats, 3 cheeses, an assortment of olives, and some flatbread. Everything was flavorful and intense--particularly the goat cheese and the sheep cheese that I tried--and very tasty as I sipped my homemade hot chocolate. Yum.
It was also nice to see the changing exhibits in the museum again. I haven't been in a few years, so there was an interesting exhibit on the foreclosure/housing crisis, and some projects proposed by major architectural firms for rehabilitating hard hit suburbs adjacent to major cities like NY and LA. There were scale models and photo mock ups and interesting descriptions of the various visions the firms presented: eco-friendly and sustainable, mixed housing units, injecting more nature amidst old factory towns--really fascinating stuff.
There was also a Cindy Sherman retrospective going on, which I enjoyed more than I thought I would. It was definitely interesting to see pieces in the context of her entire oeuvre, and to see the various ideas she toyed with throughout her life. |
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