athens, 31 may

so i decided not to go to an island after all. and really, that's okay with me. instead i'm lounging around athens, taking in the city slowly and enjoying the off-and-on weather. i've made some tentative plans for today and tomorrow: today, go back to the flea market and buy some nice shoes i saw; go to the acropolis; walk to the top of the highest hill and get a nice view. tomorrow, get up early-ish; take the metro to the seaturtle recovery center; go to the beach. if it rains, i'll walk in the rain goddamnit. thursday my flight out is at noon and gets in at 4; 12 hours on a plane. yum.

i've met some really nice people here. my roommates (5 guys=stinky) are pretty cool i guess. two of them are brothers from new mexico, and i guess i've been hanging out with them most. jenny was cool, but she's gone now. ariel is from miami and now is in new york at nyu. lexi, who works at the hostel, is coming shopping with me today. i met a nice local guy yesterday too, so now i know way more history about the acropolis than i ever wanted.

the hostel i'm staying in has a roof bar. since it was so nice last night, costa (one of the guys who works here) opened it up and gave everyone a free "welcome" shot of ouzo (gross) when they came up, and they were only 50 cents after that until 9. beers and drinks are also pretty cheap here, at 2 or 3 euro. they had a stereo set up with an ipod connector, and people could plug their ipods in and costa would pick from them. almost the entire hostel, and most of the staff, were upstairs drinking and milling. the roof has a great view of the acropolis, and it's all lit up at night, which makes it look way better than it does during the day. i spent most of the evening up there except for when i convinced nick to come down to the corner souvlaki place and eat, since i was starving. it was a nice, chill, fun night. when people decided to go out to the bar, i snuck upstairs and went to bed, classic sai style.

this is probably the most poorly-written post that i've put up in a while. i'm tired, though, and a bit restless, so i'm going to excuse myself and not feel guilty. it'll be really nice to go home.

athens, 29 may

bye bye turkey, hello greece, land of olives and souvlaki and the greek orthodox church. my last days in istanbul were quite pleasant. there was a last night of dancing, saturday night, with all the cool people from PH and friends. i had a pretty early flight to athens this morning with eleonora, who stayed in the airport to wait for her mom while i tried to decipher the metro ticket system. eventually, defeated by technology, i just asked at the ticket counter. i almost fell asleep on the train but managed to (1) not miss my stop, and (2) not get on a train going the wrong way. success all around, i'd say.

now i'm at the hostel, sitting in their lounge-ish area, and blogging, because it's FUCKING RAINING! actually, it's not raining right now, but i'm pretty sure it's going to start again soon, and actually i don't feel quite up to touristing at the moment. i'm tired and a little grumpy, surrounded by chirpy young americans traveling on their parents' pocketbooks. see--that was the crankiness coming out, right there.

this was my plan:
1. sunday: arrive in athens. see the acropolis; go to the flea market. shower. sleep early and a lot.
2. monday: take 3-1/2 hour hydrafoil ride to naxos island (one of the cyclades). arrive after midday. find lodging; rent bicycle; get acquainted with island. eat. sleep.
3. tuesday: beach. beach. beach.
4. wednesday: take 6-hour morning ferry back to athens. arrive in early evening. go to movie. sleep.
5. thursday: fly.

but this is how things have developed:
1. it rained from the moment i decided to go outside. i hooked up with some other hostel-dwellers and braved the rain to eat some yummy food at a nearby joint. got all soaked. then it stopped raining. so, yeah, no flea market or acropolis. maybe i'll go to the acropolis tonight (it's really quite close).
2. when it's windy (as it's supposed to be this week), hydrafoils don't run at all, and ferries can be erratic. so if it were nice tomorrow, and i took the boat out, i might get stranded on the island and have to fly out to make my thursday flight. that would be both expensive and inconvenient, and sometimes even the planes don't run in the wind. that would really really suck.
3. i'm actually really very tired. my whole reasoning for going to an island was to beach it up, but if it's going to rain anyway then there might not be any point--i might as well stay around here (there are beaches here too, i think, just in case), explore all the sights, take it easy, and relax. that's sounding more and more appealing.

there's internet here, so i'm finally going to post all of the things i've written so far this trip. that should keep everyone occupied until i get back and start posting more regularly again.

i think my brain has turned partly to mush.

istanbul, 26 may

i've had access to the internet exactly once since i've been here: using someone else's computer during a coffee break in the hotel with wireless internet. so, no blogging entries so far. but it wouldn't have really mattered, because i've been running around so much that i wouldn't have had the time or the energy to write things down every day. i know that notes from my travels are a huge part of this site, but it's so difficult to make blogging a priority when doing so would mean writing instead of doing. what's the point in that? so, this'll just have to do.

it's now the first day of our third of three meetings in istanbul. the staff meetings were half-days and easy because we don't have huge numbers of staff and i like almost everyone a lot. for our staff outing, we took a ferry to one of the prince islands, whose name i can't remember for the life of me. the ferry ride was beautiful. we stopped at a couple of islands before getting off, and they were so lush, with the lower parts covered with colorful villas. the island we went to had a no-car policy except for police and construction. so people get around this incredibly hilly city on foot, bikes, and horses. we took a horse carriage ride up to the top and back down, which was a little stinky but overall really very nice. after a fish dinner on the island, we took a (much shorter) ferry ride back to istanbul. these seagulls were flying right next to the ferry, catching bits of food that the riders would toss over to them. i got a couple good pictures, which i'll post on some free website when i get back. [thank you thank you thank you dave for lending me your camera. i'm terrible at taking pictures, and being able to take multiple shots and just save the best ones is really incredible. i think i'll have to make an investment in one when i get back.]

i've been hanging out mostly with the young'uns, but the old(er) folks have turned out to be just awesome. on monday night, daniel and kasia and virginija and heather and konstantin and matt and i went out dancing. we ended up at this place called garage, which played some good music but mostly just techno/house stuff (i never know the difference). man, these people can boogie! it was pretty great. we stayed there for a couple hours and danced all our stresses away. i realized that i hadn't been out dancing in AGES. i really want to do it more often in new york, if i can find a nice chill place where sketchy dudes won't be all up in my grill.

since belfast, i've gotten to know matt and erin a hundred times better. that's not to say that i know either of them well, and i certainly don't see much of them outside of work and work-related travel. but they are just so much fucking fun. from the beginning of the week i've been seeing more of them than almost anyone else, and it's great. i've seen quite a bit of danielle, which is also nice since she's leaving soon. i guess they're my preferred travel-buddy circle, and if they're around i know that i'll have people to eat and explore and bitch and joke with. on tuesday night, danielle and i ran into the ihrd staff on our way back to the hotel and we decided to join them for a coffee. we ended up going to this coffee house-ish place within view of the aya sofia mosque. we got coffee and tea and baklava and apple tobacco water pipes. people played backgammon. there was live turkish music. and we heard the prayer call from the top of the mosque, which was haunting and lovely, with birds flying about the spires. that chill nightcap followed a great day of going to the gym and the hammam and walking around taksim and eating yummy kabab and yogurt with fun, funny, wonderful danielle. it was my favorite day.

istanbul, 21 may

the flight yesterday was long, but tolerable as far as overnight flights go. i sat next to this nice guy who was headed to istanbul for his brother's wedding. he switched seats with me so i could sit next to the window, and gave me his airplane magazine since my crossword puzzle was already done, and volunteered to hold my trays so i could fold up my table. i slept a bit, maybe three hours, and watched "a series of unfortunate events" (again). we had a ride waiting for us at the airport, a minibus, which promptly got lost in sultanahmed, the old city. so we got an unplanned bus tour while our driver navigated the teensy streets and tried not to pull his hair out.

once i'd showered and rested and felt a bit more human, i walked next door to the kalyon. we're staying in a bunch of different boutique hotels in sultanahmed, mostly according to our own special little caste system. the nice thing about mine is that its backdoor leads right into the old town. also, we have mtv. it's pretty incredible how much actual music is played here. it has its share of wild boyz et al, but i've watched more music videos in two days than is played in an entire week of reasonable-hour u.s. mtv.
anyway.

after lunch with our friends from lithuania, i wandered around a bit by the water (the sea of marmara!) and walked up to the old city. i'm a pretty confident traveler, and i have more experience than most with muslim villages, having spent so much time in iran. even so, i was uncomfortable walking around alone for long stretches of time in istanbul. i kept finding myself in dead-end back alleys; strangely, i felt better there than in the touristier areas. i didn't want to keep my camera out of my bag, which meant i had to keep turning it on and off and opening and closing my bag. i think a lot of the men that spoke to me were intrigued by me because it's not plainly obvious where i come from, especially since i was alone and not speaking to anyone. still, i don't want turkish men following me around trying to find out what country i'm from. i really just wanted to be left alone to absorb the sights, and it was unsettling to have to keep a watchful eye out all the time. after a short while i gave up and went back to the hotel, figuring it'd be easier and more pleasant to sightsee when others arrived.

i ended up sleeping for most of the rest of the day. my computer was dead dead dead and wouldn't turn on, and i had forgotten to bring an adapter with me. so i took a 4hour nap and then read 2001: a space odyssey before falling asleep again at midnight. true to form, i slept til noon. that makes 16 hours of sleeping yesterday and today. mighty nice for my first day of not-vacation. i figure i've got to get my sleep in now, to make up for lack of sleep in the recent weeks as well as to stock up for greece, so i can get up early and not be grumpy.

today a new set of osi folks came. i had an early-ish lunch, by turkish standards. once erin and matt were recovered from traveling, i met them (and emily and helena) to walk to sultanahmed for lunch. i nibbled on appetizers and had a cappuccino while they ate, and then walked back to the hotel with emily and helena to make sure they didn't get lost and also to try to connect to the internet, now that i can plug my computer in. unfortunately i can't get it to work. and, sadly, i don't have a wireless card to take advantage of the kalyon's wireless internet. i've asked at the reception desk how to dial a local number MULTIPLE times, but no one seems to understand me. maybe there'll be an internet cable next door that i can steal.

more to come. stay tuned, folks!

kuwait update

kuwait grants political rights to its women.

in 2007, anyway.

'bout fucking time, wouldn't you say?

warm and lovely

saturday afternoon mikeliu came to yonkers to pick up me and mara from spring league. after being harassed by a guy impersonating the rock, getting my first slurpee in over a year, and making more than one wrong turn, we ended up back at the liu household for a pre-summer, house-leaving bbq.

it was my second time seeing garden state. it's such a wonderful movie. sometimes interactions between people are so awkward in real life, but movies just gloss them over and make them seem effortless and cheap. part of what makes garden state so touching is that it avoids doing this. in one of the first scenes, sam (natalie portman) gives andrew (zach braff) her headphones to listen to the shins. while he's listening, we see a long shot, 10 or so seconds, of her face. she does this thing where she smiles and then doesn't smile and then smiles and then half-smiles and then doesn't smile... that's what people DO when they get nervous, when they give someone else an opportunity to judge them and just have to wait for their response. it's just one example, but it's the one that comes most easily to my mind because sam is such an incredible character and natalie portman plays her so fucking well.

i just remembered going to see lost in translation with mara and mikeliu and london. walking out of the theater toward the subway, we kept hearing these sounds like firecrackers. sure enough, above the shadow of the park you could see fireworks going off. we sat on a ledge in the median and watched them until they finished. then we went to tomo and had sushi. it was such a perfect night.

after stuffing our faces with bbq we played taboo. we were all piled on top of each other in a circle in the living room, divided into good and evil teams. it was a close game, but the evil team won in the final sudden death round. it didn't matter, though. it was just fun to yell and shout and heckle each other and buzz that annoying buzzer at any taboo foul.

there was some animated discussion about faces/heads in food. i lost many games of ping-pong and othello. a smack-talking robot twenty-questions doodad was actually quite good at guessing things that we'd think up, much to gabi's surprise. and we got a nice ride home from eric, whom i miss tons.

my friends are incredible, smart, funny, clever, wonderful people. i live for days like this. they don't happen often enough anymore now that so many of us have moved/are moving on/away, but when they do they make me so happy. this is one of the best and most lasting things about playing ultimate in college: i got to meet some of the greatest people in the world.

book monster

today i read a book. a whole book. and not a fluffy trash book either--a real one, that i'd never read before. both the act of reading, and the book itself, were both wonderful.

recently, my reading has been reduced to two kinds: (1) current events reading on the train; and (2) re-reading at home. it's been a long time since i bought a new book, and even longer since i read a substantial portion of one in a single sitting. but since i'd called in sick and found myself at home alone for most of the afternoon, i picked it up and couldn't put it down. the loveliest part was that i didn't have to. except that i have a 930 frisbee-in-yonkers date tomorrow, i had no responsibilities or commitments to worry about today. how wonderful.

i read never let me go by kazuo ishiguro. i'd read remains of the day before, in modern comparative fiction last year or so. they're sort of similar in that both are pretty simple, plot-wise. in never let me go, nothing really HAPPENS. this girl just lives her life. it's all in the first person, told in memories and flashbacks. really very simple, as far as the storytelling goes. but you just get to know the people. they become real in some way. like your friend is sitting on your bed telling you this story.

i was going to write more, but i'm distracted and tired. i planned to talk about how reading that stupid review might have ruined me for the book and about playing ultimate tomorrow and about the party last night. but i'm not going to force it, and instead i'll just stay goodnight and wait for a better day.

alias

since i moved, i've given up tv pretty much cold turkey. i've been aided by the (terrible) absence of the west wing. this is the first time since then, i think, that i've sat down to watch a full tv show. it's a good episode of alias... there's a fake sloan. and jennifer garner is directing. i think maybe she should stick to acting. i've seen better episodes. there are too many big words in this one.

i finished my taxes! yes, yes, i know it's late. but not only did i file an extension, but also both the federal government and the state owed me money, so there's no interest involved. so they're finally in. i'd like to say i did them myself, but that would be a flat-out lie. hopefully i'll avoid the near-breakdowns next year, now that i've done them once.

my spacebar sucks. ifi wereto typea sentencewithout backspacing thisiswhat itwould looklike. ugh.

i'm already planning what to do with my refund. hello ipod. finally. christ.

so tao will be living with me from the beginning of june. i'm really excited. he'll be right next door. it'll be nice to have him around.

wow, this post sucks. let me stop now before i make it worse.

ready for lunch

saturday night, i went to a poker game with friends from work (and friends-of-friends). i found out there that my friend/coworker, mark, also has a blog, and that apparently there's an osi blog ring of sorts. i haven't decided yet whether to (a) ask for mark's address, and (b) come out of the blogging closet. i tend to be quite critical of work on here, and i blog from work--two facts that would be better kept from my immediate supervisors. i'm relatively safe as long as people from work don't have this address. i don't want to put myself in a place where i feel compelled to further self-censor. i do that enough as it is. that's just the name of the game, i guess.

another thing to consider is the quality of the writing on here. most people at work are both older and smarter than me, and definitely more aware of the world in general. the writing on this blog can be (in my opinion) really good or really bad depending on my mood. if this space is handed to coworkers who don't know me that well for their critique, i might be putting myself in a position to be pre-judged. i'm not sure how likely it is, or how critical or forgiving people are. i figure it's better to be on the safe side.

although this blog is technically public, i'm pretty sure no one odd reads it. i tried googling search terms one might use to find information about me, and this site certainly doesn't come up on the first page (or second, or third). "sai blog" gives over a million search hits. then again, determined people can find anything if they really want to. i guess i'll just have to be cool enough to keep people from being determined to dig up dirt on me.

tao is coming over tonight to "interview" for a room in my apartment. my interview was more like an extended getting-to-know-you chat with a few pointed questions thrown in. really quite pleasant as interviews go. i hope that tao and may like each other. i think it'd be nice to have him around. i'd forgotten how nice it was to have friends right nearby, and i guess i'm getting kind of greedy.

i am no longer applying to the peace corps. might be giving up, might be chickening out, might be the best decision ever. who can tell? i'm just going to run with it.

the economist is a great magazine. i can almost feel myself getting smarter.

go to!

william safire has an article on the phrase "go to" in this week's nytimes magazine. ultimate frisbee is not mentioned.

more later.

the day that wouldn't end

oy, christ.

today was such a looooooong day. i had almost no work to do, so i spent about 7 of my 8 working hours (a) looking at stuff online, (b) organizing music, (c) staring at - not writing - my peace corps application essays, and (d) being bored out of my mind. i was so fidgety and restless because i just didn't have anything to do and the words weren't coming for my essays. ugh ugh ugh. it was quite a cranky day.

i think it pisses my coworkers off, too. i mean, there are definitely times when i'm crazy busy and they are just loitering around, and it doesn't bother me because i know that each of us has our own cycles. but i can't help but feel some animosity directed toward me when each time my coworkers pass by i'm reading the nytimes or fiddling with itunes. i bet they wish they could shovel some of their work on to me. i wouldn't want that either though...

maybe it doesn't make sense to complain about a lack of work. i certainly complain when i have too much work (like last week). i don't understand why it has to be one or the other, though. i just want some balance. is that really too much to ask?

on a brighter note, i love my laundry service. there's a laundromat on the same block as the 2/3 station that has a drop-off service. so this morning i dropped of my bag and this evening i picked it up. cost me $14, but that's a small price to pay for not having to sit in a sweltering laundromat on a saturday or sunday when it's beautiful outside. plus, i only do it twice a month or so, and $30 a month isn't that bad. so now i have clean clothes. and today is house-cleaning day, so i'll have a clean house to go with them. now if i could only get my room in order... why does that seem like such a neverending process?

i also bought lightbulbs today, so now i have a reading lamp. they have a three-strength lightbulb that i bought for my standing lamp, so i can have it on low, medium, or high. it's very nice. and i bought a comb, too, because i left my old one in the hotel in delaware last month.

okay, i'm hungry. time to cook and eat and get myself content.

that's what they pay me for

two interesting articles about being a smarty-pants:

one

two

hey, it's a slow day. this is what i do when there's nothing else to do. i read cool things, and i give you fodder for procrastination.

not that i'm complaining.

does your english cut the mustard?

first, take this quiz.

my results
grammar: 100% duh.
punctuation: 100% uh-huh.
spelling: 80% super-wha?
vocabulary: 40% nofair!

in the vocabulary section, i missed obsequious, halcyon, and craven. drat.

kuwait

yesterday, kuwait's (all male) parliament decided that women shouldn't be able to vote in this year's municipal elections. municipal. that means local. like, new york city council, but in arabic. oy.

the times has it. so does the post. they cite somewhat different numbers but say basically the same thing. women are not allowed to vote or run in any elections. they can be appointed to cabinets, ministries, and ambassadorships, but they can't run for parliament or even vote for their local city representatives.

granted, kuwait also prohibits men serving in the police and military from voting (according to the times). the only explanation i can think of for that is that it's a weird way to try to avoid a military coup, but that doesn't make much sense either.

okay, i did some more research. the cia factbook (a fantastic resource for general country information) says that suffrage is granted to "adult males who have been naturalized for 30 years or more or have resided in Kuwait since before 1920 and their male descendants age 21. only 10% of all citizens are eligible to vote; in 1996 naturalized citizens who do not meet the pre-1920 qualification but have been naturalized for 30 years were eligible to vote for the first time."

that's not quite what was in either of the articles.

now i'm getting thoroughly confused.

i started out with the point that it was ridiculous for a cosmopolitan place like kuwait, a muslim country that doesn't force women to wear hijab, to prohibit women from voting at all, even while appointing them to high positions. the papers make the point that opposition probably stems from self-preservation on the parts of the male parliamentarians who don't want to lose their seats.

i am losing my train of thought so i'm just going to stop writing now. you're all smart people, so draw your own damn conclusions!

tinkering

i'm going to be tinkering with this blog a bit. changing things around here and there, you see. fiddling with the title, links, template, etc. please bear with me and thank you for your patience.

love always,
the management.

ps: we turned off your hot water. ha ha ha.

lazy night, and alone.

before i left work, i thought i wanted to be around people tonight. i was ready for a nice, comfortable, two- or three-person dinner of sushi or burritos or whatever. but my friends were busy, and i'm kind of glad, because when i finally got home i realized that this is what i need. no loud music, no chatter, no company. just me, and an easy dinner, and my computer, and a book. maybe some CSI, if it's on tonight.

we had mega super duper cable in my previous apartment. not only did we get almost every channel available, but the movie channels were on demand, which meant that movies and sex and the city could be played at the touch of a button. i think i watched three or four hours of tv every night in that place. i didn't want to cook, because the kitchen was so dull and crappy and (usually) stinky. my roommates kind of sucked, so i didn't want to talk with them. it was far from almost all my friends, so i didn't go out on impulse. it was winter, and i wasn't about to go trudging around the neighborhood shivering. so i just sat. on my bed. and watched tv. all. the. time. i think about it now, when i'm surrounded by friends a busride away, when my roommates are wonderful, when my apartment has a beautiful kitchen and tons of common space, when i only get four channels clearly, when i'm rarely alone. what a sad existence that was. how did i tolerate it for so long? i suppose the tv was dulling my brain.

my internet wasn't working this weekend. i didn't really feel it because i was at the ambush clinic and settling my old apartment on saturday and cooking all day sunday. but over the weekend, in the times that i was home, i read a book and a half. i read pretty fast, but i haven't been devouring books the way i used to. now, i find myself rereading a lot more often than picking up new books. i've been trying to read a heartbreaking work of staggering genius for a couple of years now. i get through chapter three or so, and then i leave it alone. since starting it for yet another time, i've read four other books. in other circumstances, that might be a sign that it's a crappy book and i shouldn't waste my time with it. but i don't think that's the case. maybe books are just standing in for tv, and i'm reading things i don't really have to concentrate on. it's mindless, like a teen movie. nora roberts instead of freddie prinze jr. who's to say which is a better use of time?

i guess i turn to mindless forms of entertainment when the rest of my day (read: work) is stressful. for a while, work really sucked. now, it just sort of sucks. the stress level has decreased a bit now that our board books are in for printing and there isn't a mad dash of last-minute editing and writing to do. the next couple of weeks should be relatively calm, and i should be able to get out of the office by six-ish every night, i hope. in a couple of weeks, on the 18th, i'll be flying out to istanbul for our annual network meeting. although istanbul is incredible, and there'll be some time to see it (again), i know the meeting will be a stressball of suits and errand-running and photocopying and more last-minute changes and lots of typing up minutes. after 10 or so days in istanbul i'm flying to athens for four days of vacation. i haven't found a place to stay yet, because i haven't decided what i want to see. four days isn't really enough time to go island-hopping, but hopefully i can hit up at least one of the closer islands for a day. i have one weekend off in nyc, and then the next weekend i'm going to middle-of-nowhere ohio for the poultry days tournament, with a team i've never played with before. don't get me wrong, these trips will all be pretty fun. but i know that back-to-back traveling like this will get exhausting. maybe if i could just teleport and avoid all the flying crap it'd be easier. hey, all you inventors out there, get a'working on that.

today in slate there was an article on north korea (here). have other people been saying this? have i just not been paying attention? where are the US's liberation forces now? i read things like this, i hear what's happening in parts of central asia, and i wonder, really, how do powerful men sleep at night? i complain about iranian women having to wear a veil, but everything--everything--pales in comparison to uniform, ruthless, demented repression. if you haven't heard me rant about turkmenistan yet, don't worry. you will.

do you know that, every year, 2 million people die from tuberculosis? tuberculosis. it's fully, perfectly, wonderfully curable. there is a well-researched, easy, and relatively inexpensive treatment strategy that has been preached by the WHO for a while now. i don't know anyone who's ever gotten TB. it's not a first-world disease anymore. but it's the leading cause of death for people with HIV/AIDS--not because their immune systems are shot, but because they just can't afford the medicine. it's a ridiculous epidemic in russian prisons, and when you can't pay for treatment, that means a death sentence for even petty crimes. there's no moral to this story. it's just true. it's just fucking true.

loneliness, television, internet, books, work, travels, north korea, oppressive madmen, health. i think that's enough for one night, don't you?