I've been trying to make a movie about food for three months, but when it arrives I get so excited I eat it before I can remember to take the damn picture. So here's a movie about my day at work.
Countdown: another day at the office. May 18, 2010.
25 May 2010
23 May 2010
Magic stick!
A man walks into a hotel lobby in Kabul and says, "Can you hold onto this stick for me?"
I'm not even starting a joke here!
Rick the Journalist has returned from shooting his piece on the Shinwari tribe for Al Jazeera bearing a magic stick they gifted him. As he can't easily leave the country with something that could be used to beat a fellow passenger into submission, I agreed to hold onto the souvenir until he returns to Afghanistan in three weeks.
I don't really understand the properties of a magical stick, and so far both google and the stick have revealed little to me. Will update the blog as more information becomes available.
19 May 2010
Get out your running shoes!
18 May: As if the morning commute weren't laborious enough, suicide bombers detonate an explosive-filled vehicle. I was already in the office at the time. Reports say it killed 18 people, most on a public bus, and wounded dozens. The road was crowded with rush hour traffic.
Some claimed it was a rocket attack, but there was no sound of trajectory, and we discovered later on (per the media) that it was actually 1,650 pounds of explosives in a Toyota minivan, rammed into the ISAF convoy that we pass on the road. The damage in the office amounted to nothing more than broken windows and fallen light fixtures.
They kept us half-dozen foreigners in a safe room for a few hours. I don't know what made that room different from the other rooms. Is it just the name? Perhaps they were going for a placebo effect.
Unfortunately they had just started re-paving the road down here. I don't know what these suicide attackers have against a nice, newly paved road. It would also benefit their attacks. Do you really want to stop and change a tire on your way to an operation with more than 1,000 pounds of explosives in the back?
I only heard the attack; I didn't really see anything except a plume of smoke and a gigantic helicopter. I wanted to use the bombing as an excuse to go have a coffee at my favorite cafe, but couldn't drum up much support for the idea. I thought about calling my taxi service but then decided that the suicide attack prices were probably unaffordable.
Later in the day it hailed.
Some claimed it was a rocket attack, but there was no sound of trajectory, and we discovered later on (per the media) that it was actually 1,650 pounds of explosives in a Toyota minivan, rammed into the ISAF convoy that we pass on the road. The damage in the office amounted to nothing more than broken windows and fallen light fixtures.
They kept us half-dozen foreigners in a safe room for a few hours. I don't know what made that room different from the other rooms. Is it just the name? Perhaps they were going for a placebo effect.
Unfortunately they had just started re-paving the road down here. I don't know what these suicide attackers have against a nice, newly paved road. It would also benefit their attacks. Do you really want to stop and change a tire on your way to an operation with more than 1,000 pounds of explosives in the back?
I only heard the attack; I didn't really see anything except a plume of smoke and a gigantic helicopter. I wanted to use the bombing as an excuse to go have a coffee at my favorite cafe, but couldn't drum up much support for the idea. I thought about calling my taxi service but then decided that the suicide attack prices were probably unaffordable.
Later in the day it hailed.
14 May 2010
13 May 2010
The Fine Art of the Truth
"It smells like horrible things have happened in here," Paul Senior said on a brief visit to my room. He was right. My new room smelled like sewage. The changes around home had not been entirely favorable to me.
My perfect health record had been blemished the previous week or so when I broke out in a fantastic rash in the middle of a high profile meeting. I tended to blame formerly acquired minor rashes on my laundry. The service has always come with a free rash, but I was reluctant to lodge any complaints with my launderer. He was a military general in the time of the Soviets, now he does my laundry. This new rash was comparatively special and looked a little like radiation poisoning.
The following week, in the middle of my workday, some men had come into the office and taken all the furniture away, then glued down a new carpet. Later, when I got home, I was internally displaced from my standard living area and moved to a room that smelled like sewage and fresh paint. Between the toxicity of my home and my job, I was high all the time. I forgot all the precious new ideas for my blog. I woke up every day with a brand new headache. Critical thinking didn't go as smoothly as before.
The lost blog ideas weren't destined to come to fruition anyhow, as the internet at work had also become internally displaced.
"I can't do this! I can't live without the internet!" I threw up my hands.
"It's only a few days," Ramin said.
"Fariba said it's until the end of May," I said. It was the first week of May.
"Yes, few days, few days. This is Afghanistan. I have become a pure Afghan." Ramin followed up with a few stories about how the local tendency to underestimate time and distance had endangered his life over the years, particularly where activities such as hiking and swimming were concerned.
My perfect health record had been blemished the previous week or so when I broke out in a fantastic rash in the middle of a high profile meeting. I tended to blame formerly acquired minor rashes on my laundry. The service has always come with a free rash, but I was reluctant to lodge any complaints with my launderer. He was a military general in the time of the Soviets, now he does my laundry. This new rash was comparatively special and looked a little like radiation poisoning.
The following week, in the middle of my workday, some men had come into the office and taken all the furniture away, then glued down a new carpet. Later, when I got home, I was internally displaced from my standard living area and moved to a room that smelled like sewage and fresh paint. Between the toxicity of my home and my job, I was high all the time. I forgot all the precious new ideas for my blog. I woke up every day with a brand new headache. Critical thinking didn't go as smoothly as before.
The lost blog ideas weren't destined to come to fruition anyhow, as the internet at work had also become internally displaced.
"I can't do this! I can't live without the internet!" I threw up my hands.
"It's only a few days," Ramin said.
"Fariba said it's until the end of May," I said. It was the first week of May.
"Yes, few days, few days. This is Afghanistan. I have become a pure Afghan." Ramin followed up with a few stories about how the local tendency to underestimate time and distance had endangered his life over the years, particularly where activities such as hiking and swimming were concerned.
05 May 2010
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