Summarizing

In an attempt to more accurately focus my forward-thrusting efforts, I want to take a moment to step back and look at some things that I have accomplished in the past two years. These follow no particular pattern.


Schools graduated from: 1
Schools attended: 2
Languages learned: 2.33333337
Countries travelled to: 5-8
Time spent abroad: 1 year
Books read: Infinite
Houses lived in: 6
Boys been dumped by: 2
Boys I have dumped: 1
Been in love: 1.25
New sports attempted: 3
Car crashes: 0
Flights taken: ~34
Letters written: ~50
Classes taught: 92
Pounds of plov consumed: 110
Horses ridden: 1
Donkeys ridden: 0
Turkeys slaughtered: 2
Official government buildings viewed: 9
Jobs worked: 5
Smallest salary ever: 100$/month
Marathons trained for: 1
Marathons completed: 0
Training related injuries: 2


Hmmmm, very interesting. I wonder if achievement levels dwindle post-college?

Long Time

It's been a pretty long time since my last post, mainly because I have very little to write about. I'm back in the greater-Seattle area, living with my parents, and out of work. I've only been home for four days and have been filling my time with riding bikes and seeing old friends. I feel like I could ride my bike all day, every day, if only I were in better shape. As it is now, my legs feel like noodles every time I step off the damn thing and try to walk. Gone are the days when I was athletic and trim, though I have a feeling they are on the come-back. As to the old friends, I had totally and completely forgotten what it was like to have a social life. After seven months of spending my nights with my best friend (a heater) and our companion (a book), it seems a little exhausting to hang out with people every night. Perhaps I'm over-doing it. My social arena in The Stan consisted of Sean and Umut and a bottle of wine. After Lamar sent Sean the You Don't Know Jack computer game, we felt like our wild college days had returned - an entire hour of trivia! You have to be kidding me! After a night of You Don't Know Jack, I would go home exhausted and then sleep until 11am the next morning. Maybe sometimes I even had a trivia-induced hangover. Anyway, I'm readjusting to life here, or at least trying to, and sometimes its really hard. It's kind of like that old Kyrgyz banya when you step out of the sauna and then jump into the icy pool. Eventually it's refreshing, but for those first few moments you feel like your heart will stop beating. That's me right now, still in those first few moments.

Re-entry and isn't it hilarious to be alive?

Well, it's Saturday night and I am lame. I think that I have begun to experience reverse culture-shock, which is the term for how freaked-out you get when you come back to the United States after living in the third-world for seven months. This is why the US is freaking me out right now: This afternoon, at around 1pm, I decided to hop on the metro and head to the Smithsonian to see the Holocaust Museum. For some reason, possibly because it was Saturday, possibly because the Cherry Blossom Festival was going on (beautiful, truly), the metro was absolutely packed. I mean, Tokyo at rush hour packed. This was not a big deal. I have sat in circa 1980 mini-vans (marshukas) for hours at a time over roads paved with boulders. I have sat in mini-vans so incredibly crowded that unknown women set their babies, or chickens, on my lap. I have had drunk Kyrgyz men grope my ass. Crowded metro cars in Washington, DC where people are freshly showered and afraid of causing offence to anyone are no problem Or, at least, I thought this was the case until today. The car was so packed that I was joking about the packedness of the car with strangers. It was funny until we came to the Foggy Bottom stop - this was when The Woman decided to snap. "You are standing in the DAMN DOORWAY!" she yelled at the people clinging desperately to poles and seat-backs, unable to move because other people were standing behind them, to the left of them, breathing down their necks. This was when she started pushing the Other Woman, the innocent one, and yelling again, "Will you move out of the F-ing doorway!" The Other Woman, being normal, didn't respond. I said, audibly (snapping in my own, particular way), "Are you freaking kidding me?" People looked away. What causes people to snap like this? Obviously we have all been in frustrating situations, but this is what they are - situations. They are not life. Usually they don't last longer than ten minutes, which is enough time to remember to breathe into your abdomen and use that breath to laugh at how ridiculous things have gotten. I hope that this tendency to snap and forget the hilarity of life, the waste of this hilarity on anger, is a trait of The Woman and not of America in general. Anyway, I made it to the Holocaust Museum. I saw pictures of the children who were euthanized for being imperfect (aren't we all?). I read about women and men who risked their lives to resist imprisonment and enslavement. I listened to the story of two starving men who, after years of starvation, ran to embrace each other because they were both alive and wasn't it something to be joyful about? After seeing this shadow of tragedy, I want to say to The Woman (at the risk of sounding condescending and preachy) - suck it up, you wuss. Suck it up. You know nothing of frustration.

I get my news from Wolf Blitzer.

I was getting my hair cut today in DC when the stylist, David, who is French and utterly fabulous, leaned down and whispered that Wolf Blitzer had just come in. Apparently he had been doing work in Iraq. "Oh, was he reporting?" I asked from underneath my hair. "Non," David replied, "he is no reporter. He is anchorman (imagine the statement being made with a French accent)." Then I felt like an asshole for not knowing what exactly is was that Wolf Blitzer did for a living. To make up for my ignorance, I watched this man with the famous name very carefully. Wolf Blitzer sat down and read a magazine. Wolf Blitzer stood up and went to the bathroom. Wolf Blitzer came back and announced that the Pope had passed. "When did it happen?" David asked. "About two minutes ago," Wolf Blitzer replied. Of course, being Wolf Blitzer, he would know. What I'm curious about is, why did he wait to announce this? Was he letting the tension build by sitting to read his magazine, by going to the bathroom? Maybe Wolf Blitzer always announces world-changing breaking news when he goes in to get his beard touched-up and he was just kidding around with the stylists by making them wait. Maybe, because he is Wolf Blitzer, he does not have to honor the important information code, which is that you announce really important information as soon as you enter a room. I don't know. What I do know is, nobody questioned Wolf Blitzer when he made his statement. This was not true for me. When I got back to the hotel, I announced to the room at large, "I saw Wolf Blitzer at the hair salon and he told me that the Pope died." Nobody believed me, especially the part about Wolf Blitzer being at the hair salon. Hopefully Wolf Blitzer was not playing a late April Fool's Day joke about the Pope. First of all, because it wouldn't be funny and, second of all, because it would make me look like a total fool. But isn't that the kind of power that Wolf Blitzer has?