Surprises

March 28, 2009 / 3 Comments

I was just alerted to a devastating piece of news. From hulu.com: For now, Hulu is a U.S. service only. That said, our intention is to make Hulu’s growing content lineup available worldwide. This requires clearing the rights for each show or film in each specific geography and will take time. We’re encouraged by how many content providers have already been working along these lines so that their programs can be available over the Internet to a much larger, global audience. The Hulu team is committed to making great programming available across the globe. That’s right, no Hulu in Pakistan. Everyone knows what Hulu is, right? Maybe you saw that commercial for it where Alec Baldwin is an alien? Man, that Alec Baldwin is funny. Anyway, for those of you still watching shows on your tv, hulu.com is a website that lets you watch all sorts of shows and movies right away, on your own schedule, with limited commercials. I love it. On my original list of “reasons why not to move to Pakistan,” I didn’t add “missing a year’s worth of Lost, 30 Rock, and The Office” because I thought I had Hulu in my corner. I naively assumed that what’s available on the internet here would be available there. There’s a rumor that you can still watch shows on nbc.com overseas, but no such luck with any of the other channels. Seriously: what am I going to do about Lost? This is just the first of many surprises I imagine I will be encountering in the next few weeks as I move to another country. Speaking of surprises, I was surprised when I caused a security alert […] Read More

Crammed

March 27, 2009 / 3 Comments

So I’ve been too busy this week to post. The way things have gone lately, I actually think I might have more time in my life once I arrive in Islamabad. I’m back in Washington for training. This includes meeting everyone in the company, absorbing about 300 different acronyms, and pretending to understand all the international development lingo. I’m also taking care of mundane activities like picking up my work laptop, learning the company’s timesheet system, and signing up for emergency evacuation insurance. Well maybe that last one is not so mundane. I’m headed back to Boston tonight to commence my final week on American soil for a while. Those seven days will be filled with saying final goodbyes, consuming large quantities of soon-to-be illegal martinis, and trying to make a year’s worth of stuff come in under the 400lb airfreight shipping limit. The karaoke machine is complicating that process. Wish me luck! […] Read More

Peep It Up

March 23, 2009 / 6 Comments

Nothing is weirder than a Peep. I’m ready to eat a lot of new, strange food, starting in less than two weeks when I move to Pakistan. Twelve different kinds of mangoes and three different kinds of pomegranates, I’m told. Goat curries, bitter gourd, mutton in tomato sauce, and chicken. (Well, chicken’s not weird, but the fact that you can buy it live off the street in front of your house is.) I love curry and flatbread and samosas, but I’m sure my visits to my favorite Indian restaurant down the street in Boston will not have prepared me for full immersion into the daily food culture of the subcontinent. But back to Peeps, the weird food of my own country. You know ’em: fluorescent little marshmallowy chicks and bunnies that appear suddenly in every drugstore and supermarket this time of year in an array of colors found nowhere in nature. They’re weird, they’re highly beloved, and they’re very American: add them to the list of things I won’t be seeing in Islamabad. I’ve had some time to think about Peeps a lot today as I scraped smashed Peep out of the carpet and pried dried Peep off the sides of empty martini glasses. (Peeps figured prominently in my spring-themed going-away party last night.) What are Peeps? Marshmallow, obviously, and a crapload of toxic food coloring, but oh so much more. Peep is an industry onto itself. You would think that, much like a Cadbury egg, they would be cursed with the problem of seasonality. They are chicks and bunnies in lurid approximations of pastel colors after all, trotted out at Easter for candy baskets and the […] Read More

The Beat Goes On

March 20, 2009 / 5 Comments

Update: I bought a karaoke machine. Frivolous purchase or wise investment that will yield hours of entertainment in entertainment-challenged Pakistan? You decide. I’ve been told again and again that people don’t go out to bars (illegal) or restaurants (high-profile targets); they hang out socially in people’s homes. I’m thinking that will be entertaining for about a week and then we will need something to do. Enter the Karaoke Party Machine. I’ll be breaking this fine piece of equipment in at my going-away party tomorrow night; if you’re not in Boston and can’t make it, think of us belting out “I Will Survive” wherever you are and feel sorry/relieved that you can’t join in. […] Read More

Craziness

March 17, 2009 / 2 Comments

Looks like I missed all the excitement in Islamabad this weekend. Blockades around the city, a convoy of protesters marching towards the capital, last-minute negotiations, and finally, celebrations in the street. While I was busy picking out the best probiotics to pack for my trip, my very soon-to-be-home country was in turmoil, agitating for the reinstatement of the chief justice who was booted from the Supreme Court in 2007 by then-President Musharraf. Oh, you didn’t know presidents could fire judges? Welcome to Pakistan. Although at least on this day, it appeared to be a different Pakistan, as lawyers and citizens took to the streets to demand justice, and Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry was returned to his post. What I don’t know about current Pakistani politics could fill several large, heavy volumes. Today’s storyline has a lot behind it, including old rivalries, new political tensions, past judicial proceedings, and lots of bad blood, but it can also be summed up rather simply by a novice like me: Something fishy happened. Today it was rectified. People rejoiced. (Come to think of it, the same words could be used to describe the events of January 20, 2009 right here in the USA!) Today’s situation in Pakistan can also be summed up in another way, as in the short yet comprehensive description my friend in Islamabad sent me earlier, in words that I’m only reprinting because my dad doesn’t know about this blog: The past 48 hours have been maybe the most tumultuous of my 3.5 years involved with Pakistan. Islamabad under siege, cell phones service cut off, gas stations closed, marching lawyers, trips canceled, embassy closed, everything dead quiet for the […] Read More

Frenzy

March 14, 2009 / 7 Comments

I am buying stuff. My mode is consumer, the internet my gateway. It turns out The Magic Bullet was just the tip of the iceberg. The last three days have seen me purchase, in no particular order: An iPod speaker/docking station thing An alarm clock that wakes you up with ocean noises and gradual soft lighting that approximates the gentle dawn. A metal thing to hang all my necklaces on. A year’s worth of my favorite shampoo, conditioner, and chapstick. A new yoga mat. Green Vibrance vitamin powder that tastes like grass. A black cocktail dress for “embassy parties.” A webcam. grapefruit seed extract. charcoal. It’s a weird list; I recognize this. It’s the kind of list that emerges when you 1) are moving to a foreign country without health food stores or Western retail and 2) have spent most of the last decade in graduate school. (The grad school thing just means you’ve been broke for a long time and couldn’t justify paying for frivolities other than heavy anthologies of Irish drama and endless stacks of photocopied scholarly journal articles at 10 cents a page.) Anything unnecessary that I wanted over the last ten years I pretty much didn’t buy. But I never forgot that I wanted it. Which brings us to the Progression Alarm Clock. I’m sorry: did I call it an alarm clock? My mistake. It’s actually the Progression Wake Up Clock, as its manufacturers take care to point out. That’s because this product is specifically designed not to alarm the body into wakefulness, but to rouse us how nature intended. That is: peacefully with the earth’s light and sound, the way our ancestors […] Read More

A Beautiful City

March 10, 2009 / 6 Comments

I just got back to Boston today from a few days in Washington DC. I was there for a conference, some pre-Islamabad meetings, and a visit to my naturopath so she could tell me the best way to fend off parasites from Pakistani street food. It was a beautiful weekend–so warm we could have drinks outside at Sequoia on Sunday afternoon and pretend it was June. Being there made me think about moving and living in a new city and change in general. Right after college, I moved to Washington DC for two years, and I can’t say I loved it. I was broke, working an entry-level job, and shell-shocked by my switch from sunny Santa Barbara and the luxury of college life. All of a sudden I was getting up early, wearing nylons, and wrestling with parking meters, winter clothing, and a fridge crammed with the food of five roommates. I missed California, the easy measure of academic success, and not talking about politics. I think I overlooked some of Washington’s beauty in the process. I remember thinking it was cool that I could see the lit dome of the Capitol outside my bedroom window and that I studied for my GREs in the gorgeous Library of Congress reading room. But I always knew I was going to grad school and would be off before too long, so I never settled in as much as I could have. My friends and I had lots of after-work drinks on the roof of the Hotel Washington, we watched Fourth of July fireworks from the office balcony of whichever Senator someone we knew was working for. We […] Read More

It’s On

March 3, 2009 / 7 Comments

The contract was signed last Thursday. There was a 48-hour waiting period in which Congress could have rejected it; they didn’t. I still don’t know my departure date. I have a hangover. That about sums it up right now. I’ll celebrate later! […] Read More

Bookish

February 25, 2009 / 7 Comments

(Alternate title: “What To Do While You’re Waiting to Move to Pakistan”) There’s a new list making the rounds of Facebook this week. I know we’re all sick to death of these lists: the “25 semi-interesting things about me” list and the “20 questions about high school” list and the “5 movies I’d take to a desert island” list. And yet I keep reading them, and I keep making them. I am a sucker for these things. This new list is even more potentially unpleasant than the others because it is designed to make you feel inferior. It’s the “BBC Book List,” a list of 100 worthwhile books as determined by the BBC, which comes accompanied by the claim that the average person has only read six of them. At least, this is how the list has been introduced. I can’t find any evidence that the BBC actually had anything to do with this list and that some nerdy grad student didn’t just throw a list together and tack “BBC” on it to make it more credible. In fact, I think this is exactly what happened. This is not stemming the tide of enthusiasm for this exercise in the least, however. The purported BBC Book List is all the rage this week on literary websites and blogs dedicated to things like proper punctuation. Put aside for a second the fact that I am a visitor to punctuation blogs and let’s talk about the books. So, the average person has supposedly read six of out these 100 books. A snooty little prediction like that makes me want to prove the “BBC”/nerdy grad student wrong, so I […] Read More

It’s a Bullet and it’s Magic

February 21, 2009 / 5 Comments

I am staring at a long, nasty list of things I need to do before moving to Pakistan (which could happen in as little as two weeks, I found out today). Clean out my closet. Buy hand sanitizer. Give back that book of yours that I read or that skirt I borrowed. Set up my Power of Attorney. Get shots for tetanus, polio, typhoid fever, and hepatitis B. [Side note about tetanus. Does everyone know you are supposed to have a tetanus booster every ten years, even if you’re not moving to the Indian sub-continent? Am I the only one clueless about this? You should have seen my doctor’s face when she found out I hadn’t had a tetanus shot since the late ’80s. I guess it’s a good thing I’m going to Pakistan, so I don’t die stepping on a rusty nail right here in the good old U. S. of A. Back to the list.] Use up all the root vegetables from our farm’s winter share. Catch up on Battlestar Galactica. Go to the dentist. Get a haircut. Eat lots of raw vegetables and salads while I still can. Buy everything I can’t get in Pakistan so that I can ship it to Pakistan with me. [Sidenote about buying everything I can’t get in Pakistan and shipping it to Pakistan with me. I know this screams bad idea. And yet, I really want to do it. Moving someplace for a year, especially a foreign place where you’re pretty sure they’re not going to have that sunscreen you like or whole wheat pasta or Dagoba dark chocolate in roseberry flavor, has given me a sort […] Read More

Yes, I’m a Mess.

February 14, 2009 / 14 Comments

I’ve always been pretty clean. (College roommates and ex-boyfriends: feel free to disagree.) I don’t know what happened: maybe I got used to the chaos of a campaign office, or was altered by the experience of living out of my trunk for most of December and January, or somewhere along the way things just got out of hand. Whatever the case, here I am now, underneath a mountain of crap, opening up the door to the back room of my apartment to show you all that I’ve been living like a pig. What does this have to do with Pakistan, or with cheeseburgers? Nothing, except that I can’t pack for a year-long trip if I can’t find my passport or my wallet or my favorite lounging sweatpants. (You think I am joking about the wallet, but I’m not. I have just been keeping my drivers’ license and a credit card in the back pocket of my jeans.) And I can’t start writing about more interesting things like Pakistani food, the language barrier, different customs, adventures with camels, my collection of shalwar kameezes, and etc., until then either. This room used to be my study. It’s where I wrote a lot of my dissertation (the rest at the coffee shop down the street), drafted up many marketing documents and articles, and brainstormed ways to get a nonprofit foundation off the ground. It has a great view of the backyard, the little vegetable garden that my landlord plants every spring and tends all summer, and a gorgeous weeping willow tree that he lops off every few years in an act that seems totally vicious, until it always […] Read More

Holding Pattern

February 10, 2009 / 4 Comments

I have nothing new to report on Pakistan (the group is still waiting for the contract to be signed, it’s 99% done, we should hear any day, etc. etc.) so instead I’m taking a second to talk about how much I hate waiting. When anyone asks me for the latest update on the job/contract process, I have been using the phrase “holding pattern.” (As in, “thanks for this morning’s article about Pakistan being volatile and dangerous for Americans, Dad; the group is still in a holding pattern until we get final word on the contract.”) It’s a quick way to describe waiting, that experience of being neither here-nor-there. I’m not afraid of flying, but two out of three of my most anxious moments in the air have been when my plane was circling low and nervously over a dark city, unable to land and at the slow mercy of waiting–on the weather, on the wind. I don’t mind waiting for things if I have something good to do in the meantime. Just the other night I had to wait for a slice of pepperoni pizza at two o’clock in the morning. I didn’t mind this at all, because I had Ellen and Jenae there to provide entertaining conversation and the unruly crowd at Rednecks in Allston to provide great people-watching. (Rednecks has the best corndogs in the city and also had that stabbing a little while back. Take note, ye who are concerned about my safety: there are no stabbings in Islamabad). Last Wednesday, I had to wait all day for the new Lost to come on. Luckily I was able to fill the time by bringing […] Read More

The Latest

February 4, 2009 / 4 Comments

The short version: I have accepted an amazing job opportunity in Pakistan and should be leaving in early March for Islamabad. Other than my irrational fear of shots (and the wide array I am supposed to get before departure to guard against things like yellow fever and malaria), there is now nothing standing in the way except for the final signing of the contract between USAID and the contractor who has hired me. The contract is 99% a done deal, but that means there’s still a 1% chance that after all this careful decision-making, I’ll end up in the U.S. after all, jobless and eating tons of cheeseburgers. But I’m getting mentally prepared for that more likely 99%. I want to say thanks so much for all the wise words, advice and encouragement you have all given me via blog notes, emails, and (only slightly freaked out-sounding) phone calls since I first opened up the floor for comments. I would highly recommend all of you to anyone I know who is currently deciding whether or not to move halfway across the world. And, as those of you on Facebook who read my “25 Things” note already know (is that thing on fire this week or WHAT), I can’t catch malaria anyway because of a rare red blood cell disorder that I have. So that’s one less shot I have to take. It’s almost like I was destined to move to South Asia to do strategic communications for a USAID consultant as part of the effort to shore up Pakistani infrastructure and thus undermine the instability that nurtures terrorism. No? Well, maybe just the malaria thing […] Read More

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

January 24, 2009 / 25 Comments

I always loved that song by The Clash. It’s so peppy and full of fun little rhymes: If I go there will be trouble And if I stay it will be double …etc. I’m stealing from the Clash’s eloquence to refer to a decision I have to make in the next two weeks. Volunteering for the Obama campaign the month before the election confirmed my long-term interest in the political process and made me want to finally stop stalling and get involved. I decided once and for all to pursue a career in politics, specifically in strategic communications: something I like and am good at. I put out feelers in Washington DC and started to get in touch with all my old contacts there about a possible job on the Hill or in the Administration. I’ve already rustled up a few good leads and a lot of great advice from people who know the city and the system. But my job hunt there is in its earliest stages. In the meantime, I got an offer. It’s for a fantastic job–strategic communications for a USAID consultant, exactly the kind of work I want to do, with a great team of people, working towards powerful initiatives, in a challenging, stimulating environment. In Pakistan. Yeah, the job’s in Islamabad. Is this a huge plus or a huge minus? Depends on who you ask. On one hand there’s being apart from everyone I love for a year. On the other hand, there’s being involved in interesting work that makes a difference in people’s lives. On one hand, there’s leaving most of my favorite clothes behind so I can shroud […] Read More