Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Culture and Development: three cheers for the all-ready wealthy

Robert J. Samuelson has a piece in the Washington Post today reviewing a new book by Gregory Clark, "A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World."

"Clark suggests that much of the world's remaining poverty is semi-permanent. Modern technology and management are widely available, but many societies can't take advantage because their values and social organization are antagonistic. Prescribing economically sensible policies (open markets, secure property rights, sound money)can't overcome this bedrock resistance....It's culture that nourishes productive behavior." Part of his thesis is that the Industrial Revolution accelerated the creation of the proper environment for capitalist growth because more successful men had more surviving children, who had learned attributes of success from their parents.

I have a strong negative knee-jerk reaction to pieces about the role 'culture' plays in economic development. So often, arguments about how cohesive families or forward-looking societies are necessary to fostering growth seem like a self-congratulatory excuse. The most pernicious forms of this argument are:
1) The lazy native argument (people in warm places don't work as hard because their lives are easier) mixed in with an abuse of Weber's Protestant work ethic (Protestantism places a value on hard work in and of itself that has been the key to Europe's success. The current state of the Irish economy compared to the rest of Europe pokes a major hole in this frame...)
2) The "loose families" argument used to explain the East Asian miracle. It goes something like: family structure is stronger in East Asia, therefore parents saved and invested money for their children's future and worked hard. In Africa, they have loose families so their economies suck AND they have AIDS. (I find this argument so upsetting I struggle to engage it productively. I do believe in looking at cultural variables, but this seems more like racism to me.)

To me, the central false premise is the idea that culture is immutable and behaviors are unchanging. This places culture on a glass-encased pedestal, one of my problems with cultural relativism too. Behaviors, especially economic decision-making, are as much the product of circumstance as anything else. I think family structure and 'morality' is a good way to look at this. In desperate times, poor women who can't feed their children sleep with men for money or food. It's an old story, and it was just as true during occupation and war in family-oriented East Asian tigers Korea and Japan as it is now in less-developed countries like Uganda.

I do believe a place can develop a "culture of corruption" that drives way investment, making economic growth nearly impossible. I have no clue how to lessen this, and I might be about to write myself into a chicken-and-egg trap. However, it seems to me that corruption is often a product of a lack of other opportunities or channels for entrepenerial activity. In both the UAE and Japan, it's very bad form to accept tips because it's considered a form of corruption. Decades ago, transaction gifts, whether cash or material, were common in both places. I think corruption inevitably lessens with broad-based development (an increase in opportunities, an increase in the educated population who can point out the corruption of officials) but this development won't take place without an increase in transparency. (Oh dear, I'm asking for the Big Push.)

Anyway, I think transparency comes from the strengthening of civil society and the birth of stronger institutions, not because successful parents passed on non-corrupt attitudes for generations. Lamarck is dead.

I don't have any big answers to the question the article begins with and tries to answer: Why are some countries rich and some countries poor? I do think US and EU agricultural subsidies remain a major obstacle to African growth. I do think unsuccessful Cold War policies set back many developing countries. However, it's also important to challenge the way local governments have attempted to take on poverty or lessen corruption and the (in)efficacy of international aid.

Before I went to Tanzania, I wrote an international economics paper on its prospects for growth. I was in love. I was wildly optimistic. It was, after all, a very stable democracy English-speaking democracy with a newly booming mineral and tourism sectors. The Gini index was low! Its neighbors had stopped fighting! Inflation was down and GDP was growing! Everyone should totally invest! My professor was a bit less Pollyannic. After spending a summer in Tanzania, I could better understand some of his skepticism. Corruption was endemic, and it was hard for even the bravest, most honest individuals to escape it because they were too desperate. However, I do believe that if we slashed agricultural subsidies, we'd be eating a lot more Tanzanian fruit-- and they'd be eating more, period.

I think there is some truth in the lead sentence in the article. Most of the world's remaining poverty probably is semi-permanent, due to shortage of resources if nothing else. However, blaming this inequity on intractible cultural variables is a convenient way to both get out of looking for solutions within our own society and a way to let developing-world leaders off the hook for corrupt practices. Don't mind Mobutu. It's just his culture.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

The Ramen Museum

After the rain stopped this weekend, I went to the Ramen museum in Shin Yokohama with Rachel and Brett and the Motoguchis, a Japanese family they are friends with. Before going, I had some misconceptions about both the ramen and the museum concepts and I thought we were just going there because there wasn't much to do in Shin Yokohama. I stand corrected.

Ramen in Japan means far more than the crunchy instant noodle packages we have in the United States. It's a thick soup with noodles and other accoutrements, and each region has its own speciality. It's an extremely popular dish (the museum was packed with adults who were locals at 7 pm on Sunday) and has become a cultural phenomenon. A friend told me there's a Japanese western about a ramen shop, and it seems there are dozens of blogs just about ramen.

Museum also isn't quite the right word-- upstairs there was a gift shop and exhibits featuring iconic moments in the history of ramen development (the invention of microwaveable instant ramen, a replica of the first-ever ramen dish eaten by a samurai in the 17th century), but downstairs was a historical noodle extravaganza.

Below the conventional museum was a two-story replica of a bustling Japanese town from around 1958. The dimly lit streets were packed with museum-goers and alongside there were pubs and even a 'love hotel' patrons could step into. Police, with thickly drawn-on eyebrows, stood ready to answer questions. As we stayed in the museum, the sky overhead grew darker. It was a little like MainStreet or Epcot, but with an attention to real life detail Disneyland lacks. I could hear the sounds of stray cats mewing and war planes-- taking troops south to Vietnam?-- overhead. It was so convincing that when I got "lost" in a dark ally I felt nervous momentarily (this was all inside the building.)

There were old fashion booths with shooting games, palinko, and this game where everyone was given a small, brittle piece square with a shape etched in it. The goal was to cut your shape out of the material using a needle while leaving both the inside and outside intact. If you were really good, you then tried to write your name on the surface of that cut-out. None of us got that far. The kids all played a game to win a prize where they went to each booth and played "rock paper scissors" with the booth attendants. If they won, they got a sticker on their card. If they lost, the attendant punched a heart-shaped hole out of their card. To win, they needed to get six stickers before losing three hearts. The Motoguchi kids were good at rock paper scissors, but the odds were against them. The attendants were unyielding, even in the face of five-year old Su-chan's tears. We later found out the prize was a lollipop with a bowl of ramen on it. Should have figured.

Eventually, we went to the town square, around which were ramen shops run by chefs from 8 of the best regional ramen shops in Japan. Part of the premise of the museum is that visitors can try all the types of ramen in Japan without leaving Shin Yokohama. I had a 'floor guide' with multilingual descriptions of all the varieties. The English translations are very cute, so I have to share some of the best excerpts:

-Id Shoten: "Pork bones boiled at high heat let out melting gelatin, emulsifying the fat in the soup, which gives the soy sauce base a mellow sensation."

-Keyaki: "Amber soup contrasts nicely with a pure white bowl. Fine stripes of cibol, chopped green cabbage, orange carrots and black Jew's ears make a colorful pile in the middle of your bowl. Having your stomach excited by the aroma of miso, you can't wait to sip the soup. First, you may feel the richness of the soup, and then the mildness in the far back of your tongue. You will also feel juicy of grounded meat and hot pepper in it, and you will not want to stop your spoon."

-Hachiya: "Hachiya has succeeded in making ramen of a powerful taste by adding grilled lard to the noodles and broth. The lard masking the surface of the broth will be a shock to those who visit Hachiya for the first time." Yum, lard and fat-emulsifying gelatin.

-Harukiya: "The bowl looks simple, but when you sip at the soup, you feel multiple levels of complex flavor and richness combined with fish aroma excite your brain. You will not come to yourself until you finish the whole bowl."

Our brains excited, we got Komurasaki (pork, chicken broth, seaweed, garlic) ramen first. It was delicious. You order from a vending machine, diner style, and choose between king size, regular, and sample size. Unlike Japanese convenience store food, even the sample sizes were huge, so we pretty much came to ourselves and were able to stop our spoons after two samples, despite the excitedness of our brains.

The Motoguchi family was politely encouraging of my efforts to use hashi throughout the meal. Su-Chan was justifiably amused by my chopstick-as-fork technique when I wound noodles around the sticks spaghetti-style, and I think they were embarrassed she'd brought attention to the fact I was an embarrassment to myself. On the way out, they gave me my very own pair of hashi they had bought from the museum gift shop. They are beautiful, and it was so sweet of them! Even though I have silverware in my apartment, I'm going to try to practice eating everything with them.

Monday, October 29, 2007

The world's not falling apart because of you

This may have already came through in the other posts I've written about Greece, but the dominant thing I took away from the trip was a feeling of hope. There isn't anyway to write about this without being a bit corny, and I imagine when I'm twenty-six I'll find this post embarrassing.

I've always been interested in the concept of heroism, ranging from people who change the world and stand up to obstacles just in the way they live their lives. When I was in ninth and tenth grade, I wrote thousands of pages about the examples of heroism I saw in my friends, calling it the "Hero Project."

As I've gotten older, the people I have known have increasingly been able to shape more than their own lives. I'm grateful that no matter how throughly I've learned to, say, problematize a development initative, I've never lost the ability to be inspired by other people.

In Greece, I was surrounded by people who were interested in transforming available information in their countries. They wanted to tell true stories and wanted to hear the stories other people told. In parts of the former Soviet bloc, this is the first generation that has a free press. It takes integrity to report on business or economics in a place where traditionally businesses bribed reporters for favorable coverage. It's brave to be a reporter in a country where a Nobel Prize winning author was prosecuted for "insulting the Republic."

It was also really interesting to hear about the projects people were working on. The German participants, who were all university students, work for a student-run TV news project called "NGO TV." They do media trainings for people who have less media awareness and access, and then put together broadcasts collaboratively. They're just starting out, but they made a twenty minute documentary on the recent EU youth economic summit in Poland.

It felt like a 30 under 30 list, the civil society version.

At one point, I was having a conversation with some of the participants in the hotel lounge, and a young woman said something like, "Well, the world's going to end soon anyway from terrorism or nuclear war, so we might as well have fun in the meantime." She was just kidding, but I was still struck by the glib fatalism.

I just don't believe there are intractable problems-- or at least problems not worth the struggle of trying to fixing. Is this an America thing, or a Swattie thing, or a me thing? A couple of professors mentioned that structural explanations are much more popular in Europe, and Marxist models for understanding history are still academically in vogue, so perhaps there's just more emphasis on individual agency in America. (Let's single-handedly unseat dictators, who cares about waiting for structural change!)

The title of this post comes from a Dar Williams song, "The World's Not Falling Apart Because of Me." It's never been clear to me whether she's talking about keeping the world from falling apart through her actions, or whether she is instead mocking her inability to have a dramatic impact on the world.

I know there's a healthy dose of hubris in talking about fixing problems or changing the world. My best defense is that I feel this way because of the people I have known, and not because of what I believe I as an individual am capable of.

Chatting with the Graveyard Shift

Japan is in what feels like an artificial time zone. It's thirteen hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, but should probably be more like fifteen hours. It gets dark around 4:30 right now-- I think December will be interesting, although I leave a few days shy of the shortest day of the year.

In the morning, I usually am more work focused, but as the afternoon wears on, I look for more of a break from work and sign on to gchat. Unfortunately, this coincides with the middle of the night back home. Luckily, in college, someone is always awake at 2 or even 4 am. In general, there are three possible scenarios: a) they are upset or restless b) they are very drunk or c) they are urgently trying to finish a paper/problem set. In the first case, I feel useful, in the second amused, and in the third, annoying.

The unfortunate thing is that my friends who have graduated from college and have real jobs are for the most part much more sensible than I am and go to bed shortly after I wake up. In general this is true of my family too, but lately my mother's been up late because of the Red Sox. Thanks for the long innings, Boston!

Sunday, October 28, 2007

The Turkish draft

I've been thinking a little bit about the tenor of the Turkish response to the PKK attack on Turkish soldiers. A Turkish friend, Z, was explaining the situation: Turkey will respond "through patience and diplomacy! The fight against terror is a long one. But watching news of young soldiers killed by PKK terrorists infiltrating into Turkey from the north of Iraq hurts too much. They were only 20 or 21 years old. Some were newly married, some had new born babies. Pft that's not fair!"

There's something about this response that just strikes me as different than our response when American soldiers are killed. It's certainly not the sorrow or the anger. I think maybe it's the sense of unfairness. It almost reminds me of American responses to 9/11-- only smaller scale and without the shock.

Turkey has a draft. All I have is an anecdote for evidence, but I wonder if universal service blurs the military-civilian distinction in the minds of the people.

Actually a Dumbledore post

My father and I had an argument about whether JK Rowling should have made it clearer Dumbledore was gay in Book 7. I argued that she was being cowardly by not-- and that Rita Skeeter surely would have mentioned it. My friend E, who I defer to on all things related to Harry Potter/cheese/shoes, wrote something that changed my mind. I imagine other people have been having the same debate, so I thought I'd post it.

"I know a lot of people have expressed dismay that Jo didn't take the opportunity to reveal Dumbledore's sexual orientation in the books themselves, waiting instead for the question to be asked. I've even seen her referred to, not by any of you but by other prominent fandom members, as a "coward" for only coming clean once the books were over and she was safe on her stage in Carnegie Hall. While I think it's silly to call her a coward for something I consider quite courageous (cue capslocked "DON'T -- CALL ME COWARD" moment :D), I did wonder whether it wouldn't have been more courageous, and cooler in general, to have made it clear in the books.

There are several good arguments for leaving it to the subtext (I'm not going to do any word play with that anagram, as much as I want to!). PS pointed out that it would have overshadowed Harry's story not just in context of the book itself but in the world's reaction; P mentioned that Jo might have been accused of pulling a cheap publicity stunt. I also think it would have looked like a heavy-handed attempt to include one gay character in her books somewhere -- much more so than the way she did reveal it, which has already drawn enough criticism for that reason.

When it comes down to it, there would really have been no realistic way in the seventh book to be explicit but casual about Dumbledore being gay. Harry's a seventeen-year-old boy who grew up in our imperfect world; as far as we know has never met a gay person in his life and was not taught tolerance as a child (who would have taught him -- the Dursleys?). Now, Jo could have chosen early on to make the wizarding world be different from ours in its view of homosexuality, and have Harry discover and come to accept this, but she didn't. She could have made homophobia a recurring theme, but she didn't. By the seventh book, there was no room for a Harry-coming-to-terms-with-homosexuality subplot. I'd like to think that the ways in which she does tell us about love and freedom and tolerance, through wizarding-world metaphors and a beautiful story, make up for the fact that she never championed the real-world political causes we care so much about.

I think the simplest and most reasonable argument against leaving Dumbledore's feelings ambiguous in the text, pointed out to me by V, is that if Grindelwald had been a woman, Jo would have come right out and said that Dumbledore loved him. I don't particularly disagree with this. I think, though, that if he had been a woman, Jo wouldn't have needed to say anything. With Gellert's gender switched and the text exactly as it is, everyone -- witches, wizards, readers -- would have assumed Dumbledore was smitten. Why, then, should Jo feel the need to tell us outright? Strictly speaking, we're never explicitly told that Snape had romantic feelings for Lily, either. Everyone just knows he did because of what we saw in "The Prince's Tale," and because he's a man and she's a woman.

Albus/Gellert is given similar treatment, but since we never get to see it firsthand, the indications are never as strong. I think it's appropriate for their relationship to be subtler. Snape's romantic love for Lily is one of the central mysteries of the series ("Finally, the truth"), while Dumbledore's relationship with Grindelwald is fascinating and enlightening backstory. It can stand to be subtle and ambiguous; I think being explicit about it would have been both clunky and unnecessary. I'll gladly admit that it's a little too subtle, and I wouldn't say no to some more delicious hints. But I'm sure it would have been clear to all if the dark wizard Grindelwald had been a witch."

Parliament by noon, nightclub by midnight (EMJI II)

More Greece highlights:

-Most nights I was in Greece, we either had formal program dinners or I wound up going out to dinner with Rachel, Michelle, Theo and Theo's wife Aliki. This was lovely, and I think I got to eat in some of the nicest restaurants in Athens. However, I knew that all the students on the program were hanging out, etc, so it was nice to have a few nights off. On one of these nights, I went out to a Greek taverna with Konstadina, a Greek native and intern in the NATO office, a journalist from Romania named Antonia, and Konstadina's friends. The taverna had a roof and some walls, but the windows were just open air so the wind and sounds from the street could flow through. We drank warm honey wine out of these tiny thimble-like glasses and ate mezzes. Konstadina, who is one of the warmest people I've ever met, was a paragon of hospitality and basically hand fed me the choicest ones. I hope she visits me in the U.S. one day.
We wanted to meet up with the rest of the students at a club nearby, but had a hard time finding the place. Konstadina and Antonia were in the throes of parallel boy drama (I need more drama) and we dissected their situations as we walked around. I was surprised by the universality--I'm too proud to call him because I don't want him to know I like him that much. It was a really warm night, and I enjoyed seeing all the Athenians in their going-out finery. I have major European style envy. I felt less lonely than I'd felt in weeks.
Finally, we found the club and discovered that our friends had taken over the second floor. I'm becoming convinced there's an inverse relationship between the ease of life in a country and the ability of its citizens to dance. Some of these kids were fun just to watch (but they were so encouraging that I got dragged into the dancing anyway). At Swarthmore, I consider someone a good dancer if they stick to the rhythm consistently. These dancers had an electric creativity, rendering eclectic, almost awkward moves magnetic.

-We had several formal program dinners. One was at the US Embassy, which was much less stiff and more interesting than I'd expected. The acting ambassador was surprisingly candid-- especially about independence for Kosovo-- for a diplomat faced with a pack of young journalists. During the Q and A, I decided to ask him about how he handled tensions between his personal beliefs and his professional obligations. He admitted there was a tension, but that things are rarely black and white and there are more channels for dissent in the state department than there were five years ago. I think we were both implicitly referring to the resignation of John Brady Kiesling. When I was a freshman in college, I interviewed Swat alum John Kiesling, who left the State Department in 2003 because he was unwilling to continue to try to sell the Iraq war in Greece. I was barely eighteen at the time, it was my first big interview, and I had a huge admire-crush.

-Another night, we had dinner at the Greek Officer's Club, where we were served by Greek soldiers in uniform. I have a friend or two who would have gotten a huge kick out of that. I accidentally ate caviar (I thought it was a coarse olive paste and put a huge lump on a cracker-- ooops) and liked it. The embassies of all the students in attendance were invited to the dinner, and I sat at a table with a Turkish diplomat who had previously served in the US and New Delhi (we discovered he was on facebook!) and a Greek head of Amnesty.
They had a long discussion about the extent to which Turkey's human rights record is an excuse for not letting it into the EU. They also inverted the normal discussion in an interesting way. Maybe it's easier for European leaders to emphasize the unpopularity of allowing in a majority-Muslim country than to criticize Turkey for its human rights record. It allows both governments a convenient out: The EU can say, "we'd let you in, but our people aren't enlightened enough. Let's keep trading." Turkey can say "It's an all Christian club." This is potentially less embarrassing for both countries than direct tension over civil liberties in Turkey. It's a more out-there interpretation, but I think it's interesting. It reminds me of the multiple level trade negotiation models from International Politics that Robert Putnam developed.

-Most of our events and speakers were in English, but the two sessions in Greek were my favorite. In part, they were cool because we all got headphones to wear that had simultaneous translation. What really made the sessions was that the journalists asked really hard questions.
The first of these sessions was on the Greek fires. A governor from a province affected by the fires was on the panel, and I was impressed by the ways they had moved to rapidly aid and compensate the victims. A very young Greek media-lawyer (you can have a law degree in Greece when you're 23!) really grilled him, and asked him why the military hadn't intervened sooner. His answer was that the military was mainly made of nineteen and twenty year old boys who weren't trained to fight fires. She pointed out that fires, although usually less severe, were almost an annual occurrence, and asked why the soldiers weren't trained to respond. He couldn't answer.

-The next day, we had a session with five members of the new parliament, including the parliament's president and representatives of all five major parties. A Macedonian journalist asked a deliberately provocative question about Macedonia, and the far-right parliamentary shot him down for being disrespectful and not saying FYROM. We were worried we were going to get thrown out of Parliament for a minute or two. A Greek-German woman asked about immigration policy, and the Israeli journalist asked why there was so little anti-smoking legislation in Greece (Aliki calls it the world's last true democracy and blows smoke circles whenever this comes up). I asked the representative from the center-left party why they had suffered a larger defeat than expected and what their strategy as the major opposition party was. (The poor woman. Theo told me later that she was dismayed "the Americans" knew her party had done so badly. And she was my favorite!)It was a much faster paced, firey session that I had expected and there was very little empty speech. Conclusion: it's more fun to meet important people with journalists than with wanna-be important people.

-On the last night after the "graduation ceremony," we all had a party in one of the hotel rooms, spilling out onto the balcony and across the bed. The sink and the bathtub were full of ice as a cooler for the drinks, but then we realized we didn't have cups. Some people suggested we borrow some from the unlocked hotel bar, but everyone wound up going back to their rooms to get a few.

-After EMJI ended, Rachel and I stayed on a few more days in Greece and Theo got wrapped up in a whole lot of last minute Atlantic Treaty Association election tension. There's nothing like election tension. At one point, they asked me to make a score sheet to count off the expected votes (of countries, no less!) and I felt a little like I was in high school, trying to figure out if I had enough votes to run for something or other.

Ichi, ne, san, shi, go!

Friday night, I went out to a local bar with Rachel and Brett where we met up with some of their friends and played a half dozen rounds of Yatzee. It was an ideal game for me because I'd just learned to count to five (ichi, ne, san, shi, go!) and could show off/practice. Everyone was very good humored, and the game descended into hilarity a few times as people struggled to master the differences between our names. (The shortened forms of our names wind up being much more similar in Japanese...Ray-chan, Bray-chan, Bree-chan. My name actually winds up being more like Badee-chan. I enjoy the way my name is reinvented in different languages. The Mudasiganas call me Bliss and in the UAE, people thought my name was Berry. It makes me wonder what I do to other people's names.)

I was talking to this man who had to be at least fifty. He asked me if I had friends in Japan, and I pointed to Bray-chan and Ray-chan and tried to indicate I had another friend named Saori somewhere. He then asked Rachel something I didn't understand and she answered, then he asked me a question and pointed to his nose. I really wasn't sure what to do, but I'd worn the phrase 'I'm sorry, I don't understand' out for the evening, so I figured I might as well also point to my nose.

Everyone burst out laughing. Apparently, in Japan, you point to yourself by touching the tip of your nose. He'd asked Rachel if I was single, and then asked me if I wanted to date him. I'd responded by looking bewildered and pointing to myself, diffusing a potentially awkward situation. There are perks to being too oblivious to be awkward!

One dynamic I'm struggling with a little bit here is how common and acceptable it is for older men to go after young women and girls. In the United States, we certainly idolize youth and it isn't uncommon for women to marry men ten or fifteen years older than them, but men in their thirties and forties don't date girls in high school and college. As a result, when a man who is 50+ talks to me, I assume he is being fatherly and not trying to hit on me. I would have assumed he was kidding if Rachel and Brett hadn't given me a crash course on vehemently expressing disinterest on the way home. Apparently he'd gotten really persistent, and Rachel had told him I didn't have a cell phone or an email account. We're not quite as far along technologically back in the US of A. The whole thing struck me as more funny than anything else, but it's good to bear in mind in the way I perceive interactions here.

Vanity

So, when looking at tracking options for the OIR website, stumbled across Google Analytics, a cool tool that lets me track the number of unique hits and repeat hits a website is getting. I thought I'd give it a go here first, and I was pleasantly surprised by the traffic. In appreciation, I decided to fight my Luddite-like tendencies and learn how to make hyperlinks instead of pasting the whole link the way I've been doing. Overall, I'm surprised by how addictive posting is becoming.

Update: My mother complained the white-on-black was hard to read, so I changed the color scheme. I guess it's good a black screen isn't necessary more efficient anyway.

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Rain on a Tin Roof

Today's been a deliciously lazy day. There's a typhoon coming through (which apparently just means a large rainstorm, but typhoon sounds so much cooler) and it's almost too rainy/floody to go outside. I was out fairly late last night so I slept in virtually forever. I love mornings when you wake up and then go back to sleep and are just sleepy enough to fall back to sleep but not entirely so you have a little bit of control over your dreams. This is the first week I can remember where I've gotten enough sleep every night. I sort of went through college pretending caffeine and sleep were perfect substitutes, but now I'm realizing it's better when they are complements. In Greece, there were a few nights where I was so tired I fell asleep on my floor. If anyone ever tells you dinner ends at 2 or 3 am in Greece, believe them. I thought my boss was exaggerating!

My upstairs apartment is so nice in the rain. It makes fantastic sounds on the roof and I can hear the wind beating around the walls. I've spent most of the day upstairs reading a book about an American gangster in Tokyo after World War II.

I had to venture out to run errands earlier today. Unfortunately, I packed for Abu Dhabi where it never rains, so I had to settle for old gold flats and a borrowed umbrella. I think it might be time to buy more all-weather clothing. I succeeded in not being an embarrassment to myself because I discovered there were plastic sleeves outside the grocery store to put your umbrella in so it didn't drip. After you put your umbrella into the plastic sleeve, you then put a rubber band around the top to make sure it stays tightly on. Dryness is a serious business.

If the rain continues to be this bad, I'll probably post more later.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Happy 62nd, United Nations!

I meant to post this yesterday, but October 24th was the 62nd birthday of the United Nations. Until sometime in late middle school I thought Kofi Annan was more important and powerful than the President of the United States, and part of me still can't let go of that as a normative goal. I know right now supporting the United Nations is very out of fashion. Even at my idealistic college, there was always someone who snorted when there was a serious discussion about UN policy or legitimacy.

As I'm going through the endnotes, I have moments where I feel very conflicted about the UN. I've studied ethnic conflict for the last four years, and I still can't read about Srebenica without wanting to cry. I guess I get swept up in a vision of what the UN could be, and frustrated with all the constraints it is hobgobbled by. I don't know enough (and haven't lived long enough) to evaluate all the merits and flaws of the UN, but I do believe we need a global organization to facilitate cooperation and develop international standards and laws, and it's better to work with what we have than start over.

A quick list of things I think the UN should be celebrating:
-Being a clearing house of easily accessible information about important trends around the world. (The Human Development Index is amazing. Before wikipedia, it was my favorite procrastination tool.)
-promoting self-determination before it was a given
-successfully helping Cambodia transit from decades of violence into a stable democracy
-leading the effort to end apartheid in South Africa
-prosecuting war criminals
-formulating international standards
-running refugee camps
-eradicating smallpox and helping contain epidemics like SARS
-serving as a forum for important conversation and collaboration, from fighting the spread of HIV/AIDS to climate change

Transcendent Conversations

Last night, I went to a neighborhood bar with Rachel's husband, Brett, and met some of his friends. I had a mango cider, which was very delicious and on the house. I also got to do some research into my ever-evolving list of conversation topics that seem to span cultural barriers and don't necessarily require sophisticated or technical vocabulary. I apologize if this list seems stereotypical, especially when it comes to gender. There are also some topics that could be on other people's lists that don't work as well for me. For instance, in Tanzania (and to a lesser extent, other places) I felt like I would have had a lot more to talk about with people had I been more comfortable talking about religion, or had we shared a belief in god. I imagine having small children or an exhausting job is also good conversation fodder.

The List So Far
-The World Cup (more men then women, but I get a lot of mileage out of this one)
-Bad Breakups, Past Relationships and Current Crushes (more women)
-Pets (Japan)
-Friends and Seinfeld (seem to have achieved global popularity)
-Strange Things You Have Eaten or Drank (more men. My best is deep fried grasshoppers in Northwestern TZ)
-Things You Don't Like That Bush Has Done (I know there's an old rule about not discussing politics or religion with people you don't know well, but I think this one actually often makes people feel more comfortable. I'm also really bad at not talking about politics.)


This list is a lot shorter than I'd like it to be, but I figure it's an evolving project. I think the best way to interact with interesting people is always to ask a lot of questions, but sometimes I do that too much and part of building trust and friendship is having reciprocal conversations where both parties volunteer information.

Some of the topics above are just fun. Last night, the guy who owned the bar told us about a liquor with a snake inside of it. People drink the liquor and cook the snake. We then talked about tequila and worms. I also had a similarly light-hearted conversation with a bunch of women in the UAE about pranks we'd played on our siblings and had played on us.

My strategy for launching into more controversial topics is to wait for a lead in the conversation. For instance, if someone says something mildly against the war/the current administration, I'll say something to make it clear I'm not going to be offended. "I didn't support the war and worked for the Democrats, the opposition party, when I was in college. I think very few Americans support the war now. What do you think about..." If it's a perspective I don't agree with but want to hear more about, I'm torn between just asking a question and saying "I don't agree with that but would like to hear why you feel that way..." I usually settle for, "I've never heard that put quite that way before. What makes you feel that way?"

One subject that I've found very fruitful in the UAE, Greece, Tanzania and Japan is discussing what the roles of men and women should be like in the ideal society. Should women serve in combat? Should men take paternity leave? Should women with kids work? I like this subject because everyone is equally qualified to have an opinion and people often have varied opinions but the conversation doesn't usually devolve into personal attacks. I'm also almost always surprised by what is said.

La Vie Quotideinne

One thing I really like about Japan is that it's socially acceptable to say, when apologizing, "I am an embarrassment to myself." I have had several noteworthy daily life successes this week, and I think they are in part due to the mastery of this key phrase-- because I often am.

The other day, I went to go visit a friend a few train stations away. I'd last seen her when I was in ninth grade, so it was fantastic to catch up. We rode a very high ferris wheel called a 'clock.' From the top, you can see all the way to Mount Fuji on a clear day. We ate at Subways for lunch. A critical difference from the United States: they put wasabi on the sandwiches. Yum.

On the way back, I had some ticketing confusion involving accidentally using a fare adjustment machine when I didn't need to. As a result, my ticket was just really messed up and the ticket machine wouldn't let me exit the station. I went into the little help booth to try to explain/pantomime the situation, an added challenge because I didn't really understand what had happened. After I had tried to act out trying to leave and the machine barring me from leaving (I could have used a volunteer, pretending to be me and the offending machine simultaneously was tricky)while repeating "I'm sorry. I don't understand. I am an embarrassment to myself," the station attendants decided I was lost. I was able to communicate that I did indeed live in Kikuna, and then they said a lot of stuff. I explained that I didn't understand and was totally an embarrassment to myself. They were enthusiastic and said a lot more stuff. Finally, they gave me an unnecessary refund and let me through a back gate. I think I was becoming an embarrassment to them too. I felt bad but I kind of count the interaction as a success because I was able to a) exit the station and b) convey that I felt bad.

Speaking of success stories, I've mastered my shower and my bathtub now! I'll confess, I don't know how all the buttons work, and have to fill my bathtub manually instead of setting it to fill to a certain number of cubic millimeters, but it's a far cry from falling and not being able to get up. My bathtub itself is phenomenal. I think it could fit three American-sized people in there. If it was deeper, there would be enough space to tread water. I've always been more of a shower person than a bath person, but Japan may convert me. I sort of just want to hang out in my bathtub with a book after work. In Japan, water is heated as it is used, so bathwater doesn't get cold and showers don't run out of hot water. In addition, no energy is wasted heating unused hot water.

One thing that I'm still adapting to is how rule-abiding people are. I took the train into Shibuye (downtown Tokyo) the other night and participated in "the Scramble" at Hachiko Crossing. It was chaos, made slightly more terrifying by the fact that it was raining and everyone was holding umbrellas that seemed aimed at my eyeballs, but decidedly organized chaos. Everyone waited until the signal to cross and people truly scrambled. There was none of this "I'll make the car wait for me" leisurely American stuff.

Closer to home, I live about a third of a mile from the train tracks. Ninety seconds before a train comes through, traffic barriers go down and a flashing light blinks. They sometimes go up immediately after the train passes, but if there's a second train following it, they stay down. This means that pedestrians, cars, and bicyclists wait two minutes between trains. Occasionally, I've treated the traffic blocks like hurdles when running , but all the people waiting the full two minutes for an "ok" signal looked at me with concealed horror. I get it. I'm an embarrassment to myself. I try to follow the rules better now-- time saving isn't worth the social stress.

Today for lunch, I went to a nearby Japanese diner with Rachel. At the door, there was a machine with pictoral representations of the food and prices. We decided what we wanted and pressed the corresponding buttons. Then we got tickets with our meal and drinks orders. (It reminded me a little of the sandwich machine at WaWa.) We took these tickets to the counter, and gave them a waitress/cook. A few minutes later, she brought out our meals, which were still cooking on hot plates. The procedure is like this: for the next ten minutes, you shield yourself from the oil/grease by folding your paper placemat in half and putting it in front of your dish and reach over the placemat with your haishi (chopsticks) to turn your meat over as it cooks. The food was delicious and I was not an embarrassment to myself!

Terry McAuliffe, Yasser Arafat and J.K. Rowling


Today I was editing an endnote on the death of Yasser Arafat and I noticed that we didn’t mention the cause of death. I figured it could be worth including, so I did some research, and realized that for the sake of brevity and neutrality, we left it out for a reason. Apparently, his death is a somewhat of a mystery and is every bit as polarizing as his life. I can’t tell if the cause of death was actually as nebulous as some reports make it sound, or whether people were just looking for a way to eek out one more statement about Arafat. Many supporters claimed that Arafat had been poisoned a month before his death and had slowly died as a result of conspiracy. Several right wing sources argued rather triumphantly that Arafat died of AIDS, a claim the New York Times dismissed, but that led to a stream of chatter about the former PLO chairman’s sexuality.

Apparently, in former DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe’s autobiography, he reported that Arafat had made a pass at him at a dinner party by stroking his leg. True or not true, I think it’s pretty cheap of McAuliffe to put it in his autobiography. At best the reason for including it is because sex sells. (I suspect that if a powerful woman included every man in a position of authority who made a move on her in her autobiography, the book would be longer and half as well-respected.) At worst, it seems like an extension of the sort of thing fourth graders do, making ‘gay’ into an insult. “You missed the goal. You’re gay.” “You failed the spelling test. You’re gay.” “You’re the leader of the Palestinians. You’re gay.” Even if McAuliffe didn’t see Arafat’s sexuality that way, he had to be aware that was the mindset he was playing into. I’m glad J.K. Rowlings’ 13th hour revelation of Dumbledore’s sexuality at least offers a pop culture alternative. Happy coming out week, Swarthmore College.

Is it fun to speculate about Arafat’s sexuality? Kind of. Is it appropriate for an American leader (or journalists) to encourage such highly charged speculation in order to increase sales and media attention? I don’t think so.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

EMJI Highlights Part I


This post is just going to be the first of several collections of highlights from Greece:

-It was nearly impossible to live a meal sober; we all ate at a meze place after visiting the acropolis and when the waiter asked us what we wanted to drink, we said 'nothing.' "Nothing," apparently, means no hard alcohol, as we discovered when he brought over carafes of red and white wine. Ah well, not going to complain about free alcohol. This was about when I learned to say cheers in Serbo-Croatian: Zhi-val-ee. (In Japan, it's Kam-pie.)

-Bruce Clark, the international editor for The Economist, came to speak to us towards the end of the program. He talked about his experiences in the former Soviet block countries, and how difficult it was to make economic predictions without freedom of information. He asked the Ukrainian journalists whether it was still common for companies to offer journalists bribes for favorable coverage. They shook their heads, but the Lithuanian journalist, who covered business news, said it was still very common in Lithuania. "People my age, we just say, 'No thanks, that's why I have a salary.'," she explained. We could tell this story really touched him, and it was inspiring to see how corruption could end.

-At one point, a journalist from Cairo asked a panelist how journalists could best cover events, for instance, President Mubarak's illness, to minimize economic disturbance. Her question made it clear to me how different attitudes about the job of the press are in different parts of the world.



Cigarettes and Coffee

I’ve read a lot in various women’s magazines about why Europeans are thinner (ops, I mean, healthier) than Americans. It usually seems to boil down to really enjoying what they eat, walking more, and eating more fresh produce. From a public policy perspective, this is a pretty compelling explanation: if people believe those are the reasons Europeans are healthier, they will make healthier lifestyle choices.

I’m not sure it adds up, though.

I am guilty of a couple of unhealthy behaviors. I certainly drink more caffeine than recommended, and probably more alcohol too. I think cheese should be eaten at every meal. I have to be forced to stretch and rarely get enough sleep. (I live dangerously, I know.) On the whole, though, my college friends and I would make excellent “healthy Europeans.” We eat produce several times a day and walk whenever it is remotely possible. This leaves me confused why an American size small is a Greek anything-but (Oh, just wait till Japan…) especially as most young Europeans seem to drink more and workout less than the typical young Americans. I still believe that the ‘healthier living’ explanation may be why there are fewer obese Europeans than Americans, but I think it falls a little flat when comparing young people.


One reason that may partially account for the European-American size gap occurred to me one morning at breakfast in our hotel. I was sleepily munching on a bowl of whole grain cereal, and noticed my tablemates were already lighting up their cigarettes as they picked at their pain au chocolate. Vindication.

Greece Background Part III: Turkey

A final issue that was key during my time in Greece was Turkish EU accession. I have a feeling if I'd been in Greece a year ago-- or even six months ago-- this would have been an even hotter topic, but I think Turkey has lost some interest in the meantime.

Basically, Turkey wants to join the EU and its economy is in proper, EU friendly shape. (Between 2002-2006, the average growth rate was 7%, about four times the average EU growth rate.) Despite a long-standing dispute over Cyprus, Greece has been a key sponsor for Turkish EU accession. Turkey and Greece have a rocky history, but according to my Turkish journalist friend, things have been hunky dory since the 1999 earthquake, when Greece led the outpouring of support for its' Eastern neighbor.

There have been a couple explanations why Turkish EU membership has been so slow. I have my own biases-- I visited Turkey in January and just really liked it (of course, I wasn't a political dissent or a Kurd...), and am also cynical about the inelasticity of the European identity.

1) Cyprus negotiations. Turkey must open its ports to all (Greek) Cypriot planes and vessels before succession can take place.
2) "Turkey doesn't have the proper paperwork and records because it isn't a proper democracy." I heard this one a lot but I'm not sure what it means.
3) Turkish compliance with various EU protocol (for instance, food safety policy and intellectual property law) will take more time.
4) Human rights abuses and lack of freedom of press.
5) Turkey is a majority Muslim (99%) country and just "isn't European."

I think reasons (2) and (3) are excuses that make the delay look reasonable on paper. It's hard for me to believe that Turkey would have a harder time complying-- or worse record-keeping-- than some of the former Soviet bloc countries that joined the EU that have spent the past decade and a half rebuilding their infrastructure from scratch. I don't know enough about Cyprus to comment on reason (1) although it seems like a plausible roadblock. I think (4) and (5) are the most interesting reasons.

Public opinion in Europe, as gauged by the Eurobarometer, is against Turkish succession. Turkey has a population of 70 million and its population growth rate is much faster than that of most EU members. Allowing Turkey into the EU wouldn't be bringing in just a small Muslim country but could change the composition of the whole EU. I think the popular resistance to Turkish accession is based on fears about a shifting European identity. While this is depressing, I bet that in 1988, the year Turkey first applied for EU membership, it was hard to imagine Bulgaria and Lithuania as members, so it seems clear the European identity is in flux.

The human rights issue is a difficult one. Turkey is a democracy that holds free and fair elections, but the army last intervened because they didn't like the election result in 1997. Political dissents who go against the nationalist line are sometimes put on trial for their views. The Freedom House Index (which is addictive) gives Turkey about the same ranking as Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Moldova.
http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=22&country=7291&year=2007
I wish the EU would be more strategic about using membership as a lever if this was the primary issue, though.

Greece Background Part II: What's in a Name?

I stayed up late last night to finish a work related task because I was on a roll (hey, old habits die hard) so I have some wiggle time during the day today and have high hopes of finishing up with everything I want to say about Greece.

Right now, Greece has an ongoing dispute with the Republic of Macedonia over its name. Macedonia is a small landlocked country that was part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia until 1991. Greece worries that Macedonia is attempting to appropriate parts of its history by its name (which is also a region in Greece), and by claiming that it is the birth place of Alexander the Great. Macedonia's first flag after independence had the Vergina sun on it, a symbol of King Phillip II of Macedon, Alexander the Great's father. Tensions increased when Macedonia named their airport Alexander the Great airport. As a result, Macedonia is identified as FYROM (the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia) in most official documents. Because NATO and EU secession is dependent upon the resolution of this dispute, it's become a very serious issue.

More and more countries (around 181 now) recognize FYROM as Macedonia, so it seems clear that Greece will have to cave eventually. The Greeks I met often delicately referred to the Macedonian journalists as "the young men from Skopje," the capital city of Macedonia.

The issue was a difficult one for me to understand as an outsider. I think I could understand a little better if the dispute was conveyed in economic terms-- Greece didn't want Macedonia the country to steal tourists from Macedonia the region--but the Greeks I spoke with were extremely emotional about the issue, arguing that Macedonia was an affront to their identity.

A young journalist from Israel was equally bewildered by the issue and Michelle told me that at a conference once the Jordanian and Israeli participants started laughing when the Macedonia issue came up. When she asked them to calm down, they explained they wished all they were fighting over was a name.

One "facet" of the problem is that Macedonia was a kingdom in ancient Greece inhabited by ancient Greeks whereas Macedonia the country is inhabited by Slavs. Some Greeks worry the modern Macedonians are trying to claim a Greek identity or conflate Slavic and Greek identities. (Although I think different responsible ethnic historians have argued both that the Greeks ARE Slavs and that the Macedonians aren't Slavs--it's kind of blurry.) The issue of the birthplace of Alexander the Great is also a sensitive one: everybody loves a conqueror. Greeks also worry that the name is a precursor to Macedonian territorial ambitions to spread into Greek Macedonia. (Maybe they should jump this hurdle once they get to it.)

This may seem like a long treatise in something of dubious international importance, but I do think it's a pretty unique conflict and underpinned a lot of the political conversations I had in Greece. If anyone "gets it" or can think of a parallel instance, I'd love to hear.

Friday, October 19, 2007

Q&A

Q: How do you meet expats in the Tokyo/Yokohama area?
A: Near the fare adjustment machine on the metro.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Crying Wolf in the Shower

It's not listed on my resume, but I'm pretty good at squat toilets, if I do say so myself. I'm particularly skilled at using them in a skirt and heels. (This actually makes it easier.) I've also mastered the bucket shower. Therefore, I thought I had the international bathroom situation covered.

That was before I got to Japan.

The Japanese bathrooms I've encountered so far really want to make my life easier. They have a lot of things they'd like to do for me, if only I'd ask properly. This personification may seem like overkill, but the shower has a brain AND a larynx.

The shower has a panel of about eight buttons in different colors with Japanese characters written on them. I had an initial lesson in shower usage my first night, but I was too jet-lagged to remember it. Two control the temperature. I understand that part of the shower brain, and it's nice to be able to pick an exact temperature for my shower. When I press those buttons, the shower speaks. I assume it's telling me what temperature the water is.

There's also a button that fills the tub, and buttons you can use the specify how full you want the tub. Once the tub is filling, there's a button that controls whether the drain is open or closed. I think this button might do something different if the tub isn't filling, but I'm not sure.

My first few showers, I wound up pushing a lot of buttons helplessly and giggling at the shower as it told me lots of things in Japanese. Lo and behold, one of these buttons is a green "emergency" button for elderly people. As I put conditioner in my hair, the message "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!" was broadcast over the house intercom over and over in Japanese. Poor Rachel and Brett debated whether to barge into the shower on the off chance that I actually had fallen and wasn't able to get up.

When this happened for a second time, I got a second tutorial on how to use the shower and have been steering clear of the green button ever since then. I hope to gain an in-depth understanding of the full shower/bath combo by the end of the month. The bathtub looks kind of amazing.

I went in a public restroom that had three or four buttons over the toilet. I was terrified (what if I fell and was unable to get up?) but finally took a lucky guess, pushed one, and ran.

Athens and the Acropolis

I can imagine what it would be like to know you were back home with your eyes shut. I’m learning that each place has a distinctive smell and feeling to the air. I think I first noticed this when in Peru in high school, when we could feel the humidity as soon as we got of the plan. Athens was cooler than the UAE, but also slightly more humid. It smelled like pollution and occasionally I got a whiff of the gyros which were cooking on every block. It’s slightly gritty, helter skelter streets felt refreshing after Abu Dhabi. I also loved the fact that I would round a corner, turn down a normal street, and suddenly have a view of the acropolis, all lit up. A hole in the ground would at first look like construction, and then as I got closer, I'd realize it was the foundation of an ancient building.


There was a lot of homelessness in Greece. Before, I would have interpreted the lack thereof in the UAE as a good thing, but because I know there's extreme poverty there, it instead seems sinister that it is so invisible. It reminds me of an argument I read when writing a con law paper on public forums (fora?):

"In their article, “Begging to Differ: The First Amendment and the Right to Beg,” Cohen and Herschkoff argue that this discomfort is a valuable result of free speech. To deprive poor people of the right to beg does not only deny them of a way to earn money but also denies them the ability to make the public aware of their plight. Begging is an individual commentary on social order—the belief that it is the duty of the prosperous to help the less fortunate in their communities. It also provides the listener with valuable information about their opportunities to be charitable. Although begging is certainly partially financially motivated, so are other protected forms of expression such as movies, music and books."


It's a problem when people are denied the ability to communicate their need. On the other hand, the different could stem from the fact that the poor in the UAE are working: I'd bet a lot that unemployment is much higher in Greece. Also, marginalized populations in the UAE are there FOR work whereas some of the marginalized populations in Greece (the Roma) may be discriminated against in hiring. Anyway, this is all just speculation.

(And now for a lesson in contrast...)

On my first night in Greece, we ate at the Athens Club with Theo and Michelle, which was quite the introduction. The Athens Club is sort of an old school British gentlemen's club that only allowed women in a few years ago. Theo had decided that EMJI would have their graduation there, so we were scouting it out. It was there that I discovered that even zucchini is good with enough lemon. This made enough of an impression that I wrote my first Greece post about the wonders of lemon. We also had a Greek salad with lemon, feta and spinach pastries, and dolma in lemon sauce. There was an amazing view of the Acropolis from the roof, and at the table next to us, some cabinet members were discussing their choices for their new under-secretaries.

On Sunday, before the EMJI academic program started but after I'd prepared some materials for Rachel, I went to go see the acropolis with the journalists. It was a beautiful, very sunny day. In January, I went to see Ephesus in Turkey with my father, and I think the Acropolis itself was a bit of a let down for me after this. Maybe the Acropolis is more architecturally impressive or restored with more care, but Ephesus is really cool because it's a whole city. I liked imaging people meeting in the agora, going to the library or walking down mainstreet. The Acropolis is a temple where people went once or twice a month, so there's less scope for the imagination.

However, the view of Athens and the surrounding countryside from the Acropolis is absolutely amazing. Athens is a pretty big city--6 million out of Greece's 11 million inhabitants live there-- but from the Acropolis, you can take in the whole city and the mountains. It was clear enough for us to see all the way to the ocean. I'd have hiked up just for the view alone.

The Blessings

I really like the singer Dar Williams, and one of my favorite songs is called "The Blessings." What I love so much about the song is that over the last year, I've found meaning in different verses depending on what was going on in my life. The end of the song is about being able to choose what you take away from an experience, what stories you tell. The following verse in the middle never really hit me until yesterday:

I had the blessings, there's nobody there, there's nobody home
Yeah the blessings, in the moment I was most alone
And aimless as a fooltime fool, the joke was on me.
I got all of those birds flying off of that tree, and that's a blessing.

I think people derive their happiness or sense of self from different things. (And this can be fluid over the course of a lifetime.) For some people, praise is really important, or good grades, or the approval of authority figures. For others, self-worth depends on being attractive to their preferred sex. For me, it's social feedback. I don't mean social approval-- I'm ok with some people disliking me-- I mean something a bit deeper than popularity and a bit shallower than being indispensable.

Not receiving this feedback is challenging for me, and I have some days where I'm quite lonely. I'll get sort of into being lonely, and think: Aha. This is what it feels like to be sad. Whenever I feel this way, there's always something small that happens and then suddenly I'm happy again. The things are trivial-- but there is always, always something. Yesterday, I was in a bad mood and went for a run and saw a bunch of kindergardeners walking in two lines up the hill. They were all wearing matching uniforms with yellow hats and started waving to me and shouting "Heddddo!" It was so cute that I was in a good mood for the rest of the day.

I think that's what Dar is saying about "all those birds flying out of that tree." To me, that's part of the difference between being happy and having a bad day and just being unhappy. I think true unhappiness is often characterized by an emotional inertia or numbness. I can tell I'm fundamentally happy because I still get excited over the birds in the tree.

I explained this to my friend and fellow Dar affectionado, Allie, who got what I meant, but sorry if I'm just rambling. I take lyrics pretty seriously, as you can see.

Chronicles of a Formerly Picky Eater

I used to be a very picky eater. I went into college a vegetarian, although I (somewhat painfully) transitioned out of that before my trip to Tanzania. I didn't eat pizza until my junior year of college, or tomatoes. I didn't like (non-cheddar) cheese until I went to France sophomore year. (This is hard for me to imagine right now). However, this really only scraps the surface of my limited palette. Before college, my diet consisted mainly of yogurt, cereal, green apples, chick peas, grapes, carrots and ceasar salad. I don't know how my parents put up with me. When people invited us over for dinner, I politely asked if they had cereal.

I think I first discovered the joys of real food (read: cheese and nutella) when in Paris with my friend Eleuthera on spring break. Life without cheese seems pretty unpalatable now. The beginning of the end was probably the summer after my sophomore year, when I worked a lot with African refugee families and decided it was just plain rude not to eat the food they offered me. When I went after to Tanzania the next summer, we were frequently served nyama, an all-encompassing term that means "animal," and although we never learned to love it, we became able to eat a polite amount without wincing. As for ndizi (banana) cooked with tomatoes? Bring it on! We also discovered the wonders of Ethiopian food and I truly enjoyed meat for the first time.

In the past few weeks, I've discovered just how necessary my devolution from selectivity was. In Greece, I rarely got to choose my own food. When we went out to eat with Theo and Aliki, Theo inevitably ordered our food with input from Aliki. In some ways, this felt very old world-- I can't really imagine men routinely ordering for women in the U.S. On the other hand, it made sense because Rachel, Michelle, and I couldn't speak or read Greek. I came to trust that they would pick 'something good.' There's a small list of foods I still dislike-- like zucchini-- but I learned even zucchini is good if you put enough lemon on it.

I don't have a fridge in my apartment yet in Japan, so I often go to the convenience store ("Family Mart") to pick out healthy, cheap, ready made food. One of my favorites is onigiri, triangle-shaped rice balls with different fillings wrapped in seaweed. Luckily, they are color-coded so I can tell what's in them. The blue ones are my favorite-- they are filled with tuna, a food I thought I hated a week ago.

In general, though, my food shopping is hit or miss. Not only can I not read Japanese, but a lot of the food doesn't look like anything I've experienced before. I'm kind of intimidated by the heads of fish, but other than that, I'm never sure what I'm eating until I bite into it. I can't even reliably predict whether things are sweet or not. The other day, I accidentally bought sippable sweetened aloe vera yogurt for breakfast. At least now I know how to avoid it.

I know how to ask several helpful questions in Japanese: What is this thing near me? What is this thing closer to you? What is that distant thing? I imagine these could prove helpful at some future date. At this point, I could ask, but wouldn't understand the answers.

The only part of the food label I can read is the numerical part of the nutrition facts. Thus, I know my onigiri has 187 kcal, 5.5 g something and 3.1 g something else. My meal shopping is sort of like a mathematical scavenger hunt: find 600 calories. Go!

Another challenge is that what seems to be fairly extreme dieting here is so common that a lot of 'healthy' foods are insubstantial. I'm looking for a salad that has more than 54 calories to go with my onigiri after a long run, thanks. The solution is definitely mochi, a warm dumpling filled with delicious sweet red bean jelly.

The final grocery shopping challenge begins when I order mochi at the counter, where they are in a heater. "Mochi, I request," I say in terrible Japanese. Then I point to the pink one. This doesn't always work and there is a lot of confusion. "Sorry," I say. "I don't understand Japanese. Thank you." The cashier then has a lot of things to tell me about my food or its cost or the transaction in general. I'm not sure if these are expressions of surprise ("That is a very strange meal." "Thank you."), warnings about the food, ("The onigiri is no good today. It might make you sick." "Sorry.") or friendly conversation, ("Are you from America?" "Thank you" again.) but I stick to my stock phrases. Right now my favorite word in Japanese is ho-ten-ni, which means totally/very, but I haven't figured out a way to work that into my grocery shopping. I do totally request mochi, but I don't know which part of the sentence the adverb belongs in.

East African Runners

I know this is old news, but I'm still in awe: His marathon time isn't so far off my half marathon time. Yikes.

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Elections and Fires: Background Part I

We arrived in Greece shortly after a summer of extremely difficult forest fires and a week after the national election. For some background: Greece has a very dry climate (although certainly not as dry as the UAE) with dense, low-lying vegetation. Some of the plants contain resin, which catches on fire very easily. Forest fires are a habitual summer hazard.

What made this summer’s fires particularly unique was not only their devastation but also the mystery surrounding their cause and the lag in government response. In many cases, evidence of arson, such as bottles of gasoline, was found at the site of the fire. The long-standing (and in my opinion, plausible) explanation is that developers were trying to get around a provision of Greek property law that makes it illegal to build on forest land. The (now former) Minister of Public Order, Vyron Polydoras, claimed that Greece faced an “asymmetric threat” and that the fires were the result of terrorism. To me, this seems a little bit like a play for aid from the United States, a more extreme version Uribe labeling the FARQ terrorists. It’s a magic word. Another explanation—heightened because the fires took place during election season—was that the fires were started by an opposition party in order to throw the results. This rumor became so prevalent that the leader of PASOK—the main opposition party—accused the government of perpetuating the story that his party had started the fires.

The other source of controversy surrounding the fires was the delayed government response. The fires started in June, but it wasn’t until August 25th that the government declared a national state of emergency, asked for EU help and sent troops to the areas affected by the fires. My impression is that aid to fire victims and refugees has been immediate and generous.

Greece has five political parties that are large enough to win seats in parliament. The majority party, New Democracy, is a center-right party that won the most recent election by 4%. New Democracy had parliamentary control before the election too, so there wasn’t a change of Prime Minister. The major center left party is PASOK, which had control for most of the eighties and nineties, as well as earlier in this decade. To the right of New Democracy is the Popular Orthodox Party, which gained ten seats in the last election, its first term in parliament. To the left of PASOK are SYRIZA and the KKE, which both gained seats. The two major results of the election: 1) minor parties gained seats, perhaps indicating disenchantment with the government response to the election and 2) PASOK was expected to only lose by 2%. The 4% margin has caused lots of turmoil within the party and there may be a change in leadership.

Arrival in Greece

We left the UAE for Greece on the morning of September 28th. The flight itself was too uneventful to merit its own post, but the Athens airport has a really gorgeous setting near the coast and surrounded by mountains. It was easy to see why Athens was a good choice of a location for a city—easily defensible for its earlier inhabitants.

My boss, Rachel, teaches at an annual ten-day conference class in Athens called the Euro-Mediterranean Journalism Institute that is hosted by The Fund for American Studies and the Greek branch of NATO, GAAEC. Typically, participants come from countries that have only recently developed free presses—or have partial press freedom. This year, we had participants from Croatia, Serbia, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Turkey, Egypt, Israel, Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Brazil, Italy, Germany and the US. (The last five countries aren’t typically represented; the Brazilian girls had applied online and were accepted because TFAS is expanding programs into South America; the Germans were part of a really neat program I’ll discuss in a later post.)

In the next few posts, I’m going to give a little background on major happenings in Greece’s domestic and regional situation. I think they’ll come up repeatedly throughout my Greece commentary, so I thought I’d write a bit about them. I didn’t know anything about the Macedonia/FYROM controversy before arriving in Greece. You can skip these if you just want to learn how to say cheers in Serbo-Croatian.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

A Brief Note on Judging

Throughout my time in the United Arab Emirates, I occasionally posted impressionist or evaluative generalists about society, politics and culture. I’m not going to stray away from these—to do so would make this a very dry blog—but a conversation I had towards the end of my stay gave me pause.

The British-Kashmiri designer had a good friend, an older Brit who’s done consulting in the UAE since Blair supported the Iraq invasion and he jumped ship. He asked me what I thought of Dubai, and before I could answer, responded that he was frustrated by the many Europeans and Americans who described it as a plastic city without a history. He argued that Westerners have specific, concrete ideas of the cornerstones (cobblestones, old buildings and churches, places where documents were signed) and because we can’t find evidence of such a physical history, we believe the UAE is artificial and ahistorical. He argued that buildings were easy for the foreigner to experience and understand, but a wealth of oral history, and long-lasting cultural tradition were far more difficult for the non-native to access.

I experienced just the very surface of life in the UAE. I can make observations, but I am aware that there’s probably a lot going on under the water. This is true about a foreigner’s commentary anywhere, but particularly important in a society where it is hard to gain access.


I just arrived in Japan, and will be posting about Greece (and hopefully getting this up-to-date) over the next few days.

Edit: After reading over this post, it feels like an apology for the one below it. I don't mean for it to be at all-- it was just a conversation that seemed worth mentioning.

Migrant Workers in the UAE


I keep promising myself I’m going to write about this topic, and then putting it off because it’s going to make me sad.

One important demographic fact about the United Arab Emirates is that only roughly 15% of its population is Emirati. One qualifies as Emirati if one was living in the emirates at the time of federation. In theory, then, it is not a ethnic or religious term— a few of the descendants of former Ottoman empire era slaves count as Emirati in terms of their rights to social services—but in effect, especially because there is no present day way to become Emirati, the term is a marriage of culture and citizenship. This 15% of the population receives various boons from the government.

Typical expats are another 15% of the population. This includes Americans working in consulting firms, Dutch real estate contractors, Saudi oil company operatives, etc.

The remaining 70% of the population—and the people that a visitor comes into contact with the most—are migrant workers engaged in low wage jobs with no political rights. (All my sources have some version of the 15/15/70 breakdown, but I can’t figure out exactly what the line is between the expats and the migrant workers. It’s not about source country—there are ‘expat’ Indian and Pakistan luxury merchants as well as low wage construction workers—and the children of migrant workers sometimes stay in the UAE and move into the expat “class.” It may just be a class distinction, in which case rigid percent breakdowns don’t make any sense.) These workers have a range of jobs, from factory work to waitressing to personal training to entertaining. They are almost invariably overqualified for their jobs but making several times what they could make at home.

Among the migrant workers, certain nationalities seem most prevalent in certain fields. There are a lot of southeast Asia waitresses, and people joke that all Middle Eastern bellydancers are Ukrainian nowadays. Major sending regions include poorer Middle Eastern countries, Northeastern Africa, the former Soviet Block, the Indian Subcontinent, and Southeast Asia.

At best, this gives Abu Dhabi a very multi-ethnic, culturally pluralist feel. When people get off work, streets that are quiet in the day come to life. One corner feels like “mini-India” and the next the Philipines. Even in New York, I’ve never seen such an international mix of restaurants and clothing stores. While this makes the city, which can feel a little stale during the day, the story underneath this “multiculturalism” is a sad one.

First of all, most migrant workers in the UAE have left their families behind to come work there. Some have their passports taken by their bosses so they can’t return home for years. The gender ratio is about 3:1, men:women, reflecting all the men who have left their families behind and send money back.

The story for many of the women, particularly the Eastern Europeans and the Southeast Asia, is also a sad one. Many are sex workers, both dancers and prostitutes. They typically collect huge fees from the Western and Saudi businessmen they work for, and then turn most of the money over to their pimp, who holds their passport.

Most of the workers here are desperate for this opportunity. Their salaries often pay for the education of children who would otherwise never be in school or the medical expenses of sick family members. Because of this desperation—and because they have no legal rights—they are constantly afraid of being sent home. This explains Noor’s need to demonstrate his usefulness.

Early on in my stay, I discussed the migrant workers with an ex-pat friend. She told me not to get too close to them. I was worried a mildly racist remark would follow. Instead, she told a very sad story that made me cautious for the rest of my visit. When she had first arrived in Abu Dhabi, she befriended a Sudanese bellhop in her hotel and had started giving him weekly English lessons. After a month, she found out that he’d been fired because of her friendship with him. This helped me better understand why it felt like people were afraid to talk to me—and made me hesitate before starting conversations.

On the Truman listserve throughout the summer, there was a flurry of emails about migrant workers in the UAE. A year ago, a Truman class made a trip to the UAE funded by the UAE government; my own class dined at the embassy during our orientation. People debated the ethics of taking a trip funded by a government that so neglected workers’ rights and was complicit in the strict maintenance of a class system. Others argued that the benefits gained from experiencing a new culture outweighed this harm, and that the UAE was being held to an unfair standard. I never publicly weighed in on this debate, but had qualms about taking a job with an organization that received limited funding from the emirati government.

During my time in the UAE, I was constantly upset by the plight of migrant workers. However, I don’t think this is a unique plight. It stands out more in the UAE because of the large number of migrant workers and because they are virtually the only people working in low wage jobs, so one is confronted by their frightened servitude every day. Illegal immigrants in the United States are in a similarly powerless situation as are immigrants within the European countries with more open borders. At the same time, I don’t love the more closed-bordered solution adopted in parts of Western Europe. To me, what complicates the migrant worker situation is that the workers seem so grateful to be treated as second class citizens. They are begging, flooding borders and pouring into countries in order to have their political rights (if they ever had any) replaced with economic opportunity. I think a long-run solution is greater global equality.

In the short/medium run, I’m not sure. When I studied con law, I was intrigued by the discussion over which constitutional provisions applied to citizens and which to people. Ideally, constitutions could limit the non-election-related rights granted to citizens and not to persons within the national borders. I also hope that one day, constitutions that tie citizenship solely to birthright will shift and allow permanent residents to become citizens through residence or marriage.

Abaya Fashion Show

(Or, “That abaya would look great with your hotpants, sweetie.”)


Last night, I went to Dubai with A for dinner, and he decided to we should meet up with a friend of his, a British-Kahmiri fashion designer named H, who had a bunch of Ramadan exhibitions, at one of her shows. I was massively undressed for any fashion event in any place, but on principle I try not to whine about things like that, so we went. This was my first (and only) encounter with glitzy Dubai life. The show had three exhibitions along the stretch from Jumeriah beach to the Burj Al Arab hotel (if you’ve ever seen pictures of Dubai, you’ve probably seen these hotels. They’re the ones that made the city famous as a tourist destination. One of them is a built like a wave and the other like a tall ship. It costs over 700 hundred dollars a night to stay in either. While we waited for H, A and I walked out along an artificial causeway and I was amazed that a place could be so clearly man-made and still look so pretty). The shows were typically in Ramadan tents, along with tables at which people elegantly broke their fast, and carpet and jewelry stands.

At first, A’s friend mistook me for a prospective customer (designer abayas, beautiful as they were, aren’t a great fit for my lifestyle or budget). It was clear H was both very talented and successful and had been able to tap into a market—conservative and glamorous Muslim fashion—that was entirely new to me. I was fascinated by the pieces—gauzy and airy, some far too low-necked or slit-sided for Abu Dhabi, an occasional dark green among all the blacks. My favorite had a silver serpent stitched in sequins snaking its way up the back. H dressed me in it. “In the UAE, women wear their Abayas entirely buttoned up,” she explained. “But in London, the girls wear them open. This Abaya would look great with your hot pants and some knee high stockings to go to the theatre, sweetie.” I think I may actually be more likely to own an abaya than a pair of hotpants, even though I've always liked my legs. I wondered what girls wore such racy apparel under their Abayas. Were they Muslim teenagers who buttoned up at home? WASPs hankering for a more exotic air?

Three of H’s friends joined us after the show, a Somali runway model who grew up in the UAE and two siblings from Kashmir, a girl in her late twenties who was a makeup artist and a boy my age who was in university in Dubai but did TV commercials. They were a very put-together, black-wearing, smokey-eyed (Islamochic?) crowd, and I felt douty in my jeans and flats. A didn’t seem at all self-conscious, but I’d wished I’d put on a dress or makeup. I was grateful to be tall and to have the sort of hair that can pass for deliberate.

They were also more or less the highest maintenance people I’d ever hung out with. We went to one restaurant, but the minium fee was over 200 dirhams per person (about 60 dollars—a lot for any dinner, especially when the diners don’t drink). We took a ‘buggy’ (a glamorized, super-sized golf-cart) through hotel-land to get to another set of restaurants. The next restaurant was too hot, the one after that too noisy. We discussed going into a bar, but the Somali girl didn’t want to be seen anywhere where alcohol was served. H offered to put her hijab up too in solidarity, but we ultimately decided to drive into central Dubai for dinner (it was around midnight at this point).

A and I wrote in the Somali girl’s car, and they fought about her driving, which was terrifying. She yelled at me for not trusting her when I attempted to buckle my seat belt; I glibly explained that it was the law in Vermont, so buckling was just a habit. On the way, she pointed out a main road that everyone went to “to flirt.”

Q: How do you flirt in a car?

A: You drive a very nice car and wear extreme makeup and roll down all your windows and play cool music, so people know that you are there to flirt.

Rachel added further detail to this explanation when I told her about it later. She said that repeat numbers (such as 333) are considered especially lucky in the UAE, to the extent that people will pay extra for a repeating cell phone number. They are sold at auctions for thousands of dollars. One way men ‘flirt’ is to drive up to women and flash them their cell number. Hey baby, look how many digits I can buy.

Eventually, we pulled into an Emirati restaurant where we sat on curtained low couches around a table. I ordered mint lemonade, which was the consistency of a smoothie and so good I ordered a second one. We also had a variety of mezzes, including really delicious cheese-basil cigar pastries.

Everyone talked about their childhoods, the pranks they played on their siblings and those their siblings played on them, bad exes, failed marriages and mean teachers. I’m gaining more of a sense of which stories transcend cultural and minor linguistic barriers. I’m tempted to invent more dramatic bad breakup stories but I think this imaginative leap would do my exes too much of a disservice.

The Kashmiri makeup artist (who’s father is a financier) discussed meeting a relative of Osama bin Laden’s, and described his desire to distance himself from his family. “I told him I thought bin Laden was kind of cool” she said. This made me a little nervous, and I probably should have fought with her on this point, but I was too curious what she was going to say next/amazed she had so forgotten my Americanness (or didn’t care). I felt sort of undercover. Unfortunately, she didn’t elaborate, so it was a moot point.

Interesting items: I learned that some wealthy Islamic families shave their children’s head and give the weight of the hair in gold to charity several time while the children are old enough to let them.

H and A are both very political in sort of a Pan-Islam, common identity kind of way. H won’t drink coke because she says coke gives money to companies that make weapons that are used to fight against Arabs. (Maybe Lockheed Martin/other defense contractors supplying weapons to Israel?) I’d never heard this before (maybe fabricated, maybe just not a persuasive argument back home and want to get the skinny on it from my Kick Coke friends. The other people made derogatory comments about Palestinians and Jordanians and H and A gently reprimanded them.

I got back to my hotel at four in the morning, vaguely triumphant because I’d finally figured out what people in the UAE did so late at night.

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Ela from Greece

Sorry it's been so long since I've last posted. Most of the last week, I've been busy from eight am until two or three in the morning and the idea of trying to post about my last days in the UAE and the Greece trip seemed overwhelming when I was free.

However, tonight's the last night of our official program here, so I'm anticipating some time to update tomorrow. Highlights: the acropolis, discussing Turkish-EU accession with a Turkish diplomat, Greek food, a very candid meeting with some Greek MPs from across the political spectrum, the FYROM-Macedonia debate and views on journalism, from Lithuania to Egypt.