About Me
Good morning / afternoon / evening, and welcome to my Web site.
My name is Chris, and I’ll be your host.
This Web site is a work in progress, and that’s going to be a permanent state of affairs. One of my less endearing traits is that I always have to try to incorporate the latest, coolest things into what I’m working on, which means that invariably as soon as soon as I’m done with one round of revisions, I find something else to do that requires me to start all over.
Regardless of when you read this, I am either about to or have just celebrated my 29th birthday. I have been 29 for a couple of years now and have no plans to age any further. At some point I may have to actually admit to having reached the age that follows 29, but I’m hoping that I can fake it for a few more years.
I live in Round Rock, Texas, which is a suburb of Austin, where I work. I live here with my partner, Ray, whom I’ve been with since September 2000, and our child dog, Mocha. I grew up in Ohio, and lived in DC before I came to Austin to get my Master’s degree, and I never left.
I work at a very large University located in Austin whose name I mention often in my blog. By way of my own academic background and current place of employment, I have spent a lot of time in the Arab world, particularly Egypt. I tend to focus a lot in my blog on some of the current trends going on in the Arab World, particularly when it comes to foreign policy and how it affects the average man-in-the-street.
I’m half-Greek, ethnically, and I’d be lying if I failed to mention that that my extended family doesn’t quite understand why it is that I can speak Arabic much better than I can speak Greek. I’m not actually sure that I understand it myself.
One of my most favorite hobbies is photography, and you can see lots and lots of my photos by clicking on the link in the menu bar. You’ll notice that I don’t actually have many photos of myself on this blog, and that’s because I tend to be taking the photos and am not actually in them. (I also have body consciousness issues and tend to reject most photos of myself because I think I look fat in them.) I’ve been looking for a photo to replace the one in the sidebar, which I took of myself on a day when I was working with kids on a craft activity. It’s very hard to see, but I took the picture because I managed to get blue paint up my nose.
If you really want to know more about me, you can see my list of 100 things about me.
Check back often to see what craziness I’ve started working on this time …
What the heck is a khowaga anyway, and why do I keep using it as my screen name?
Khowaga (Arabic: خواجة IPA: χɛwæɡɛ), is the Egyptian Arabic pronunciation of the word khawaja (χɛwæʣɛ). Officially, it means “sir” or “mister” and was a form of address to foreigners or Christians, but eventually it came to be a term of reference for a foreigner. The word entered Egyptian Arabic through Turkish, but its origin is Persian, where it is a title meaning “Lord.”
When I was a student doing a year abroad in Egypt in the mid-90s, my classmates and I observed that long-term resident foreigners in Egypt tend to be called by slightly more respectful terms like bey or basha. Technically, there’s nothing derogatory about the word khowaga, but as aspiring Egyptianists we were all hoping to eventually get to a point where one of the other terms would apply to us as well.
After more than a decade, I’m still not sure if I’m at that point. Egyptians can spot foreigners a mile away (see: Khowaga can’t walk), and no matter how good my Arabic gets, I still suffer from foreigner non-comprehension syndrome (a situation in which I can say exactly the same thing in Arabic in exactly the same way as a local, and invariably the local will be understood and I will not).
Hence, I’ve resigned myself to being a khowaga on a permanent basis. In celebration of my khowaga-dom, I wear the name like a badge of honor – if I’m going to be a khowaga all my life, I’m gonna be the best damned khowaga you ever did see…
