meetings « Ramblings of a Hopeless Khowaga

Tag: ‘meetings’

My Life in Photographs

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

So, I haven’t posted recently. Well, here’s the story: on the way home from Atlanta, I was kidnapped by Tuareg nomads who happened to be roaming the luggage carousel at the Atlanta Airport for no particular reason, and I was held for a ransom of three thousand kilograms of gummy bears and a crate’s worth of the 1994 swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated. That having been completed …

Ah, who’m I kidding. I got a cold in Atlanta that knocked me on my back for two days, and then I got to fly to Boston at the ass crack of dawn on Saturday morning for four solid days of meetings, networking, and restaurant food.

Finally, on Monday, I managed to get out of the hotel for a whole two hours to wander up the street to Copley Place, Boston Common, and the Old Granary Burial Ground, home to such American Revolutionary Heroes as Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, and the parents of Benjamin Franklin (who is, I believe, buried in Philadelphia).

Here are some photos from my wanderings:

Happy Thanksgiving, y’all!

Tags: art, bla, blog, dna, food, heroes, Home, khowaga, life, luggage, me, meetings, parents, Photos, sports, thanksgiving, work
Posted in Photos, Travel | 1 Comment »

12 of 12: July 2009 / ١٢ من ١٢: يوليو ٢٠٠٩

Sunday, July 12th, 2009

It’s time once again for 12 of 12! This 12th of July, I’m in Cairo, capitol of the Arab Republic of Egypt. I’ve been out of the US since June 29 — I was in Turkey for 10 days and flew down here on the 9th. (For the record, and if you’re interested, there are photos from Turkey here).

I’ve been in Cairo many times — I studied here for a year in university — and it’s one of my favorite places in the world. This is my first visit since 2006. I’m here on a combined business / vacation trip. Although today is a business day (the work week in Egypt is Sunday through Thursday, since Friday is the communal day of prayer in Islam), I didn’t have any meetings scheduled, so it was kind of a fun day.

7:52 am: Skyping with Ray

I’ve been waking up kind of early since I got here, and I caught Ray up late at home so we talked by Skype for a bit. Mocha was in the picture for a bit, but she never quite looked at the camera. Sorry, Mocha fans, there are no photos of her this month

10:00 am: Errands

After pretending to go back to sleep for a bit, I finally wandered out around 10 o’clock to go pick up my laundry from the place down the street. The laundry is in the same complex as the supermarket, so I stopped in to pick up some water and soda first, and then carried it all back to the hotel. It was warm in Cairo today (102 F/41 C), and unusually humid. This is, lamentably, still cooler than it is at home in Austin. Tomorrow it’s going to be cooler – by Tuesday, it’ll be 91 (36).

1:56 pm: Christian Cairo

I met up today with Tarek, our junior professor in modern Arabic literature, and we went down to the so-called Christian quarter. It’s in the oldest part of the city, which actually predates the city of Cairo by 300 years. A little-known fact: around 10 per cent of Egypt’s population is Christian, belonging to the native Coptic Church. In an area of town called Mar Girgis, there are a number of churches and one of the few synagogues remaining in the country, all clumped together.

Tarek and I first hit the Coptic Museum (no photography allowed), and then wandered through the rest of the complex. Although it’s a tourist draw, most of the people there were Egyptian, which was OK by us.

2:11 pm: St George’s Cemetery

That’s Tarek taking a photo of the mausoleums in the Greek Orthodox cemetery behind St. George’s Church. There are a bunch of mausoleums and family plots back there. I was a bit surprised to find the tomb of someone with the same name as my grandfather — how many Neoklis Triantafillides’s could there have been in the Greek speaking world?

2:16 pm: Water from the Holy Well

Although it’s not spelled out in the Gospels, the Egyptians have an entire itinerary set out for exactly where the Holy Family (Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus) traveled during their flight into Egypt. In the cemetery is a crypt built over a cave where the Holy Family is said to have sheltered and drawn water from the well above. As Mary (as Meryem) and Jesus (as ‘Issa) are both revered as prophets in Islam as well as Christianity, you can see adherents of both faiths making pilgrimages at these shrines.

2:51 pm: … you crazy, adorable fool

The oldest known synagogue in Egypt still in existence, the Ben Ezra Synagogue, is in Mar Girgis as well, although, once again, no photography allowed. Tarek and I got the royal tour, and were shown to the ‘Ayn Musa, the spring of Moses, located behind the synagogue. This is said to be the spring where Pharaoh’s daughter drew the baby Moses from the Nile (the synagogue is said to be on the place where Moses pleaded with God to stop the plagues inflicted on Egypt).

3:12 pm: Off to Lunch

OK, by this point in the day it was really hot in the sun and time for lunch. Tarek and I had made plans to meet up with some students who are here for the summer, so we set back off for the area where I’m staying and several of the students live.

I am routinely asked by people if I feel unsafe traveling to Egypt as often as I do. The answer is no – I have been coming to Egypt for 15 years, and I’ve never hidden the fact that I’m American, nor that I’m Christian (I don’t mention the part about being gay, however — that’s one barrier I’m not willing to cross here). I’ve never been greeted with anything but kindness by people here.

The one place I do feel unsafe is on the road, however. Egyptian taxis are built like tanks, but it doesn’t stop me from flinching often when riding in them. Cairo is horrifically congested (by most unofficial estimates there are 20 million people in the Cairo/Giza/Shubra el Khayma metropolitan area) and it can take ages to get anywhere. The Metro, wisely, is more for local use than tourists (it’s also not air conditioned), so we decided to cab it.

3:44 pm: Decisions, Decisions

We met up for lunch at Abu Sid, a local upscale Egyptian restaurant. You can get just about everything they serve on the street, but without the nasty side effects afterwards

5:38 pm: Towel Art

Back on my own, I headed back to the hotel — a small, unassuming place run by a lady who governs with an iron fist. I had forgotten that I’d hung my socks on the towel rack to dry after handwashing them in the sink this morning. Hence, the guy who cleans the rooms at the hotel got a little creative with towel placement and left me a duck!

8:05 pm: Sunset

In my food coma haze, I checked e-mail quickly and read while half watching episodes of the less successful Law and Order franchises (Trial by Jury; Trial by Fire; and Parks and Recreational Petty Crimes Division). I lose track of the time until I hear the call to prayer wafting in through the window, meaning that it’s sunset.

8:45 pm: Evening Traffic in Zamalek

I wander out, mostly from sheer boredom, and it’s traffic as usual in Zamalek on a weeknight. Cars and pedestrians going every which way.

10:06 pm: Dessert before dinner

One of the students calls to see what I’m up to and invite me to tag along to dinner (they eat late here). I’m not that hungry, but first we stop in at a local bakery/sweet shop that I’ve frequented since my student days. They churn out really nice baked goods–baklava, basboussa, kinaffeh–and ice cream as well.

For the record, we didn’t actually eat this stuff until after dinner (the shop was on the way to where we were going). That would have been totally crazy … *innocent look*

And that was my 12. How was yours?

Tags: 12 of 12, art, Austin, baklava, bla, blog, boredom, cairo, cars, cat, christianity, churches, coptic, crime, decisions, dinner, egypt, family, fes, food, Friday, fun, gay, god, greek, Home, ice, islam, khowaga, law, literature, me, meetings, men, Mocha, nile, photography, Photos, Ray, SHE, stuff, summer, taxis, traffic, Travel, turkey, university, vacation, Will, work, zamalek
Posted in 12 of 12 | 13 Comments »

A Moment’s Respite

Friday, June 19th, 2009

It’s literally a quiet day here in the office. Several people are out–my erstwhile assistant is enjoying a long weekend, as is the current cause of office drama. The lack of screaming in the hallway is a nice change — it’s hard to explain when you’re having a meeting with people from outside the department.

But mostly it’s quiet because I’m at a point where I don’t want to start working on things because I’m about to be away from the office for three weeks. Note that I didn’t say I’m going on vacation for three weeks. If there’s one thing I can’t quite seem to get certain coworkers to understand, it’s that hauling a group of people around the Middle East is not “vacation.” I leave in just over a week for Turkey and Egypt. Egypt was supposed to be vacation, but is no longer. It’s all good — in exchange for a couple of meetings, my airfare down from Istanbul and my hotel is being covered. Past that, Egypt is cheap: if you spend more than $15 a day on food, you’re doing something wrong.

So, given that, I’m kind of piddling around this afternoon.

I got a new kerpooter at the office. It’s a 24″ iMac, and it’s quite zippy. It boots up in under a minute! The major drawback is that I get less reading done, what with the not having to wait 5 minutes for Photoshop to load.

At home, we’re dog-sitting my parents’ new dog — they waited too long and the name Brandi (with an i–gag me) has stuck, although they’re calling her Boo. It doesn’t matter much because she doesn’t actually respond to anything. Pleas such as “Boo, please stop chewing on the electrical cords,” or “Boo, you are standing on my sunburned shoulders GET OFF GET OFF GET OFF,” fall on completely deaf ears. She’s not deaf, though. Any time the fridge opens, she comes running.

One of the things that we’ve been lulled into false security with is that Mocha, at 50 pounds, doesn’t fit in certain places that Boo can go easily–such as under the sofa or through the missing board in the fence that is technically the neighbor’s responsibility to replace. I pointed out to my father that she doesn’t take direction well. “You probably have forgotten when Mocha was all arms and legs and would bite everything is sight,” said he.

I wouldn’t say I’ve forgotten. I’d say I’ve repressed.

Let’s see … what else. I am almost done with the thirty day challenge on EA Active — Ray had his last day today, mine is tomorrow. Between that and the dieting, I’m done almost 10 pounds in the last month, and Ray is close to 15. Yay us! Now I’ll go to Turkey where meetings come with baklava…

At any rate. It’s Friday, and I’m ready to go home. Have a good one, everyone!

Tags: art, baklava, cat, diet, dog, egypt, food, Friday, HBO, Home, ice, istanbul, me, meetings, men, Mocha, parents, Photos, press, Ray, SHE, turkey, vacation, weekend, work
Posted in Home | 3 Comments »

Readin’, Ritin’ and Revivin’

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009

There are some times that I am less OK living in Texas than others. The passage of the state’s second Defense of Marriage Act was one of them. I fear we’re coming up on another, and I feel like I should be able to do something about it, but I don’t know what.

It’s come to the attention of just about everyone that the State Board of Education has been taken over by a bunch of radical loonies. These are the sorts of conservatives who make conservatives uncomfortable, and somehow they managed to take over the body that’s charged with revising and implementing educational standards at the K-12 level. (Thank Bob it’s only K-12.)

This would be the same board chaired by a dentist (!) from College Station who came under fire shortly before the board’s final vote on revised science standards for endorsing a book that referred to supporters of evolution as “monsters,” “atheists,” and “morons.” I want to make it clear that the board currently leans in the direction that believes that if you ain’t their kind of Christian, you’re not a Christian at all. (The fact that this is exactly the kind of logic that Osama bin Laden and his ilk use is the kind of irony that isn’t lost on me, but would be shot down as “totally different” were it brought to their attention.)

Earlier this year, a call went out for people to review the social studies standards. As an historian who works with K-12 educators a lot in my line of work, I put my name in. I didn’t get selected, and it didn’t take long enough to realize why. I didn’t know that the SBOE member who represents my district had sent out an e-mail claiming that Obama was a terrorist sympathizer, and that an attack by said terrorists would take place in the first six months of his administration, followed by the implementation of martial law. (Perhaps we should secede just in case?)

Clearly my passioned e-mail describing my committment to global competencies was a bad idea.

I know several people who did get appointed to the committees (two of them went with me to Egypt in 2005). One of them, a University professor at a rival institution, was appointed to the economics review committee and managed to cause a horrific furor when he had the audacity to suggest that the term “free enterprise system” be replaced with “capitalism” in the standards. “Capitalism,” after all, is what it’s called in every college textbook, and he thought that it would be appropriate for K-12 students to use the same terminology that they would use in college. Why call the same thing two different names?

To say that this was received very badly would be an understatement. As I was told later, when one of the SBOE members saw this proposed change, she stood up and screamed, “What kind of anti-American sonofabitch did this? You should be ashamed! I swear, whoever you are, if you were one of my appointments, you can consider yourself fired!” (note: committee members are unpaid – it’s all volunteer work.)

My other friend wrote me to say that, while her committee was congenial, others were concerned that “too much attention” was being paid to the rest of the world at the expense of “our” history. Another friend told of how someone was appointed to her review committee–which was to oversee one of the years of world studies–whose sole purpose was to state over and over that he had moral objections to students studying other cultures.

For the record, Texas schoolchildren have two years of American history (grades 8 and 11), one year of government (grade 12), one full year of Texas history (grade 7), world cultures (6), world history (10), and world geography (9). More than one board member has stated the desire to replace either the 9th or 10th grade course with a third year of American history, apparently being unaware that the 12th grade government course is entirely American history content.

It gets better.

After the first round of review committee meetings, the board cancelled the second round, apparently afraid that further anti-Americanism might ensue, so they’ve decided to appont an “expert panel” to guide the revision process.

First up? David Barton and the Reverend Peter Marshall.

In his books and teachings, [David Barton] argues that separation of church and state is a myth and that America’s laws should be based solely on Biblical scriptures. His numerous claims include that the Bible forbids income and capitol gains Taxes. Barton’s views are so far right that even such groups as the Texas Baptists Committee and the Baptist Joint Committee have been vocal critics of his interpretations of history and the U.S. Constitution.

Even better: “Marshall has previously suggested that the California wildfires and Hurricane Katrina were divine punishments on society for the tolerance of homosexuality.”

TODAY comes the news that they’re considering LYNNE CHENEY for the expert panel.

Cheney is well-known for crusading against national history and social studies standards in the 1990s, calling the standards–which the National Endowment for the Humanities helped fund while Cheney was its chair–”grim and gloomy.” Cheney also denounced the standards as a monument to political correctness, claimed they gave insufficient attention to Confederate General Robert E. Lee and the Wright brothers and focusing far too much on figures like Harriet Tubman, and worried that they concentrated too much on embarrassing episodes in the nation’s history, such as the Ku Klux Klan and McCarthyism.

Outraged? You should be. The science standards revision made us uncomfortable by flirting with intelligent design–this will make us look like fools. The next revision won’t happen for another decade, by which point our students will be the laughingstock of the country.

I still can’t tell what can be done about this twisted version of Evangelicals Gone Wild! I’ve got half a dozen pleas in my inbox to help find real experts to testify before the SBOE, but it’s obvious they don’t care what people like us think. If you live in Texas, write your state legislator–seriously. The Lege is already moving to restrict the power of the SBOE after the science and English debacles.

I know that there’s probably very little that I can do about this … but I’ll feel better when it’s all over knowing I did what I could.

Tags: art, Bible, bla, Books, brother, california, cat, children, college, conservatives, economics, education, egypt, english, fes, flirting, fun, gay, god, government, history, irony, law, laws, lost, marriage, me, meetings, men, moving, news, power, punishment, science, sex, SHE, studies, tea, texas, university, Will, work
Posted in Politics as Usual | 2 Comments »

Hey, ho, hum

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

I spent the last few days at a conference of my peers, and I probably should be more careful about what I’m going to say, but I don’t want to.

I have a busy month – I will be traveling or working part of every weekend between now and the first weekend in March, and this was the first salvo. On Sunday, I flew up to an unnamed city in the north. It doesn’t particularly matter which one it was: as usual, these meetings are held in suburban areas populated by office buildings and chain restaurants. Except for the trip to and from the airport (which took exactly five minutes and that only because we missed all of the traffic lights), I didn’t go farther than two blocks from the hotel at any point on this trip.

Here’s the way these things work. You arrive and are escorted to conference registration. In this case, there was no pre-registration, so for two days we were all walking around with hand-written nametags in a myriad of fluorescent (and frequently unreadable) colors. Someone in the sponsoring office, a federal agency not known for its sense of humor, had apparently decided to exhibit some personality by buying the pastel colored pack of Sharpie markers. Note to anyone in the conference planning business: these colors don’t go so well on nametags.

One of the major north/south divides that I have recognized since I moved to Texas from DC has to do with formal attire. I now chafe at the notion of having to wear a necktie like a ten year old boy in a clip-on. Northern men love them. Southern men? Well, we like not wearing neckties when we can get away with it, and we’re all in favor of considering a nice pair of jeans “formal attire.” Up north, that doesn’t go over so well.

And so …

I am firmly of the belief — and in a moment of levity, I actually put this on the evaluation form — that there should be a minimal IQ requirement to attend conferences. Perhaps that’s a bit extreme. I think maybe the requirement should be there only if you actually plan to ask a question.

For example: it was revealed that — and, sit down folks, this one’s a shocker — Congress wants to determine whether the money it’s offering up in student aid for foreign language study is actually encouraging students to take jobs where they have to use the foreign language skills that they developed with that aid. The way some people in the plenary session carried on about this, you’d have thought that Congress wanted to take a sample of each student’s DNA so that they could track their movements by satellite for the rest of their natural life:

*hand goes up*
“Um, so am I to understand that you want us to keep track of these students just because we give them a federally funded scholarship? Have you considered the privacy violations? I don’t know if, ethically, I want to be part of this,” said the concerned woman in the front row.

The rest of us rolled our eyes. You see, what Congress wants is aggregate data: 45% of graduates found relevant employment, 55% did not, or something like that. There’s no privacy violations in aggregate data. And, furthermore, we all mumbled to each other, if she didn’t want to be part of it, the rest of us would be more than happy to sacrifice ourselves by taking the money she didn’t want anymore.

Also, we’ve been required to track this stuff for the past fifty years.

Anyway. I flew back late last night straight into office drama — my favorite. I had that sort of strange energy today where I was kind of hoping that problem child would engage me directly (all of the drama took place over e-mail), but alas. The problem child didn’t try to engage me. I had to be all diplomatic and stuff. Jeez.

I hope your week is going well!

Tags: art, conference, conferences, dna, energy, flu, fun, humor, ice, jobs, life, love, me, meetings, men, money, restaurants, sacrifice, SHE, stuff, texas, traffic, Travel, weekend, Will, work
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Tag: ‘meetings’

My Life in Photographs

12 of 12: July 2009 / ١٢ من ١٢: يوليو ٢٠٠٩

A Moment’s Respite

Readin’, Ritin’ and Revivin’

Hey, ho, hum

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