Thursday, November 12, 2009

Fun with Calendars

As is my Winter tradition, I'm preparing to cement my status in the TSA line as an "experienced traveler.



As this handy table from MS Word shows, I'll be on the road for the next month. This is all for work, or trying to squeeze domestic vacations in and around the pretense of work. I shudder to compare it to the similarly simplified table I made for a more life-consuming project, so I'll leave that as an exercise for the imagination of the reader.


Meanwhile, it occured to me that I don't consider domestic travel to be a vacation, because it's not somehow generally adventurous enough. Road trip planning buddy, consider that a challenge.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Kermanshah

Did you know: When I have to make up transportation project locations for software prototypes, I refer to the map of Iraq I have displayed in my cube. For names, I almost always use variations of people I know from MIT. My favorite is Mitra Long.

Blog, it's been a while. The downside to blogging every time you fly somewhere is the inevitable span during which you don't set foot into an airport. Woe.

I'm taking a Saturday morning technical communications class with the incomparable Jeffrey, and the attendance policy is keeping me in the Bay Area for eight whole weekends. I still get to fly to Portland, OR every other Wednesday, but something about being in a city for seven hours (and working for six of them) just doesn't get me stoked. Though I do enjoy the bars at PDX and Oregon's lack of a sales tax.

But heart! My favorite holiday is only a few days away. My pumpkin is carved, and I finally saw my full costume assembled and have begun readjusted my expectations accordingly. Josh is flying out, my two favorite houses in San Francisco are throwing parties, and daylight savings time will kick in Halloween night providing an extra hour of party.

This week just has to crawl by first.

Update: I just won third prize in my office building's pumpkin carving contest.


I lost to a great hamburger pumpkin and Michael Jackson. Long live the King of Pop.

Friday, September 4, 2009

Still Unpacking

I feel bad that I haven't posted the third and final post of my trip recap (Jordan!), but then I found this in the washer today after I pulled out my clothes.


That change jingling around? Shekels. I found $0.52 in Israeli currency that had been in my pants since at least August 8. This probably fell out of the pocket of a pair of now Rose-Red pants. Rose-Red like Petra.

The real moral of the story here is that I've been on extended tours in other parts of the world so long, and washing my clothes in other time zones, that I haven't been to my trusty Berkeley-based laundromat since mid-July. But tomorrow is the first day of my new writing class through the Berkeley Extension Program. These classes meet every Saturday for the next three months, and I already have plans to be in town but absent for my one allowed absence. So I'll effectively grounded for the next 12 weekends. No more fancy currency falling out of my pockets until December.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Syrian Adventures

The much talked about, but little blogged, portion of my Middle Eastern experience was in Syria. Which is a shame, because I don't think I can convince everyone I know to visit by just repeatedly telling them how nice everyone was, how beautiful everything was, and how delicious and cheap the food is.

Seriously, if you go, and only interact with shawarma cart operators, it'll be worth it.

But anyway, here's the much delayed photographic evidence that I was in Damascus.

We departed Israel via an absurdly short flight to Amman (for the sake of passport entry stamps). First off, Israeli security is ridiculous. I was flagged for having a Syrian visa in my passport, and they asked a bunch of questions to suss out the exact nature of Josh and my relationship, as well as exactly how Jewish each of us were. Racial profiling much? The Syrians at least treated us like generically white people.

From Amman we took a small car (with five people) to Damascus. At the border, our burly Arabic-speaking driver kept close watch on us, directing us and the border agents as needed until we cleared with record time. Anyone getting into Syria needs their own burly Arabic-speaking driver.

We drove through lots of desert and agriculture before getting to Damascus itself. When I go back, I'll want to check out the suburbs, and see more than just the core of the city. But from our vantage point, the rest of the city looked like any other city (with some old building scattered throughout, of course), and the old city in the center was the real attraction.

The old city part of Damascus is just this enormously dense maze of alleys and small buildings. There are clearly more residential and more commercial parts, but they blend intensely. You think you're in a residential portion, and then there's a spice shop, etc. The entrance we regularly took was covered, except for the tiny sunlight illuminated pockmarks. Josh explained those were delivered by the French upon their final exit from the city. Good job, French.

The souq survived and is flourishing. And after a short walk through one of the busiest markets you'll ever see, you arrive in a courtyard. Ummayad Mosque!







I threw a fit because they let Josh in, but insisted I rent a cloak to cover myself from head to toe. Poor Josh suffered through fits like this at least twice a day.

Josh bore this nuisance well, and in the kind of act that will only reward him by raising my expectations, we had dinner on a rooftop near the mosque. The call to prayer came somewhere while we were gorging on hummus.


The next day we just wandered through architectural and historical wonders. And more hummus.



A painting at the old train station.


"President" Bashir was everywhere. Even watching over the Internets.


A fresco outside a bathhouse:


Overall, we essentially just looked at stuff, ate, and tried to stay cool. It was fabulous. And the people were so incredibly friendly. A couple at a restaurant invited us over to talk for hours. A shopkeeper gave me a piece of candy for being American. Another man proudly rattled off every American state he knew, and when I told him I lived in California, responded "your governor is the Terminator!". Another man responded "very bad police, LAPD."

But the best interaction with a local was this guy, Charlie:


Charlie is Lebanese. He was a translator for the US Navy back in the day. As a result, his English is that of a US sailor in the 50's. Charlie is hilarious. If you're ever hailing a car to Amman from Damascus, look for the one-legged, 68-year-old, Lebanese man cursing "Jesus Christ" all the time.

Next up - Jordan!

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Celadon City

I haven't written about pottery in months, because, well, I haven't thrown pottery in months. It totally sucks. But my basic requirements of a pottery studio are:

1) no bodies dumped in the parking lot; and
2) don't leave the kiln inoperable for three months and lose my stuff in the down time.

I feel this is reasonable. So enjoy the survivors of my experience at the Studio One Arts Center.





These all have similar glaze, and not too heavy for the size. I made one more small cup, but it's at work, so it has escaped photography for now. These two are part of a set - the third was lost/stolen from the kiln room over the summer.



"So imagine you're throwing a dinner party. You could put the beef entree on this, so everyone would know what it was."

PIG PLATE

"This one is for pork. I couldn't find a stencil of a plant for the veggie plate, so I figured I'd just use some random herbivore."


Now I just have a random cow plate and a triceratops plate. Whatever. If you see my pig plate, let me know?

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Oakland Transportation Fails

I don't know if it's 2009, or Oakland, or what, but it's shaping up to be an interesting year to live in the East Bay.  It's especially interesting to work in transportation.  Two particular bits of water cooler discussion:

BART Strike

BART staff are set to strike tomorrow.  I'm sad to be in Boston this week, because I've never seen a transit strike (I missed the 2005 New York transit strike by a few weeks).

You know your cause is off to a bad start when pro-union San Francisco Bay Area doesn't support your strike.  But a city with a 10.3% unemployment rate apparently doesn't want to support a bunch train operators and station agents (with a $63,000 base salary).  Funny.  I've had my longer union discussion with Josh, but in this case at least, I hope BART hires scabs.  I like the idea of hiring staff with graduate degrees in English.

The Oakland Airport Connector.

Connecting Oakland Airport BART stop and the Oakland Airport, BART voted in May to pursue construction of a fixed guideway rail line to replace the existing bus service.  I've complained about having to take the $3 bus to the airport, but an $11 train is not the solution.  Other facts that are shocking for the fact that they're real and still being pursued:
  • Project cost: $552 million (4 times more than voters were told)
  • New daily ridership: 500-1200 new riders
  • Costs per rider: $500-700 (roundtrip, more than a flight to NYC)
  • Slower than the roadway it travels above.
  • No stops serving Oakland residents
  • More expensive to ride than the SFO connection

Poor Oakland Airport.  They already have free wifi.  They advertise on BART.  The security lines are a tenth as bad as SFO.  I fly for work and personal reasons all the time.  You know what would make me pick OAK over SFO?  Cheap flights!  Duh, its the fares, stupid.

Friday, August 7, 2009

Food.

Because I know dad is primarily concerned with how well I'm eating, this post is for him.

Beverages
The Middle East is not big on beer. Maybe because of all the Muslims. Probably not a bad idea though, because after being constantly dehydrated for weeks at a time, you really only need one. Anyway, Taybeh (Arabic for delicious) is the local Palestinian beer, and it's decent. Barata is Syrian, and Almaza is Lebanese, and both are about as exciting as Italian beer. Instead, we drank a lot of water and mint lemonade. A lot.


Also, this brand of kiwi lemon juice is amazing. The kiwis here are much bigger than the ones at Berkeley Bowl (feigned shock).



Dessert
There was good dessert to be had as well. A shop keeper asked if I as American and gave me a piece of candy. It felt like a reverse of some American WW2 propaganda, but it was tasty. Various pastries and whatnot were had, as well as pistachio-coated vanilla ice cream, as shown below:



Kebabs
Avaailable most frequently in chicken and lamb. In Syria, lamb kebabs traditionally come with a spicy tomato sauce (second picture below). Also popular, the thin bread with spicy tomato sauce and oregano that resembles pizza in appearance.





Seeded pastries
The most necessary thing that I recreate back home. Take a bread-like substance. Smother with olive oil. Distribute sesame and other seeds. Eat. Taybeh.
Also, cucumbers are really common and appear to be good with almost everything.



Hummus
Creamy as butter. Often served with olive oil, paprika, garlic, lemon, or whole chick peas. Ridiculously better than hummus back home, and for no obvious reason. I've eaten at least a half pound of this a day for two weeks.


Israeli McDonald's
McNaggats and McKebabs. Big Macs without cheese.




Bedouin food
Defined by its simplicity and minimal seasoning - it's basically how I cook already. Put things in a pot, heat, then consume. Except that this was made in the desert by our Bedouin tour guide and his wife. It was so good I even ate the tomatoes.