Tobian

Great Expectations

2011-09-12T14:35:00.003-04:00

On Sunday I got a call from a cousin, wishing me happy Ethiopian new year. After he shared what he has been up to, he asked if there was anything new. I told him I planning to leave my job soon, in order to go back to school. He asked if I intended to do it full time. I said, 'yes'. Then he asked, 'Did you ever buy a house indae?' I said, 'No'. Right about here he must have concluded that I am a disappointment, because the interrogation ceased.

He did say I should invite him to my wedding (Another disappointment so far). He mentioned having talked to one of my brothers, who had recently held a christening for his daughter. Our cousin had complained about not beeing invited. Apparently my brother had responded, 'The christening party you missed is nothing. Some of us have been missing out on weddings!' Since then, my cousin said, he has been wondering it was me or one of my single siblings who got married without telling/inviting others. I laughed, and assured him that I will surely invite him, but there will be no talk of marriage on my turf for another few years

I laughed, because the wedding in question was my cousin's.

Equilibrium

2011-08-02T10:23:00.004-04:00

I've been thinking about going back to school and as the expenses I am facing are in the vicinity of 100,000 USD, I have also been looking for scholarships.

Reading the descriptions of scholarships brings an uncomfortable feelings. Merit based ones are easier to confront. Not a big deal, my grades do the talking - sometimes they got me some money, sometimes not. Life goes on. Merit scholarships sometimes become intimidating when they state they're looking for 'exceptional', 'exemplary', 'outstanding', 'visionary' individuals with "demonstrated leadership skills" and ...what not. Their essays ask the candidate to write why s/he thinks they're so special. I'm paraphrasing but that's what it comes down to.

Why do I think I'm special? Actually, I don't ... if I thought I was so special, I don't think I'd go to school at all. At least by my definition, Bill Gates was special ... hence why he quit school which he, appropriately, deemed unnecessary. I am not so special and therefore need further instruction. No?

Ok.

Then there are the need based ones, which are just plain horrible. Some even have clauses in there that they are meant to be for people with unconventional backgrounds. When you look into blurbs of previous scholarship recipients you see mother of three by age 20, first to attend college in family, endured extreme hardship in life, etc, etc.

Quite frankly, I've had it easy. For my admissions application I wrote essays littered with my Ethiopian background and departure from my homeland at a time of political unrest (it's true ... but it's not like I trekked for days, malnutritioned, hiding behind bushes trying to reach the boarder. My parents bought me an Ethiopian Airlines economy class ticket. I flew with my ex-stewardess aunt, who got us upgraded to first class. For a 14 year old, that was sweet. In fact, as a 30 yr old, I still think that'd be cool.) I wrote of apartheid and struggling in society with language barriers, yaddi yaddi yadda. It felt ok to write in my application, because that was my experience and it has shaped me into the person that I am now. However, it did not crush me. I didn't even inconvenience me. Whatever happened put me in a trajectory that led me to a state of self sufficiency. Yes, I could have done better, or worse. But I'm ok with where I am now.

When it comes to writing my story to convince somebody to part with their money on my behalf, it becomes sticky. Frankly, I think there are a lot of other deserving people out there. I am hard pressed to write an honest, convincing essay that I deserve being funded more than anybody else.

So I'm looking at 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 scholarships and wondering if I want to paint my life in a light that will make me seem like a recovery from the brink of disaster, or lose the chance for funding because I've led a life slightly unconventional by American standards, but otherwise quite ordinary.

Where's the scholarship for ordinary people? Why is it that society always tries to push those on top or bottom higher, but never the middle? Does the middle have to stay there .... forever?

So, should I be top or bottom today? (Naughty, naughty! Get your mind out of the gutter.)

iExpect, youExpect, weExpect ...

2011-06-05T12:59:00.006-04:00

There are at least three 'group mentalities' in my family. The first one, headed by my parents, claims that it's "traditional". The second one, headed by a cousin who we shall call Cuz also claims to be traditional. The third faction is an anarchy. It is headed by everybody who's younger than 50 yrs old. I'm a member and I have been told that we're 'non-traditional'.

Cuz is the master elusive qualities like meqeyayem, hod mebas, menafeq and qir mesegnet. My parents specialize in qir mesegnet and menafeq ... less so on meqeyayem and hod mebas. By my parents are experts on non-communication. They strive for non-communications.

Case point: one of my siblings just had a baby. Cuz somehow didn't find out that the wifey was preggers until a week or so before the delivery date. Cuz says "akaki zeraf! Why wasn't I told?" Now Cuz has gone into a self-prescribed state of seclusion. The sibling in question swears that he shared the news with him .Current theory about the miscommunication that is being floated by my parents is that the aforementioned sibling told Cuz that wifey was 'expecting', in English, and that the message was lost in translation with Cuz wondeirng, "mindin yihon yemitiTebiqew?" This is no joke.

So now with this damage done, some meqeyem was thrown in some qiyame way, etc, etc. My parents, like all sane people, place the blame on the sibling with the new baby. "Why does he have to tell people, including us, that he is expecting? Yemayasfelig zena!" my father explains. That's setting up people for sadness.

What?

"He should never have told us either", my father explains.

"So you only want to hear after the baby pops out?"

"Yes, yeqerew were new ... god forbid if something goes wrong it will just make people worry."

"But I'd rather know what's going on through poeple's lives so that, for example, I don't ask them when they plan to have a baby in casual conversation and hurt them. "

My father protests that he never asks people about having children.

So I pick the "When are you getting married?" question that he has asked in the past, "What if I had a boyfriend and he died. You'll still be asking me why I am not getting married because you've no idea what's going on in my life and you don't want to know."

At this point I hear my father yelling to my mom, "Hey, don't you want the phone back?"

She tells him no, or something, because he's back, changing the subject. I start laughing.

"So you're stuck with this conversation."

"Yes, it's not very fruitful is it?"

No. A few min later I set him free by demanding to talk to my mom. While talking to my mom, my phone card craps out. As was instructed by my mother ("Dimtsshin semtenal, lela ayasfeligim?"), I don't call back.

Relieved but still agitated, I call a friend to rant. She laughs and asks, "Wait, you called your dad on Father's Day to yell at him?".

Today is Father's Day?

Oh.

Damn You St. Valentine!

2011-02-16T14:56:00.004-05:00

There are discriminations and there are discriminations. For many years I was in denial that sexism or racism affected me at work. To date, I maintain that sometimes they do, but on a daily basis, they don't. But there is one kind of discrimination which has affected me since day 1 of my employment, that I have come to mind more and more over the years: being single (let this encompass being childless as well.)

I work in a company that is very child friendly. Some people work from home once a week to stay with their kids. We have infinite sick days that apply to child sick days as well, so long as the #of days used per week doesn't raise eyebrows. Many parents come and leave work on their children's schedule with no questions asked. Having said that, only less than 10% of the company is female so most of the married guys are likely making their wives take on most of the child rearing responsibilities.

Imagine my surprise when I've instances where I've told my work that I couldn't flex my schedule on say, a Friday evening, and that conversation showed up in my one of my reviews as 'Sometimes your team members feel that you're not flexible with your schedule.' My reaction was, and if I had a kid and I'd to leave every evening at 5pm to pick up my kid, would anybody complain?

A perfect example of when this was blatant was this past Valentines day. Our team broke into two to work on two deliverables, both due on Valentine's Day. To assist with collaboration, we split the team by geography. The younger crowd (Team Singles), working out of a more urban setting, ended up one one, and the older crowd, people with families (Team Married) living and working out of a suburbs office in another.

Team Married got a headstart with a pre-existing document, which meant that from the get go, Team Singles was behind. That gave Team Single a furious fist week by the end of which both teams were on equal grounds. In fact, in terms of quality of product, Team Singles was ahead. Well and good, you'd think.

On the day of the deliverable, Valentines Day, thing fell apart. On Monday morning, Team Married requested to take one of our team members. We asked why, they said they felt that they were a bit behind. Ok? We gave them one person, immediately realizing that, shit, we didn't plan on losing a person so we're adding a few hours per/person on our team for that day. A slightly late day, we think. That's alright.

Come 5pm, Team Married, except for the person we gave them, is out the door (7pm is a regular end of work day). "Oh, I promised I'd take my wife to dinner.", they said, one after another. Are they kidding me? (OK. For a moment here, let's examine this same scenario if I was to show up and claim, "sorry, my guy is taking me out for diner" ... I wonder how much sympathy I'd have received. It just doesn't sound as "forgivable".) So Team Single acquired another couple of hours per head since we had to finish our document and theirs.

In the end, the deliverables were sent out in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, with some of the Team Singles members clocking 18 hrs for that day (following a 90 hr previous week). I know that doctors and lawyers routinely have long weeks, but there's a good reason I'm not one of those. And the last thing I expected in my career choice was for being single to work against me.

My No-Something Projects

2010-12-27T04:42:00.008-05:00

The past five years, I've had a series of home projects in mind. They didn't always make the best of sense, and more often that not, they may never see the light of day, but I wanted to do them. One was a no-TV project -- I was supposed to build a projector because I don't have and don't want a TV and if I were to use some gadget for watching movies only, why not have a home theater? The key was that I was supposed to build it myself. Alas, I've only gone as far as reading the DIY manual and acquiring a 15" flat panel.

Another project was the no-couch project. I was obsessed with making sure that everything in my apt was something i could move on my own, so things had to be dismantlable or small. My bed teethered on the edge of breaking this rule, but I didn't want to give the same leeway for a couch. I thought the best thing to do would be to build something of a platform myself, to put a big mattress on it, cover it with a few pillows and make it my couch/day bed. I fell in love with the idea, and completely out of love with the execution of it. So for many years I had no couch. A year ago I was moving apartments and I was about to throw out a shelf when it occurred to me, there it was, my 'platform'! I've since put it face down and thrown a single bed mattress and a bunch of pillows on top of it. Voila, my couch/day bed's finally come to life without breaking my no-couch rule.

I also had this idea that qulet has to have a lazy way of making it, i.e. the no-maqlalating qulet. I was convinced that I could make it with a slow cooker. They use slow cookers to make caramelized onions, so why can't I make qulet with it? I wanted the cooking instruction to be as simple as:

1) chop onions

2) put in slow cooker, mix ingredients; leave for 10 hrs in a well ventilated area, e.g. window sill, porch, etc.

3) consume

When I mentioned my idea, my mom said, 'wey gud.... beysti ... ingidih memoker new'. My friends said, 'wait, why do you have a slow cooker?', or 'what is a slow cooker?'

So a few months ago, I finally tried it. I needed the qulet for a habesha dinner I was planning to host at my place a couple of days later. I documented the process.

Step 1: I chopped as many onions as I could tolerate. The idea was not to chop them too finely. Not to highlight my questionable talents in the chopping department, but the idea here was to chop them as crudely as possible to fit with the 'be-lazy' theme.

Lessons learned from mistake: do not chop the night before, or any hours before, for that matter. It will stink up the place.

Step 2: I mixed the onions with enough berbere and oil, same amount I'd use if Iwere maqlalat-ing this in a pot.

Step 2.5 : Since I live on a floor of an apartment from which if an empty pot fell I could gravely injure a person, I decided that

I shouldn't risk a pot full of hot stuff falling on top of anybody's head. At the same time, I didn't want to give up the idea of getting to cook my onions on my window sill. So I tied up the slow cooker from various directions with climbing gear. In case you've never seen a slow cooker, don't worry, it wasn't a fire hazard.

Step 3: I left it on for something like 10 hours. 6 hours on active cooking and the rest on the setting to keep it warm, because I didn't make it back to my apartment. It looks like qulet, tastes like qulet. The smell, even after the mistake of chopping the onions the night before, was minimal. My dinner subjects ate woT from the slow cooker qulet, and nobody complained ;) I'm satisfied.

If I were to do this again, I'd leave it on active cooking for longer than 6 hours. I would also cook the berbere separately beforehand. Maybe I'll keep a stash of dilih(to be made by a slow-cooker too, doh!)

'till the next project ..

Goals

2010-09-14T12:46:00.003-04:00

Five years ago another BILB told me the obvious, 'if you don't have goals, you'll never reach them'.

At the time it didn't help me make goals, except for the part i joked around saying getting goals was my goal. I think I've spent the past five years doing what I'd call 'playing', at best. Slowly, I'm getting goals. Not five year goals, but definitely season goals, and vague 1-2 years goals.

At the beginning of the summer I made a list of things I wanted to do. The summer has officially ended, and here's my report card:

if we go strictly by the wording of the goals i emailed myself : 4 out of 7.

if i was to realistically evaluate my goals and grading: 3.5 out of 6

good surprises: 1

bad surprises: 2

Of the original 7:

1 goal has been moved to the fall.

1.5 to winter/spring and

1 to summer.

And I leave this with a question that's been bugging me all summer but I've not been able to answer. It came from my father who commented that my generation has a curious obsession (he called exactly that, curious) with cameras. "Why do you all take so many pictures?" he asked.

I couldn't tell him it was because I wanted to be a great photographer. I mean I'd not mind if I became one, but I know that I'm not willing to put in the energy and time for it, so I won't become one. If I were to become one because, you know, I've an undiscovered brilliance ... I have no desire to become a photographer as a profession.

Is it because I'm trying to save images for memory's sake? No, I hardly look at my old pictures. I think back of my 1 year experience in Scotland as fondly as other destinations where I've taken hundreds of photos. I have exactly one underexposed photo of my time in Scotland, and even that, i think somebody gave me.

Is it because others like to look at my pictures? Not really. Sometimes it is fun to take pictures of people, but most of the time i find i take pictures of mushrooms, snowy mountain tops and cracks. I don't share most of them.

Maybe because I'v been occupied with other things, or maybe I just can't justify to myself why I should pick my camera, but the number of pictures I've taken all summer is almost the same as what I'd have taken in a week in other years.

Maybe it's just a phase.

To All the Boys and Men I’ve Loved Before (pt 1)

2010-08-24T20:47:00.009-04:00

This isn’t an entry about men I’ve romantically loved before, as the title may imply. It is about men who I love in one way or another. In fact, the first two guys here are in my family. The title is a reference to Willie Nelson’s song, “To all the girls I’ve loved before”, which starts out …

To all the girls I've loved before
Who travelled in and out my door
I'm glad they came along
I dedicate this song
To all the girls I've loved before

This is an entry about boys and men who I’m glad came along in my life. Here are snippets of moments which weren't really monumental, but I remember them like they happened yesterday. Their significance has, in some cases, taken me years to comprehend or apply in my life. In any case, they've stuck with me through the years.

My Father

When I was around 10, I came home with not so impressive grades. In my parents household anything less than 100% is unimpressive. So it wasn’t hard to be unimpressive. What was hard was finding enough plausible excuses to cover so many instances of unimpressiveness. This time I must have given my father some lame excuse, but convoluted enough for him to not want to poke holes into it. He listened. He told me to try harder anyway next time and walked away.

Later we bumped into each other as he walked out of my parent's bedroom, and I from our study room. We were headed to dinner. Out of the blue he said, “Minim bihon min, lela sewin gid yelem, irashin gin atatay ishee?” (“Whatever happens in life, never mind other people, but never fool yourself, ok?”) His face was wearing the brightest of smiles. I was taken aback. I knew he was talking about my grades. But there was nothing accusatory or vilifying in his voice. He said it like one'd say, 'Merry Christmas!' Except there was nothing merry in his message. I just nodded on, probably faking the best confused look I could muster. The truth was that, yes, I could have done better.

To date, when I justify things to myself and people, I stop and wonder if I’m fooling myself. Sometimes I find that I am. Most of the time, I think I still forget to ask myself the question.

My Brother

When I was around twelve, family friends came over for a visit. Their kids' ages matched my older brother’s and mine. We loved having them around. The adults had fun too, so it wasn’t unusual for that family to visit us or for us to visit them for hours on a stretch. That day, I felt like they were at our house for 10 hours. They probably weren't, but it was hours and hours of game, and fun, and more games. When they left, it was close to bed time.

My parents had very strict rules about studying. If you were found loitering before 8-9pm, you were generally asked, ‘hey, what have you studied today?’ That day it was past 9pm. I happily skipped into the study room to probably pick up a fiction before heading to my bed. Lo and behold, there was my brother, sitting at his desk reading school work. At 9pm!

I told him, ‘But you don’t have to, it’s 9pm.’

‘I know.'

‘Do you’ve a test coming up?’

‘No.’

I kept on standing there, completely befuddled. It just didn’t make sense to my 12 yr old mind.

‘It was a fun day. I’ll feel like one day I’ll feel guilty for not having done anything productive on a day like this. I have to read’, he explained, and buried his head back into his books. He didn't look sad, or burdened. It was stated as a matter of fact. You know, that's how life goes ... in his universe!

I watched him for a bit, thought “Crazy!” to myself, and skipped on to my lovely bed.

To date, when I’m having too much fun, I stop and wonder if I should take a break and do something that feels more ‘productive’. Have I used this day/month/year to the fullest, or will I look back and regret it one day? Sometimes I opt do whatever feels fruitful at the time. Sometimes I continue to play.

As each year passes, I’m more and more in awe that a boy at 13 or 14 put this question in my mind. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t even remember. I don't see him on a day to day basis anymore. Haven't for over a decade. But I'm sure he still lives his life with the same sense of purpose and responsibility.

A Tale of Two Cards

2010-07-31T12:37:00.009-04:00

Ever since I stopped living under the same roof as my mother, about a week before my birthday, I receive a card. It’s always this generic, poor quality paper with no particularly meaningful, pre-printed message on it type of card. The cards are generally printed in India or the Middle East. The pictures on them are, for as long as I remember, flowers. To be frank, they are atrocious products.

Whenever I open the envelopes, I can almost imagine the path my mother took to buy, write and send them. I’ve seen those cards being sent to my older siblings. I may even have signed some of them.

She writes iTir minTin yalu 2 or 3 points.

Inkuan aderesesh.
Wish you all the best in what you wish for thx year.
I will be thinking of you and will pray for you.

Always.

This has been going on for 16 yrs. The brevity amuses me. My parents are never short of mikir. They've enough for all occasion for their children and hell, for anybody else's children. But never inside birthday cards, which appear to be reserved for my existence and my dreams.

Back in the days my mom used to sign the card for herself, that was during a period I used to live w/ my dad. Then it became for both her and my dad. Nowadays, my dad writes a blurb under hers. The underlying message of both blurbs is identical.

This year, a few weeks before my birthday I got an email from my dad that said, ‘I can’t find the address of your current apartment. We need to send you your birthday card. Please send your address immediately!’ My dad still hasn’t figured out how the search box on gmail works. Oh, yay! My generic card’s coming. I emailed my address back immediately, with a thanks in advance.

Exactly a week before my birthday, I opened my mailbox and there was a pale green, yedekakemech envelope with my mom’s handwriting on it. As if I didn’t know what was in it, I rushed to open it. But when I flipped its back there was a glossy postcard from Toulouse, France, stuck perfectly aligned to the back of my beloved envelope. Ok. That’s bizarre. Nobody I know is in Toulouse. I removed the postcard and unsurprisingly, it’s not addressed to me. In fact, it’s way off -- it was destined for Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Upon further examination I noticed that the quality of the envelope my mom sent was so bad that the envelope’s glue had oozed all over the back and it has accidentally adopted other people’s mail. I must have laughed out loud -- a guy to my right checking his box was giving me a funny look. I gathered the rest of my mail ran off to the safety of my apartment as I investigated this further.

In the elevator I saw the word Ethiopia at the back of the postcard … so, um, I read the whole thing. The writer is travelling around in Europe, enjoying eating and making different kinds of European food, and she says she soon plans to go to Ethiopia to visit some guy. Then it says, “I am sure there will be very strange food there.”

Ha ha ha! Those Ethiopians and their strange food! Of all mail, this card hard to be stuck to mine? Seriously, this has been a great birthday gift, Mom.

Eventually I opened the poor, geen envelope. Its glue had defaced my card a bit. But there were the two familiar handwritings. And the good old familiar messages. I took the card and put it in its rightful place, at the center of the middle shelf. It will hang out there for a few weeks, or months, and one day it will join the others in one of my mess piles. I never throw out these cards.

However old I get, however much I may or may not want to face my birthday, every year these cards make me look forward the next.

So, until 2011 ....

p.s. I dropped off the postcard at the postoffice, on its merry way to NC ... I hope the writer found some good Ethio food ;)

I ♥ NY

2010-07-29T11:24:00.005-04:00

I am not a fan of the 4 block radius around Times Square. It’s crowded, dirty, filled with mediocre restaurants and retail stores all of which are overpriced and run down. Yet just about every visitor I’ve had explicitly asks to be taken there.

I try to avoid Times Square, but I can’t. It’s on the way to my gym, my favorite Ethiopian restaurant, etc. Every so often, when I’m not too busy quietly cussing out the tourists, it puts a big smile on my face. Frequently, actually. Case point: the photo here. Who doesn't park bumper to bumper in NYC anyway?

I once parked my car in a spot such that by the time we got out of the car to see if all was ok, there really wasn't any space in front or behind. I'm not sure how I made it fit, but who cares, it did. Even then I didn't mean to stop and marvel but my friend, who now lives in Ohio but was once a New Yorker interrupted our conversation to say, 'I'm sorry but I was pretty sure your car wasn't going to fit in there. I just didn't want to say anything so that we'd not interrupt our conversation.' I think I must have asked if he thought that because I was female, as, you know, we’re not expected to park 'well'. The thing is, it happens in Manhattan all the time. You fit your car, your bed, your kitchen, your shoes ...your anything, in small, incredible spaces. Or you die. Ok, maybe it is your bank account that does the dying. Or you just don’t live here. Fit or die!

But I digress.

About a week ago I was rushing through Times Square, and I passed a guy with a boom box and a sign on his neck, like one of those somber people who solicit money with recession themed messages like "I lost my job. I've 4 children and a wife to support. Please help!"

This guy was uncharacteristically more jovial, having the time of his life dancing to his music. His sign said, "Help! I need money for WEED!" Really. The sign was in green for the word 'weed'. I pulled out my Blackberry to take a picture but I wasn’t seeing what I expected to see in my screen. When I looked up I noticed he'd stopped dancing, flipped his sign and was doing a friendly 'no picture' wave. I smiled, waved back and walked on. In this day of telephoto lenses that's silly of him, but I wasn't about to commence a discussion w/ a guy panhandling for weed.

Sometimes I wonder what tourists see in NYC, or what people think of me when I say I’m from New York. Maybe it’s me. When somebody tells me they’re from Waxahachie, TX I think I immediately think … I’m not sure what I think, but if I was to be brutally honest with myself, I think some bearing in my brain reorients itself a little bit. Mind you, I’ve no idea what’s in Waxahachie, TX other than the fact that it’s an important train hub. I’ve never even been to the entire state of TX.

A few years ago I went to Alaska with a friend for a race. After the race we’d about a week where we had little purpose and hardly a tangible destination. Sometimes we drove; sometime we boarded random boats stopping at random towns, random restaurants, glaciers and mountains, which they’d surely call hills.

This was in the post-Sara Palin era and we weren’t really sure what Americans in the Last Frontier were like. As the only two black people in almost any scene we entered, we stuck out like … black, sore thumbs. People were friendly. Check. We expected that.

People asked where we were from. We’d say, ‘New York’. Almost always this question followed, ‘The city or the state?’ We said the city. Then they got excited. They’d either say that they want to visit, or in a good number of the cases, that they’ve already been there. And that they loved it! Ok, not ‘check’.

We started off assuming they were being polite, but they’d chat on and on, telling us what they did, from Times Square to Liberty Island. The most surprising of all was when they told us that New Yorkers were nice. We laughed. One guy was the captain of a boat we were on.

He tried again, ‘No, really. It’s a pleasant place. My wife and I have been there a couple of times already. We will happily do a third visit if we get time and money.’ We laughed more. My friend said to him, ‘I guess at this point I’m wondering if we’re talking about the same city. New Yorkers are many things, but pleasant is just not a typical adjective to describe the place or the poeple. New Yorkers don’t … talk.’

He thought for a bit, and he said, ‘New Yorkers always seem to walk with a purpose. But if you manage to stop them, they’re very polite and helpful.’

We agreed. If I’m walking in Times Square, I’m not there to chitchat. I’m in a rush to get the hell out of there to a destination. I’d never enter that domain if I wasn’t short for time and if I didn’t have a destination beyond it. If you manage to stop me, even if I’ve no clue what you’re asking, I’ll likely pull out my blackberry and look up stuff for you. If you manage to stop me.

I guess I forget the first time I liked NYC. It was after my second visit to the city. My first visit was a day tirp on a gloomy day. I got dumped form a bus full of college kids. I looked at the grey buildings, grey sky, grey streets and wondered, why on earth do people want to live or visit here. I stayed away from the city for the next 3 years.

My second visit was to see the same friend with whom I went to Alaska. She’d finished school and moved to NYC. I took the bus to Port Authority. When I stepped out of the bus terminal at 9pm, Times Square was lit bright as daylight. The place was buzzing like Merkato at noon. When I finally managed to take my eyes off the lights shooting up into the sky, there was a group of familiar faces hopping and yelling, ‘You made it!’ Yes, I had.

Times Square, I guess you’re not so bad.

The Wizard of Oz, Chopsticks, Suicide, etc.

2010-07-22T19:10:00.002-04:00

I was told by a person I met recently that for most things in life, I have ‘platforms and policies’. I think what he politely meant was that I’m highly, if not too opinionated. I’d probably have a black/white view on chopsticks. Come to think of it, I do think disposable chopsticks are wasteful. Does the damage caused onto trees to produce them outweigh the environmental damage from plastic utensils? I’ll check.

Moving on, my take on suicide has been ‘no’ for a while. And don’t worry, it still is, and it was never really about me anyway. I somewhat understand why people may attempt failed suicides (Apparently, to get attention. It would not at all have worked in my family, but hey. My mom would have dragged my ass to the ICU of Yekatit 12 Hospital to show me injured soldiers and ask, ‘ihis, hiwot aschegeresh …?’). I just don’t get the ones who succeed (unless it was an accidental success on a botched attempt, or under a sentence of life imprisonment.) Why not just walk to any country/place and restart a new life under a new identity? Just walk. No, this didn’t occur to me after I grew to be more resourceful. I used to think this when I was 15.

As I get older, I’m realizing that life can get you really down. If you’ve a somewhat normal life, you can pull all faculties and resources to a focus, you can turn it back around. At least that’s been the case in my life so far. At some point, the knowledge and belief in that I can always make things OK were, in themselves, a big comfort.

As I grow even more older, I’m beginning to feel that there’s something sad about this kind of comfort, in believing that I will always eventually be OK. If the Wizard of Oz had to be written over and over again, and Dorothy was always to land safe and to find a new set friends, again and again, how long would it have remained wondrous and fun?

In the honor of the approaching the end of my third decade, here’s a new platform/policy: paradoxically, it’s not all OK to be OK.

Not that there’s an alternative.

“When I get older, I will be stronger; they’ll call me freedom ….”

Oh, and I don’t rally like K’naan.

Lady At the Corner

2010-05-28T18:42:00.004-04:00

She disappears during winter. Otherwise, every morning at around 9am, she stands at the same corner with her luggage in tow. Her neTela gave away her identity. Let’s call her Itye Lady. Her luggage is generally two or three small bags. She reminds me of the mothers at meneharia (yes, I’ve been there!) They pack small bags, even plastic bags. It’s as if they’re not going to miss the place they’re leaving behind, or like their destination is temporary. Leyismula packing. You cant tell if they’re going home or going away. Like Itye Lady.

If you didn’t see her at that corner everyday, you could think that she just came back from a shopping spree. Except it’s 9am. In Manhattan’s unofficial embassy district. And the bags don't exactly look very new. When I first moved to the area I attempted to say hello. No response. For the sake of yilugnta, for weeks I figured I should at least bow my head. Nope, no acknowledgement. I even suspected if maybe she wasn’t habesha. But there was the neTela draped on her shoulder like a Sunday betekiristian tesalami.

Eventually, telemamedin. I went about doing my business. Every so often I’d look out for her. Seasons came and passed. I noticed she wasn’t there during inclement weather, or the winter months. She’s not there at 7am. But any weekday between 9 – 10am, that corner can count on her presence.

I don’t know when I decided what her story should be, but after wondering what brings her there I’d concluded that her son (son, not daughter, I don’t know why) had told her years ago that he’d pick her up at this corner, but never showed up. So every day since that day, she comes to that corner, ready to go wherever he’s going. Yeah, I made it up., but it suited me.

This morning I left my apartment closer to 10am. Late for work. Again. I figured I should find some Spanish audio to practice with during my walk. I was fidgeting to find the right track with both ears plugged when I heard, “yisemashal?” coming from behind me.

I turned around. Lo and behold, Itye Lady was talking to me!

I said, ‘awo’, as retraced my steps back to her.

“yigebashal?” she asked again.

Saqe meTa. It’s like when habeshoch ask in the street, “Habesha nesh?” Over the years I’ve learned to answer with a straight face, ‘aydelehum. Antes?’ You’d think that’d stop them there. No, they get confused for a bit, then u see their face light up and they’ll ask, ‘Amarigna tawqialesh?’. I don’t tire, I fire back, ‘Ay alawqim, antes?’

I was tempted to start my game with Itye Lady, but considering this momentous occasion, I decided to play CHewa instead.

“awo, yigebagnal”.

“yihenin awCHiw’, she said pointing to my earphones. I took out one ear. “wedelela, yemayhon neger yimerashal. Tiru aydelem”

So here I’m thinking that’s an odd way to phrase the issue but she must mean the traffic, that I’ll accidentally walk into oncoming traffic while distracted by what I’m listening to. Or that I’ll miss a warming horn or yell. Anyway, all I said was, ‘Ahhhh…’.

“Be igziabher tamgnalesh?’ she asked. Aha! I see, said the blind man. I see.

I don’t know why, I said ‘awo aminalehu’.

“ke igziabher yineTilishal! Blela bekul yiwesdishal …. “ At this point I’d started retreating, with my fakest of fake pleasant smiles on.

“Ishi, ishi … ameseginalehu … belu dehna yiwalu ….”

I bolted.

A block later I put on the Spanish audio I was looking for.

13 minutes later when I reached my office, I realized yebaTun yeQotun silesetiyewa sasib, I actually didn’t hear much of the audio.

I mean, Itye Lady …. talked!

Arizona

2010-04-28T16:30:00.002-04:00

This is probably not the most 'thoughtful' of posts after such an extended absence, but I never claimed I was/am/will be thoughtful.

But I came to remember ... a few months ago, at a birthday dinner with Ethiopians, we went over some unfortunate yet hilarious confusion that arose when one mixed English and Amharic in the same sentence. The trigger was when one guy said, 'Qesar ...'. A girl asked, 'Qes min?', which cracked me up because I thought she said 'ye Qes min?' Next thing we know we're pointing fingers at each other to figure out who started the "corrupted" message. We concluded with the understanding that 'Caesar Salad' will probably never be translated into Amharic in menues. Ever.

One word let to another and a friend pointed out that if you said 'Arizona' quickly over and over, you'll hear something else in Amharic. I'll let you try it.

The translation of that meaning comes to something like, 'we're full of crap.'

Arizona & and your new immigration law : yeah, you're full of crap!

Damn you, MJ!

2009-07-02T01:01:00.005-04:00

Damn you, Michael Jackson!

I've made a proud habit of making fun of crazy fans lining up near celebrity sightings for autographs (what exactly does one do with a piece of paper and somebody's scratch anyway?), a two second glimpse, crying, fretting, writing crazy notes and going around declaring, 'when s/he passed, a part of me died'. WTF?! And now Michael Jackson has brought me pretty darn close to that state, and i'm not amused. Again, WTF!?!

I was out in 'The Last Frontier' when I heard the news. My friend and I had singed up for a boat trip in a 'fjord', this one a long narrow water inlet surrounded by cliffs, glaciers, and ... nothingness. At the end, we returned to civilization in what turned out to be a rainy, cold evening ... we decided to treat ourselves at one of the nicer restaurants in town.

We got there. They seated us. The diner at table to my left turned out to be a crazy woman, seriously nutty or possibly tripping on some sort of narcotic, who started talking at us. We didn't even get enough time to look at the menu as she marched as through a dozen topics. Suddenly she interrupted herself and said, 'Oh, stop! OMG! Let's talk about Michael Jackson'. My friend, who's Kenyan, and I looked at each other -- I could see she was on the verge of cracking up, as I was. I guess as I grow older I've become unnecessarily cynical. This may come out as borderline, eh, racialist but it's pretty bizarre when you're in the US state nicknamed 'The Last Frontier' for a good reason, not yet fully "discovered" by certain demographics, and a white woman assaults two unsuspecting African women at an upscale-ish, otherwise tranquil restaurant with a conversation and the topic is, 'Let's talk Michael Jackson'. Seriously? I kept quiet. My friend, barely containing her laughter, asked, 'Who's that?' There went my control over my laughter.

At this point a person sitting on the right also joined in the conversation.

'Wait a minute, you guys haven't heard?'

'Heard what?'

'He's dead, you know that right?'

'Who's dead?'

'Michael'

'What do you mean?'

'He died today.'

'What do you mean?'

'He died today, it's all over the news.'

'What do you mean 'he died'?'

'He died today. And farrah fawcett also died.'

At this point I was fully disengaged from reading the menu. They told us what they knew. Between the nutty woman and the news it took us about 40 minutes to pick something and place our orders. Throughout the dinner our conversation kept coming back to, 'I can't believe he's dead.' We couldn't wait to get back to the B&B where we could watch the news. We eventually left the restaurant over 3 hours after we'd arrived. The food was great, the experience, including the news, was torturous.

On our way back I asked my friend, 'So who's the other person who died?'

'Farrah Fawcett'.

'Who the hell is that?' She laughed at me. She's routinely my celebrity bearing,

'You know ... the girl in the red swimsuit. She'd been battling anal cancer.'

For once that was sufficient description. I remember reading about iconic photographs and the girl in a red swimsuit was one of them. Then recently I'd read about a woman who was doing a documentary on her battle with anal cancer. I just hadn't known those two referred to the same person.

"Ouch, nobody will remember she died", I commented. She corrected, "The people who really cared for her will, which is all that matters". True that. True that.

On TV commentaries that followed the death of Michael Jackson spewed a lot of shit, I thought. As we listened to CNN, I found myself getting very annoyed.

' ... we'll have more on Michael Jackson and his controversial life'. Please. The man is dead. He's not even been dead 24 hrs. Can't the fuckers just say, he passed. Period. We've a lifetime to make up and fan more allegations which he'll never defend. No need to get an 'early' start on something for which society is already so far ahead.

' ... we'll tell you more about the fate of his children, whose custody could turn out to be a controversy'. What? Could turn out to be a controversy? What the hell kind of reporting is that ... the media's version of a preemptive strike? It seems like a controversy to me to report on the possibility of a controversy ... which turned out not to be a controversy.

Then there were other little irritating tidbits, like comparing Elvis' and Prince's careers to MJ's. Seriously?

The other day I asked a friend about his thoughts on MJ. His response was a somewhat nonchalant, 'Well, it doesn't affect me, but he was alright' kinda take. Mind you, this brat grew up in Ethiopia too, listening to MJ stuff. I told him I'll now have to reconsider our friendship. But you see, this is what I mean... MJ has turned me into one of those freaky, fanatical fans. I'm taking this personally. Damn you, Michael.

The day after I found out about MJ's death, I went hiking with the Kenyan friend. She told me how while she was growing up in Nairobi, people used to translate Michael Jackson's songs into Swahili or Kikuyu. Smooth Criminal had become 'Muishi Munyoroku' which literally translates to 'slippery criminal' form Kikuyu. The didn't have a word, nor concept, for 'smooth' in that context. So up we went Mt Roberts, singing 'Muishi munyoroku, munyoroku, munyoroku ...aww ...! '(they sang that in place of 'Annie are you ok, so are you ok, are you ok ...') Hilarious!

To my knowledge no MJ song has been translated to Amharic or other Ethiopian languages, but you never know. "muliCHliCH leba"? "afetlaki leba?" "aschegari leba"?

My earliest memory of Michel Jackson was on an NTO bus, on a rare trip to Lake Langano with families from my mother's maheber. Somebody put a MJ tape in the player, and there it was, Beat It, beating though the speakers in communist friggin' Ethiopia. To parents' and us little kiddies' entertainment, some of the teenagers were on their feet attempting impersonations of MJ. I was maybe 4 years old. I doubt that was the first time I heard MJ's music, but that was the day I got the bug. We'd been hit by a smooth criminal ... and it was more than ok. (yeah, i'm getting carried away here, and no, I know my name is not Annie.)

Last night I was reading random stuff about Michael Jackson and came across a reference to his legendary half time Super Bowl performance in 1993, which I didn't know much about. The writer claimed that was the best performance in the history of Super Bowl. Of course, I believe anything about Michael Jackson, right? I figured I'd check it myself so I dug it up on youTube. As I have never watched a Super Bowl half time show I have nothing to compare it to. But on its own, it was a stunning performance. Surreal. Quintessential Michael Jackson.

At the end of Heal The World I couldn't help but feel guilty. Society had severely misjudged and mistreated this man. Eventhough there's a chance he was a pedophile, you say? No, I don't believe so. For Michael Jackson to be a pedophile, then the parents who settled for money to drop their charges had to have been pimping their kids out for child prostitution. You can't drop a case on sexual assault on your kids for any price, at any time. Perhaps the only thing I find more disturbing is to think parents as selling their kids for sex, and that somehow the law allowed that to happen. I don't even understand how that was permitted. So I I chose to believe that the parents lied, and MJ paid.

Back in the 80s when Micheal got 3rd degree burns while filming a Pepsi commercial, one of his many good wishers supposedly sent him a note that read, 'Michael, I heard you're pretty hot, but this is getting ridiculous'.

Now a similar statement can be made about how Michael's always been pretty cool, but he's gone a little over the top this time. More than a little. (a bit in bad taste? I've to find something in this to keep it light.)

Wherever he is, I hope he finally finds some peace and happiness. I never know whether to believe if there's heaven and hell, but I'll make this exception and hope that there's an afterlife for him. And may this afterlife be much, much better than the one life he had thus far.

He'll be missed.

p.s. Long post, I know. But Dude, it's about MJ!

Me, anti-social?

2009-05-21T23:49:00.003-04:00

A party organizer is not something that anybody who knows me would think of when thinking of me. Yet when I first got hired I got thrown into an after-work 'position' which most of my co-workers called 'the social chair'. I threw parties and got people out for drinks once a week in the evenings. When I moved to NYC, it all stopped. Last week I'd to rise out of my ashes to organize a sendoff for one of the guys I worked with for the past year.

Once we sat down I found myself immensley bored. It didn't help that they were all guys and after a couple of drinks I started hearing statement like, 'The best things in life are cigars and good whiskey. And women.' It also didn't help that that particular statememt was uttered by at 24 year old munchkin who just got weaned off his feeding bottle.

Recently I've been hanging out with/hosting a grad-school friend, an Aussie who moved back home and is now back for a short visit. He commented that New Yorkers are impossible to talk to for more than 5 minutes. He said he keeps meeting very interesting people but the conversation always ends just when it gets to be interesting. I was going to make fun of him and ask how he makes his interst be known at minute 5, but the truth be told, yeah ... conversations are breif in Manhattan. They're like business cards. Nobody wants the details. Common questions are where do you live? What do you do? Your name? And if you're really more curious you can ask leading questions to figure out the age of the person by asking how long they've been in NYC and where they came from. You conclude by, 'Do you like it here.' You'll get an enthusiastic affirmative, which you acknowledge by shaking your head vigorously and smiling, 'I know! It's an amazing city isn't it? So full energy ... ' Then abouts you look for in a distance at a person you know but most likely have alraedy talked before and raise your glass (or bottle, or just empty hands) as you turn to your new found company and say ... 'Well, it was good talking to you. I'm going to say hellow to a friend over there' and you take off. If you don't do it, the other person will do it. As you walk off, you conveniently fall into another conversation with a new person crowd. Repeat cycle. Really. This is my thought on Manhattan conversations. So my Aussie friend legitimately asked, 'How do people date in this city? How do they get to know eachother.' Beats me! But it reminds me of an evesdropping I read at overheardinnewyork.com that went along the lines of:

European Man: New York girls are strange. They don't like it when a man holds a door open for them.

European Woman : New York girls are either want to slap you or sleep with you, but nothing in between.

As a female, of course there're many things i could take offense in with this exchange, but there is an element of truth on Manhattan interactions.

As I approach my second year in this city, I really am nowhere near ready to leave this town any time soon. But there are certain things that I just don't care to be a part of .. such as shmoozing New York style. I've no patience.

Out of Place

2008-11-08T15:51:00.005-05:00

I am currently doing what might best be described as career change shopping. I don't know what I want to do, but I have this vague feeling that it's not what I'm currently doing. I was looking up OR and related fields, and came across Financial Engineering. So I went to an info session for the Financial Engineering program at Berkley. The lady who was giving the info session talked a whole bunch of stuff. Along the way she was trying to make the point that the students tend to be well rounded ... and even pleasant,

"If someone is going to spend more time than their wife and their kids with you, they are going to want you to be a certain way."

I doubt she was trying to imply that their female alumnae tend to be gay.

A few years ago, right out of college, this wouldn't have bothered me. Yesterday it made me take a glance around the room to confirm I was the only female in the room.

And boy, did I find the other participants ... irritating. Maybe MFE is not for me :)

So, how long before the US elects a female (who's not named Palin) to be President?

Post-Obama

2008-11-07T10:43:00.003-05:00

Heh :) I for one am still checking out my usual, left leaning blogs obsessively.

Although, I must admit, politics just isn't as much 'fun' when it's not dressed in Prada.

Grey's Anatomy

2008-11-01T11:19:00.004-04:00

"In Ethiopia they eat stew on spongy, sour bread. That's not for everybody", said Baily, who's kinda my favorite character on the show.

She was talking about trying out new things, and in that specific case, about lesbian sex.

Umm. Okkk.

Palin’s (Inadvertent) Contribution to Feminism

2008-10-28T21:40:00.018-04:00

"Republicans have taken over the word 'feminist' ... and left its content behind.”

I start off with a quote on US election 2008 from an appalled feminist whose name I don’t recall at the moment , and Google's not cooperating. I agree with her. So it it may sound like an oxymoron but I also happen to think the Republican Vice Presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, has left a few marks on feminism. Note that I state it in past tense because I don’t expect she’ll have any relevant contributions in the future.

Here’s what I think Palin has done (or done onto her).

Yardstick of Success

Conventional wisdom had it that if you’re female, you’d to be much better than your male counterparts to hold the same position in the work place. A while back another feminist had said that the struggle of feminism in the United Sates had shifted from giving qualified women equal opportunity as men, to letting mediocre women have the same opportunities as mediocre men.

Well, here it is folks! A woman who out-mediocres all her male counterparts actually managed to get nominated to a VP position. Feminism may now go back to being defined as ‘equality between the sexes’, this time in support of men.

Gender Bias (or Lack thereof)

The theory was that women would vote for women. Regardless. That was what they said about Hillary Clinton. That was what they thought would also be true about Sarah Palin.

I was very upset during the primaries, and despite some of Hillary’s awkward moments (like the imaginary shooting incident), I was a dedicated supporter because I thought the media and men around me were unduly critical of her. The more they told me I was for her simply because I was female, the more I defended her.

The bottom line was that Clinton and Obama had almost the same policies. It shouldn’t have been shocking to support one or the other. However, it was acceptable to mock a female for supporting a female candidate while almost nobody would dare to openly argue that a black person was only voting for Obama simply because he or she was black. So Hillary took the one sided flack. And. It. Got. On. My. Nerves. She was dismissed her as ‘Bill’s wife’. She was called ‘catty’ for defending her positions, etc.

Enter Palin.

In the beginning people were actually excited about Palin, probably including left leaning women who were rubbed a little raw by Hillary's mistreatment. Personally I was pissed off from the get go. The news headlines on the day of the nomination accross the board, including B-fu**ing-BC, read something like, 'McCain picks female for Vice President'. It was evident from day one that 'who' wasn't the quiestion, 'what' was. And when we finally dug up 'who', it was some ex-beauty pageant religious bimbo, whose bimboness was evident even before she started describing the view from her house. That, to me as a female, was so offensive.

Anyway, the moment Palin opened her mouth and started spewing nonsense unto Couric, women rejected her at a higher rate than men. Feminism can check this in it’s to-do list: women’s movement has matured enough to reject BS when it sees it, regardless of the packaging geneder. If Palin hadn't come by, Clinton's near nomination would forever have been tainted with irrational women-for-women vote. I think we can now safely say that women don't just want to symbolically break the symbolic glass ceiling. They want to break the symbolic glass ceiling with substance.

Thank you, women across America. Thank you.

So now, this begs the question: has black people’s movement in the US matured enough to rejecta a bullshiteous black candidates? Barack Obama has over 90% of the black vote, and the media keeps saying the black vote is going to carry Obama through. Give me a break. The black population is only 12% of the US, so chill the fuck out. And there is no question thatn an overwhelming majority of black poeple in the US would benefit from Obama's policies, so it's hardly surprising they're pro a Democratic candidate. After all Bill Clinton was known as the first black president.

So my question, I don't think, has ever been answered ... and one day it will have to be, in affirmative.

Long Hair

Yup. Long hair. Look at Clinton, Pelosi, Albright, Rice, Thatcher … any powerful woman (ok, pictures of Cleopatra don’t count). Either short hair is the trademark for women above 40 (umm, not! Now look at Michelle Obama, Cindy McCain, etc), or they all suffer from a touch of the Lady Macbeth syndrome. Political women have deliberately taken out the feminine in them to be taken seriously in the public eye. Since none of them ever dared to try long hair, nobody used to know if it’d affect them.

Enter Palin. And her weird coiffure.

I think we can safely say that nobody gives a damn.

White people's sport

2008-06-10T23:29:00.005-04:00

I could hear his music as he came up the bend - he had a blasting boombox. I was on my way to re-chalk. I grabbed my chalk bag , dipped my fingers in and when I looked up he was there. I rubbed my hands together and looked at him intently. He was a bit different than I expected. A bit older. He was in his fifties or sixties. He stood about a meter from the beginning of my route. For a split second I looked around my surroundings. There were still bikers passing by every few seconds, a runner every minute or so, and one of those police golf-carts about a 100 meters downhill. I didn't feel unsafe at all. I kept looking at him.

"I am harmless!", he said.

"Eh ... I'm sorry?"

"I am harmless. I am a good guy. You're going to climb this right?"

"Right."

"Go on. I won't be in your way." He pointed ahead and said something about the police. I imagine that they were watching us.

I tried to smile. "I know."

Actually, he was in my way. I could start but I could land where he was. I walked over to him and started anyway, making sure I didn't slip. He kept talking over the blasting boombox.

"Is this your first time here?"

"Yes."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"You've never been to the park? then you must be from out of town."

"No, I'm from here. I just haven't been here before." I meant the actual location, not even the park but from where I was hanging, I wasn't about to explain.

He looked at me for a while longer, changing the radio station erratically. Then he yelled more.

"This is white people's sport, you know? Black folk don't do this."

I cracked up and let go.

"Aha"

"This is white peoples' sport. I see them all over this thing all the time. "

"Aha. " I went back to my chalk bag.

"White people sport! White people sport. I gotta talk to the police."

Then suddenly, leaving aside a nicely made out trail, he made a dash through the bushes and started running to the police golf cart down below. For a while the boombox was quiet. and I went back to my route. Part way through my traverse the music came back. Eventually when I looked back he was slowly walking away from the police cart, tweaking his radio stations once again.

effect vs. affect

2008-03-23T23:17:00.003-04:00

They're making fun of my pet-peeve :(

Surely, it must be that lesbian school ...

2008-03-05T20:09:00.007-05:00

Ever since this Obama fever started, emails have trickled into my mailbox from various friends and relatives telling me I should contribute, vote for 'change', i.e. Obama. I was obviously more interested in who sent me the email than what they sent me. One curious thing to note about who's been sending me these emails has been that it has all come from black men. My friends who are female and black are still rooting all for Clinton.

Anyway, I ignored one email after another ... until today. Just yesterday night against all odds Hillary Clinton pulled through in OH, TX and RI. Then this morning I received more Obamaganda. Come on! So I hit reply, added a list of all the men that've sent me vote-obama messages, and replied:

Thanks, but no thanks, Obamacans. You're on this list because at some point you've littered my mailbox with Obamaganda :)

A long time ago I heard Bill Clinton say in an interview that Democrats win when people think. I thought it was obnoxious but oh, so funny. Fast forward to last night : Billary won in TX and OH b/c the people were forced to think ... beyond the great speeches and your kinda spams that've been going around, people stopped to think about what each candidate had to say ... which at the end of the day is pretty much the same thing presented differently.

Now, I can confidently say that I like black men more than any of you (yeah, fight me on this one) ... but I can't see the one in question to be anything other than a man who makes good speeches and has sub-par take on issues on which he agrees (considering his age, some may say "copied from") with Billary.

I think Obama's OK. I just think Billary's better at everything other than making speeches. As you may already know, i don't won a TV and reading his speeches just doesn't do the trick for me.

Now, my office mate just pointed out this morning that a candidate's grasp on issues has no bearing on how good a president s/he will be -- or else the US would be in a lot worse situation than it is now under Bush. Touche. But I can't be asked like a candidate for the same reason (however minute the degree) that I dislike Bush. And I'm not about to buy a TV so i can be 'inspired' and down with 'cool' gang.

People say Obama will bring "national reconciliation". Dude, if you can get NY and TX to vote for you, you've got "national reconciliation".

In conclusion, this is not to tell you to stop spamming me. I like Obama ... I just thought I'd spam back for a change :)

If anybody feels like contributing towards Hilary's campaign, here's the link : https://contribute.hillaryclinton.com/march4.html?sc=2373

Then I started getting some awesome responses. The first one said,

Oh sharrup; I knew they did some shit to you at the lesbian college you went to

LOL.

I wonder if the fact that Hilary Clinton also went to one of those 'lesbian colleges' brings a sour taste to the table. (But wait, isn't the though of 'lesbian colleges' a cool thing in mainstream, straight American society, including black men?)

Another response said,

It looks like we have a traitor in the family... Remember the last time we had the supreme court instead of the people decide who was going to lead this nation we ended up with Bush, the man you loath. You are advocating the same scenario here where Hillary is trying to pull out a win by disenfranchising voters.

BTW, any democrat can win NY in the general election... look 4 years ago a man named John Kerry won NY land slide but lost the general election to W. At least it would have sounded better if you mentioned Ohio. But we all know McCain has no chance in Ohio because he is so pro NAFTA.

Come on ... join the enlighten and support the man that is ready to transform the nation. Bill Clinton already built the bridge to the 21st century. We don't want another bridge back to the 20th century.

Again LOL to the traitor. I find it amusing that the person who wrote this is an engineer and still wrote the second paragraph. I think I'm going to write back and ask, 'If you did a great job 10 years ago of say, building a bridge, you want your future jobs to be given to another person especially because you did a great job 10 years ago?'

I think Hilary & Obama should eventually run a joint ticket. They've divided the Democratic party straight down the middle line, and it is in their hands to bring the party, the country back together. As this country stands at the edge of a recession, one of my officemates pointed out, imagine Hilary as the president, Obama as vice president and Bill Clinton as a 'first man'(?). Is that a power house, or is that a power house?

The question is who'll be on top.

To quote an alumnae t-shirt slogan from my 'lesbian college', it's all about 'a century of women on top'.

I also remember a bumper sticker on somebody's dorm door that had a picture of the white house with the following written under it:

A WOMAN'S PLACE IS IN THE HOUSE. THE WHITE HOUSE.

Yeah, maybe that 'lesbian school' has made me into a feminist of sort (actually i'd rather be identified in the anti-feminist feminist camp, which my brothers like to refer to as "feminazi" ... which is really, ridiculous ....anti-feminist feminism is actively pro-men, but whatever.) If this is what it's made me, I'm happy with it.

p.s. My new favorite blog : Stuff White People Like . Hilarious, and apparently on point, at least for left leaning east/west coast Americans! The only disturbing thing about it is that I'm guilty of most,

coffee, film festivals (if i could get to them), farmer's markets, organic food (but only coz i was used to organic stuff growing up, i don't pay shitloads for it), diversity (or else i'd not be here), making you bad about going outside (coz i need company), having black friends (well, like i've a choice), hating parents (defunct habit), awareness (for survival, not poke fun at the unaware as such ... though that's a good side benefit), traveling (training for deportation & consequences), being and expert on your culture (yeah, i tell Americans what their culture's like ... so what? they don't know. ref : awareness), having two last names (actually, i've more than 2, ayat, qim ayatoches?), david sedaris, Manhattan, marathons (don't do them .. but talk of them), not having tv, 80s night, snowboarding, breakfast places, netflix, apple products (if i could afford more than my ipod), indie music, sushi, plays, public radio, Asian fusion food, whole foods, being the only white person around (i mean the only black person around ... does that count still?), study abroad, gentrification (i.e. Harlem), threatening to move to Canada (ref earlier comment about deportation), multilingual children (yeah, my kid'll speak Amharic too and that's that), modern furniture (any furniture, at this point), the idea of soccer, graduate school

p.p.s So I'm kinda like a white female. This may be awfully convenient ammunition for those who cant understand why I like Hilary.

21st Century Realized

2008-02-23T12:31:00.002-05:00

Ok, so a picture is worth a thousand words. And a video is worth so many more, which is specially convenient as I'm not putting much effort into utilizing words in this blog these days.

I was reading NemoZen (?) and came across this post about why the WII remote is so much cooler than it is in the context society uses it today.

YouTube led to more YouTube and I ended up here, which's ... pretty darn amazing!

Also at : Foldable Displays .

Hippos vs. Cheetahs

2008-02-22T21:38:00.007-05:00

I am at 1:59 of this video as I post this ... but it came from a friend who always sends me links that'd make spamming worthy if only I had the right motivations. So I post this, and I trust you'll learn & enjoy:

This grab-you-by-the-throat speech by Ghanaian economist George Ayittey unleashes an almost breathtaking torrent of controlled anger toward corrupt leaders and the complacency that allows them to thrive. These "Hippos" (lazy, slow, ornery) have ruined postcolonial Africa, he says. Why, then, does he remain optimistic? Because of the young, agile "Cheetah Generation," a "new breed of Africans" taking their futures into their own hands.

[I am at 4:08 now ... I think I should share another link from the same friend]

Hearts of Darkness

Please, avoid becoming a fufu-head!

What do you do when you need to kick some ass?

2008-02-21T20:56:00.001-05:00

An Ethiopian family on Jay Lenno ... very funny!

Clinton and Cruise

2008-02-08T00:35:00.000-05:00

I still like her but this is funny too ...

Something about Clinton ...

2008-01-20T01:33:00.000-05:00

These days Americans have two hobbies -- (American) football and hating Hilary Clinton.

I don't get it, although years ago i ... kinda did it myself. It was while I was in college and Hilary was the First Lady(ok, let me take this opportunity to say that this first lady/gentleman(?) business in a democratic society is a very, very dumb idea. You can't not want royalty and want it, too). At the time I was defending Bill Clinton saying that what made him into the liar that he became were the puritanical questions he was being asked regarding a matter that didn't concern the public ... the way some evidence may be inadmissible in court if obtained through illegal means ... So he cheated; let his wife deal with it.

Also, I thought, of course he's a manipulative first class liar -- that's how he functions so well as an American president. And to top that he's a lawyer by training! Why were people slapping his wrist for the very skill he's been using to bring the Palestinians and Israelis to the same table? Mind you ... I didn't absolutely adore the guy, especially because he'd a tendency to distract the media from his personal life by bombing random locations in Africa.

One day I was talking to a girl named Carol in my house and I mentioned that I didn't care much for Hilary Clinton. It turned out Carol had interned with Hilary the summer before and she asked me why I didn't like Hilary. When it came down to it, I had no tangible reason other than the fact that even back then, America didn't like liking Hilary. The sentiment was contagious and apparently I'd caught some of it. So what's wrong with her? She was unlike any other First Lady who'd preceded her. Her education equaled that of any man around her. She had a successful career until she paused it to actively promote husband's career. Hell, she'd to change her maiden name to Clinton to appear like a 'normal' American wife so Bill Clinton could win his elections. Some criticized her marriage saying that it was more like a partnership:

To some, her marriage looked like a merger. Former candidate Michael Dukakis only read about Swedish land- use planning in his spare time; the Clintons talk about similarly dense topics with friends over dinner in the huge kitchen in the statehouse.

Well, I am sorry for Dukakis that whoever he's married to likes talking about the best sale in town, or how their last croak pot burned the food on one side, but for a married couple to take interest in the same things is hardly a point to be shamed about.

Carol calmly refuted each one of my (lack) of arguments. Since then I've been sold on Hilary.

Last week when Hilary lost in Iowa and supposedly had that breakdown moment, my co-worder who's never hesitated to express his distaste for Hilary Clinton retorted, 'I would never vote for a President who cries in public, male or female'. Over the course of the day I had convinced him that he was just hater. Yup, a hater. He'll take whatever Hilary does and give it a negative twist.
In this case he'd been complaining that she was too calculated and couldn't be trusted, and now, when she supposedly had an emotional moment, he struck her down for exactly the opposite reason he'd struck her before. Finally he said that she'd probably faked it. I continue with my argument that once again, he'll take anything about Hilary and dislike he for it. For that one instance, I had him admit that he was, perhaps subconsciously, looking for ways to explain her behavior unfavorably.

I think Barack Obama's alright. Hey, anybody that gets enough Ethiopians (on an average day politically apathetic people, unless it comes to demonstrating in DC) to actively support him, organize fund raising events, etc, gets my attention. If I were American I would consider voting for him. Consider is the key word. He surely got the dreamy catch lines ... the kind of lines I would have embraced when I was in college, I would love to embrace now, but alas, I've grown too cynical. Still, I wouldn't go as far as Bill Clinton to call Obama's campaign , 'the biggest fairy tale' i've ever heard (but ... there's something positive to be said about Bill Clinton for making that statement in reaction to his wife's first 'loss' at the polls.)

B Obama's weakness point for me is every time I hear Michelle Obama speak I can't help but think that I would definitely vote for her. The woman's on fire ... I wouldn't be surprised if she writes her husband's speeches.

So yeah, basically I think less of Obama, the man, because he has a stellar wife .. whereas I think people should not dismiss Hilary Clinton because she's a stellar (or scumbag, depending who you talk to) husband. You ask how than am I different from all the people who dismiss Hilary for the wrong reasons? Coz I'm not going with the popular crowd, that's why! I'm an independent hater ... yup, yup.

But seriously, I think Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton have the same take on many issues so picking one over the other on that isn't much help . So she's shown signs of changing her mind over the years. Good for her, and America! Shouldn't a leader in a democratic state be molded by the desire of the people, unlike G W Bush who marched to America to into a disaster called Iraq and insisted on keeping it in the same disaster in the name of 'strong leadership'? Yes, it would have suited me better if she'd been against the war from the start, but at least she's learned from it. And while we're the topic of voting, missing important votes because one's out campaigning don't impress me at all, Mr Obama.

The fact that Obama's black has no play in my world. He's as much black, as I am, as she's female, as I am. Besides, voting for a person for their color or gender is as bad as voting for a person because they hold similar 'values'. To me what Hilary has that even her husband didn't have to deal with is this hobby of Ameirca that likes disliking her. To me, enduring so many years of being in and out of public life and scrutiny, being humiliated by her husbands affair, putting her carrier on a back burner for her spouse's sake ... and surviving all that to become a New York senator shows strength worth every respect.

Much love to Obama, but so much more love to Hilary.

I probably should read this over again, but am about to be de-stuck from Salt Lake City airport.

Attention ugly and/or non-Ethiopian women ...

2007-11-06T18:08:00.000-05:00

... no more coffee for you!

I sent as speechless an email as I could to some folks regarding this : Ethiopia tackles Aids with coffee-flavour condoms.

"It is about time to use an Ethiopian flavor for beautiful Ethiopian girls," said Dereje Alemu, 19, a university student.

Well, what have we learned here? His major is not English and he has a future in marketing. If he ever lives in the US at some point in his life he'll get sued.

Or maybe after reading this comment,

"It's inappropriate," said Bedilu Assefa, a spokesman for the Ethiopian Orthodox church, whose millions of followers are encouraged to abstain from sex outside marriage. "We're proud of our coffee."

I should have entitled this post, "No coffee for you - you're not Christian enough!"

But after reading this, the recipients of my email wrote back saying that they were confused:

"I hate coffee-flavoured condoms," said Tadesse Teferi, 37, a mechanic. "But I use ordinary condoms when I have sex with ladies other than my wife."

What's he been smockin', you ask? Well, we broke down the sentences into a conjunction of logical statements and after a careful analysis coupled with a wee bit psychology, we've come to a conclusion. This man means:

- he does not use condoms with his spouse
- he uses ordinary (unflavored) condoms with females other than his spouse
- he uses coffee-flavored condoms with men other than his spouse

Ummm ...yeah.

Let's hope all the wives of mechanics called Tadesse Teferi are illeterate, and that this article will never get translated into Amharic and/or other Ethio languages. Wait, should we not be hoping for the opposite? Hmm.

The thing I find most interesting is how every comment has a name attached to it. Since when do Ethiopians allow a person to appear behind a quote? Also not the lack of female comments.

The person who forwarded me the link (non-Ethiopian) had one question : Is decaf available?

I see so many jokes coming. And some kids may just giggle in the future when the gorebet Itye calles out 'ere nu buna TeTu! Indae ... berede iko'

I should stop.

Sonata For a Good Man

2007-10-23T23:33:00.000-04:00

There has only been one book that I remember, whose last page I turned and thought, 'I will read this book again'. The book was Atlas Shrugged. As I was reading it, I was folding pages to keep track of paragraphs that I had read and re-read, but wanted to come back to.

I read user comments about it on amazon later on. People either found it depressing or inspiring. In both cases, most people loved the book. I am in the depressing-book camp - it paints a very grim picture of society without much sense of hope. I wish, really wish I had found it inspiring.

I wonder what psychologists have to say about the discongruent congruency of readers' opinions.

Every so often I've paid my dues as a movie junkie - good ones and bad ones. Unless due to extenuating circumstances, I always finish watching them. Tonight's movie is the only one I can recall that I finished and couldn't wait to see it again. It's called Lives of Others.

Funny. It views like 'Our Lives'. I could almost hear the movie in Amharic, eventhough I was too young at the peak of Dergue and Dehnenet. If I spoke the language, I could hear the movie in Mandarin too. And Polish. And Bulgarian, and Russian ... and all those other languages in which people were too afriad to admit that they were afriad.

Georg Dreyman reminded me of Abe Gubegna. And Bealu Girma. I can't find the exact quote now Nelson Mandela is quoted to have said, 'If you don't have something to die for, then you've no reason to live'. How few those who lived for a reason. How extraordinarily rare those who who lived to say they lived for a reason.

HGW XX/7 reminded me of a conversation I recently had. It was one of those nothing-really-matters-distress topics. The question was if, as we grow older, we are giving up on our dreams and our sense of purpose, or desire to look for a purpose to replace them by "maturity" - a state of resignation and apathy. How many generations of dinner parties have discussed that exact topic? Perhaps the saying, 'if you're not a liberal at 25, you've no heart. if you're not a conservative at 40, you've no brain' is telling. Years pass, ideals break, responsibilities rise, children grow, time crawls onto the next cylce. But not to despair - somebody pulled an Oprah line, that you don't have to impact a whole nation or half the world - you can make a difference in the life of one person . We laughed it off, saying that that is one of the worst and most common excuses for having children.

Except now it doesn't seem so funny.

I thought the 'Good morning, sun' joke was very funny.

Talking of Abe Gubegna:

Every day in Africa a gazelle wakes up.
It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows that it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle.
When the sun comes up, you better be running.

Abe Gubegna
Ethiopia, circa 1974

As recited to me by a cab driver in Washington DC

"Kicked out", "kicked off" ....?

2007-10-22T00:42:00.000-04:00

At 10:40pm my friend set me a txt msg asking, 'Did Beyonce just get kicked out of Ethiopia?' 10 minutes later I was on my laptop and on the phone with her trying to figure out where she got that from. We couldn't confirm that she was kicked out, but it seems she wowed the 5000 people in Addis that could afford her show.

Meh. Not my kinda gig. Each to his own, but of the story, this made me cringe

Beyonce's opening act, rapper Ludacris, also got a lukewarm reception Saturday.
"Rap music doesn't suit Ethiopia," said local music promoter Michael Melake. "Ethiopians need a melody.
"Rap music is all about the message and we don't identify with that," he said. "It's all about the black American experience, and we don't relate to that."

Eeek!

Beterefe gin I wonder if Anita Powell has ever been to Ethiopia, or how much time she's spent in Ethiopia.

Some 5,000 adoring fans in Ethiopia — a country normally unimpressed by Western music — turned out to see Beyonce. In this country, even teens tend to be loyal to music in the national language, Amharic.

In a country of 70 million people, surely it can't be that hard to come up with 5000 molqaqa, Ethiopian raised, English-only-speaking (or pretending) fans ... if not people who appreciate a balance of world music. If you round up all the kids from the private and international schools inkuan, you can beat that number.

Two Things On My Mind

2007-10-16T21:13:00.001-04:00

There've been a lot more than two of them but I've not had much time to pause and think ... or whatever it is that i do with things on my mind.

Lemn Sissay. For starters, shall I say, what an interesting name. 'Why a blessing?' ... unless it is 'beg for a blessing', which is less likely, but equally odd. If you dig around deep enough you'll find that his background has many twists and turns. And I can almost understand why they called him 'lemin sisay' ... but I couldn't find the bit where he said his mother named him that. But still, why would she name him that?

He was adopted by English parents until he was 11, apparently against his mother's will. But his adoptive parents turned him to foster care at 11 and I'm not quite sure how he grew up after that. He is, however, against cross-cultural adoption ... which is how I found out about him. No, I'm not against cross-cultural adoption, his position just caught my eye.

His blog and one of his poems :

INVISIBLE KISSES

If there was ever one
Whom when you were sleeping
Would wipe your tears
When in dreams you were weeping;
Who would offer you time
When others demand;
Whose love lay more infinite
Than grains of sand.

If there was ever one
To whom you could cry;
Who would gather each tear
And blow it dry;
Who would offer help
On the mountains of time;
Who would stop to let each sunset
Soothe the jaded mind.

If there was ever one
To whom when you run
Will push back the clouds
So you are bathed in sun;
Who would open arms
If you would fall;
Who would show you everything
If you lost it all.

If there was ever one
Who when you achieve
Was there before the dream
And even then believed;
Who would clear the air
When it's full of loss;
Who would count love
Before the cost.

If there was ever one
Who when you are cold
Will summon warm air
For your hands to hold;
Who would make peace
In pouring pain,
Make laughter fall
In falling rain.

If there was ever one
Who can offer you this and more;
Who in keyless rooms
Can open doors;
Who in open doors
Can see open fields
And in open fields
See harvests yield.

Then see only my face
In the reflection of these tides
Through the clear water
Beyond the river side.
All I can send is love
In all that this is
A poem and a necklace
Of invisible kisses.

Another worthy read : why do we fucking swear? I've been told I put sailors to shame ... which is another odd thing, i think. Because I rarely swear when I'm angry ... or at work. Perhaps subconsciously I'm putting on a show? Who knows. Anyway, me likes article.

Hmm. Of poets and swearing, Kim Addonizio is one of my favorite poets ... alongside maybe Dorothy Parker. I'm not poetic, nor much of a poetry reader, but I've come to realize that what brings these two women together in my world is their 'vulgarity' and humor. Well, DP is unquestionably very funny ... and is even quoted in the article above.

Kim Addonizio ... I was working in Daytona, FL in the Summer of 2004. I was bored and roaming the hallways of the hotel I was staying at when I saw a pile of her books up for sale on a table. She was scheduled to speak that day. I picked up one of the books and opened to a random page to be faced by a poem called "Fuck". My thought exactly - what the fuck?! I read the poem. I bought the book, and went to the hall where the poet of that strange book I'd just acquired was speaking. She read a poem from the book about a dying brother, I think ... and yet made the reading sound so sexual. But then she also read about her cat and to me she was still sounding like she was on the same wavelength. Maybe I'm not receptive to nuances of histrionics. Anyway, no further comment 'bout that, but here's ...

Fuck

There are people who will tell you
that using the word fuck in a poem
indicates a serious lapse
of taste, or imagination,

or both. It's vulgar,
indecorous, an obscenity
that crashes down like an anvil
falling through a skylight

to land on a restaurant table,
on the white linen, the cut-glass vase of lilacs.
But if you were sitting
over coffee when the metal

hit your saucer like a missile,
wouldn't that be the first thing
you'd say? Wouldn't you leap back
shouting, or at least thinking it,

over and over, bell-note riotously clanging
in the church of your brain
while the solicitous waiter
led you away, wouldn't you prop

your shaking elbows on the bar
and order your first drink in months,
telling yourself you were lucky
to be alive? And if you wouldn't

say anything but Mercy or Oh my
or Land sakes, well then
I don't want to know you anyway
and I don't give a fuck what you think

of my poem. The world is divided
into those whose opinions matter
and those who will never have
a clue, and if you knew

which one you were I could talk
to you, and tell you that sometimes
there's only one word that means
what you need it to mean, the way

there's only one person
when you first fall in love,
or one infant's cry that calls forth
the burning milk, one name

that you pray to when prayer
is what's left to you. I'm saying
in the beginning was the word
and it was good, it meant one human

entering another and it's still
what I love, the word made
flesh. Fuck me, I say to the one
whose lovely body I want close,

and as we fuck I know it's holy,
a psalm, a hymn, a hammer
ringing down on an anvil,
forging a whole new world.

~ Kim Addonizio

Everytime I read this poem, I'm surprised by how it starts, laugh in the middle, and surprised by its end.

I hate it when people swear in Amharic. Hate, hate, hate it. Yidfash, yisenTiqish, yiCHergidish is fine! It's the inat'shin and like crap that's repulsive.

I used to think you're not truly fluent in a language of a culture until you can understand the local humor. I now think you're not fluent until you can "appropriately" be offended by swearing.

So am I or am I not offended in English?

Hmm.

That was 3 things. At least.

p.s. It just occurred to me, his name can mean, 'Why, Sissay?'

Net Rhytms

2007-10-04T16:49:00.001-04:00

It took me almost a 3 weeks to get Internet at my new apartment. Partly because I was taking too long to pick up the phone to make an appointment, and partly because there's a waitlist for everything in NYC. Then it took me another 3 weeks to set up my router (does plug and play ever work with routers for other people? Every single time I set up my Linksys, it's been a painful multi-day exercise for me). So, it really is nice to know I finally have it. But the damage is already done - the one month residential internet free existence has broken my email and other web rhythms.

Anyway ...

A farewell scene from Joisy (no, it wasn't me!)

...and a welcoming scene from Central Park.

Berhanu Nega in NYC

2007-09-13T11:40:00.000-04:00

Berhanu Nega was at The New School for Social Research in NYC on Sep 6, 2007. Great talk.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Melkam "Alicha" Millenium

2007-09-12T08:07:00.000-04:00

Here is to a prosperous ..eh ... thousand more years.

I happened to miss the DC hoopla last weekend, and I even skipped to Ohio for the week. I spent yesterday evening having a quiet Ethiopian meal with a friend. It wasn't even a matter of choice... Columbus Habesh people (and there are a lot of them!) must be celebrating from home... which is, if we go by tradition, the right way to celebrate. If the Ethiopian restaurants ever go quieter than they were yesterday, they'll need to shut down the businesses.

I called home, and my mom told me Addis Ababans are calling it the Alicha (yellow) Millennium. Apparently the price of berbere (red pepper) has rocketed to something like 1300ETB per 17Kg (not sure why i got the rate in 17kg units - must be some Ethiopian thing I'm missing). To help me with comparison she said it was 14ETB per 17kg during Haile Selassie, a hundred something per the same unit during Dergue, and 400+ETB during EPRDF. Finally now it's simply not affordable to have Qey woT for the average folks in Ethiopia.

The jokes go:

Man, after getting his shoes shined : how much is it?
Listro : 8.50 Birr.
Man : Indae, mindin new? Beberbere new indae yeTeregkew?

Daughter calling from the US: Ima, what should I send you for new year?
Mother : Ya balefew kelakulish berbere and hulet lastick isti melisesh lakilign?

My mom also reports EPRDF (hmm ... we're a 'multi party' system, maybe i should say 'the government') has been rationing electricity in most areas, but places like Churchill (aka Chercher) Avenue (what's on Churchill?) have been getting 24/7 service. I guess consumption has gone up beyond the city's capacity(doing what, and where?). So, according to my mom, it's also become the Chelema Millennium.

I guess everybody in my family, myself included, are not very interested in this "Millennium " business - to remind people of the obvious, the 'new' 1000 years started last year. I wasn't that interested in the ferenj 2000 either. But it's interesting/amusing to see what's been going on. Really :)

So for real ... melkam addis amet!

Refresher for the soul, lessons for the mind

2007-09-04T10:03:00.001-04:00

If you're going to go off trail and start bush walking, don't do it while you're 3 hrs away from camp with 5 hours to sunset. Never.

Sap is apparently great for starting fire.

Either of polar bears or grizzly bears cannot go downhill, and the other can't go uphill. Figure out which is which before you're stuck in the woods with no reception. (hint: one can slide)

Color, color everywhere.

If you see a weird looking lake ... such as this one ...

... it's quite unlikely that after two hours of bush walking you came to a different lake of haunting similarity.

Color, color everywhere.

Crazy sized mushrooms. Another one here. (actually i'm not even sure they're mushrooms - "mushroom-like-things-on-trunks-of-trees")

A camping hammock is so not excessive!

Even trees have social outcasts :-/

Smores are sooo much better in the morning.

Adirondack Mountains, NY

Before the long weekend takes charge...

2007-08-29T22:18:00.000-04:00

Drunk and Wild
Have you ever tried Amarula? The best I can describe it as is that it's like Bailey's ... except it's tastes so much better. And it's African! It is made in South Africa from a tree called Marula.

The trees themselves cannot be cultivated, and so the fruit must be harvested in the wild, where it stands ripening under the African sun. As they ripen the berry.s skin becomes a light yellow, with white flesh inside around a large stone. Rich in vitamin C, and the nut packed with natural oil, this succulent, tart fruit draws the animals of the plains with the promise of its annual feast. This fruit is the base ingredient from which Amarula is made.

So, I kinda knew all this. What I didn't expect was this - utterly hilarious!

Linkies

Then the top 100 undiscovered websites, classic and for 2007. It was a del.icio.us fest.

Geeky

Remember when Netscape used to have a built in wysiwyg basic HTML editor? I think that used to be about the only reason i ever used Netscape. It's a cool feature, I thought. Netscape didn't think so ... the feature disappeared (and/or Netscape disappeared from my list of apps). Anyway, I'm not sure what to do with this find yet, but here's a nifty plugin for Firefox. It lets you right click on a text box and Xinha then gives you a separate window or a sub-window to compose HTML, alternating b/n wysiwyg and source.

Spider Nation

This is one of those rare moments where a new discovery in science sucks.

Physicists have found the formula for a Spiderman suit. Only recently has man come to understand how spiders and geckos effortlessly scuttle up walls and hang from ceilings but it was doubted that this natural form of adhesion would ever be strong enough to hold the weight of real life Peter Parkers.

This will pretty much kill the sport known as rock climbing. There'll be freaking spider-wannabes everywhere. Or maybe that will be the new sport.

Khadja Nin

She's from Burundi, raised in Burundi and Zaire. I used to listen to her music a while back. A very long while back ... then I must have stopped.

I can't believe this CD has been out for over 10 years and I never got to it until recently. I only know 'M'barik Fall' in there. Well, better late than never.

Sambolera is an easy favorite ... of everybody, apparently. However, Sina Mali, Sina Deni stands as the most replayed in my book right now. You can listen to samples here.

UK, Japan & US

2007-08-22T19:36:00.000-04:00

Amy Winehouse

I knew the woman was nutty, but I didn't think I was betting my money on it. Months ago a friend and I bought tickets to her upcoming concert in Darby/Philly, PA. It was supposed to be on Sep 13th, which is Jewish new year ... a day after Ethiopian new year. Since my friend is Jewish, and I Ethiopian, we figured, hey, what better excuse to party in the middle of the week?

But then we both kept coming across news articles that made us question our wisdom in buying those tickets. There was the spitting at fans, hitting her own head with the microphone, vomiting on stage, collapsing due to drug overdose ... you name it, she's done it. And she kept singing Rehab:

They tried to make me go to rehab but I said 'no, no, no'
Yes I've been black but when I come back you'll know know know
I ain't got the time and if my daddy thinks I'm fine
He's tried to make me go to rehab but I won't go go go

Well, there's only so much a (withered) human body can take. It seems she finally said, 'yes, yes, yes'. She's canceled her US tour and checked into rehab. About time.

If you've not heard her before, her voice/music is something. She is ... something else!

Now I need to hunt for my refund.

Kabuki in the 21st Century

There are a few places I have to visit. Japan's one of them.

The Matrix Ping Pong

Why is my girlfriend mad at me?

Packing

It started out well, with me packing 1/2 a box of books. It ended with me reading the books I was supposed to be packing. But that's cool. I figure, I never perform well while not under pressure. I never ever do. So to hell with packing. Today's chill day. Tomorrow's activitating. I'll start packing on Friday at 8pm and stay up all night.

Hey, at least it has worked before ...

De-Vacationed

So, tobian.blogspot.com went on vacation coz ... well, not too long ago yekolotemari stopped by my apt, and then claimed that it was his birthday (good one, yekolo ... nice stab at trying to get pampered). Well, there's no pampering at my place. But I figured I could masarer something in my underused kitchen and hope that siyayew dengiTo Tilo indemiTefa.

At that point I knew who yeqolotemari was coz .. well, there can only be one of such a person in North Jersey! I've seen him comment around here a few times but I never volunteered to share my blog identity, I never asked for his.

So, as I was mangodagoding in my kushna, I heard him yell, 'anch nesh demo lekas Tobian?' At first I said I'd no clue what he was talking about. Then I asked where he heard it from. He heard it from somebody who I technically don't know ... which was kinda odd. It bothered me. The first time was during New Year in DC. Somebody introduced me as, 'this is Tobian' at a party... umm, how about not? I don't even like being called be bet sim let alone some username. But the music was loud, the crowd was happy, alcohol was in the air ... well, I smiled and moved on. It never got better since.

Andrew noted that one of the similarities Sudanese bloggers have with Ethiopians is that we use a lots of pseudonyms. We've a few real lifers, like Noalwi, Yemi and Fezz. The rest of us stick to nicknames coz ... well, for whatever Habeshalacious reason I didn't create this account under my real name.

So, here's my resolution ... if you ever ask me to my face if I am Tobian, I will always answer that I am not. So don't ask. On that note, Tobian, whoever the hell she/he/it is, is back on ranting track.

Well, this has been a ranting ground all along.

Re-Vacationed

So I put a functional template on this thing and started reading through posts from the past month and realized that they're a lil too peronal for my taste. Argh.

This is why I should instead be packing.

:-(

2007-08-21T21:57:00.000-04:00

I dislike packing. I hate packing. I loath packing. Arggghhh ... maybe this is it. I'm finally hitting my limit.

I've moved in 6 of the past 7 years. Wow. WTF? I hadn't thought of that until I decided to procrastinate by writing crap I shouldn't.

It's 10pm. I almost never sleep before midnight - it makes me feel like i'm wasting the day. Today I've been feeling like going to sleep since 8pm. So far I've packed 1/2 a box of books.

I need to start throwing out books. I've read almost every English book that's not school/work related and is not a reference.

I've not read most of my amharic books, but the ones I've read, I've read multiple times.

I've way too many bibles ... for a person who hasn't read the bible in over 15 years. Which reminds me ... i think i've an old post i should publish.

I should have paid for packers and movers.

I don't think I'll move next year. Or the year after.

That's a depressing thought.

Oh yeah, of depression & suicide. I always end up saying something that I think I'll regret when I speak of both topics. No regrets yet. I never mean to be disrespectful - it's just there's something that doesn't sit well with the way society expects me to react. It finally struck me, these two issues are much like homosexuality. A very common argument that you'll hear being thrown at homophobes is, 'you know statistics show that most homophobic people are gay themselves'. It may be thrown at pple to make them feel uncomfortable, but I think there's an element of truth in there. You can only make other people's business personal if it is personal to you as well.

The thing with depression/suicide is ... if somebody makes a conscious decision to not commit suicide after a difficult deliberation, then to say suicide/depression is beyond the control of the individual is to invalidate that person's state of conscious being. It can have a few alternative meanings. a) although the person has had previous brushes with suicidal thoughts the person was not truly suicidal to begin with b) the person is suicidal, but the conscious decision not to commit suicide was not done at the true testing limit.

So if it ever crosses this person's mind again that suicide is still an option, in both cases the person will now be thinking, 'maybe now I'm really suicidal and I can no more control it'.

Basically a suicidal person who makes a conscious decision not to commit suicide should not be encouraged or forced to believe that suicidal tendencies are beyond one's control ... as is commonly acknowledged of mental health in today's society.

That's what bugs me.

I think I'll go pack.

As the world marches on ...

2007-08-15T22:33:00.000-04:00

Ethiopian Airlines

Ethiopian Airlines is looking to hire foreign pilots due to unprecedented fleet expansion. I understand they need to stay completive, but in a country where there's 90% urban unemployment rate, and being host to one of the best pilot schools in Africa, it seems to me somebody in EAL failed to plan well (even if staff left for other airlines ... every company has a turnover. Get with the program.)

Wikiwikia

Last year we got a group together at work and went for paint ball. One of my office mates, who happens to be an extremely tall guy, decided not to participate. His height had nothing to do with it, but if we didn't blame everything on his height, then he did. On this occasion the reason he gave must have been related to his hight, I think about how it would make him an easy target.

Upon hearing that, one other work mate disappeared for a while, came back and told us, "Did you know that Wilt Chamberlain was in the paint ball hall of fame?" Ok. I'd no clue who Wilt Chamberlain was -- it turns out he's a famous, tall (of course), American basketball player. "Really!", he assured us "Check Wikipedia."

So we checked Wikipedia and lo and behold, the entry said,

'''Wilton Norman "Wilt" Chamberlain''' ([[August 21]], [[1936]] – [[October 12]], [[1999]]) was an [[united States|American]] [[National Basketball Association]] [[basketball]] player. Known as ''Wilt the Stilt'' (a nickname he hated) or ''The Big Dipper'', he is regarded as one of the greatest and most dominant basketball players of all time for the incredible statistical achievements he attained throughout his playing career. Also a member of the paint ball hall of fame.

We didn't even have time to be skeptical. In a few minutes the original Wikipedia article had been reverted. We were as amused by our workmate modifying the entry as we were amazed by wikipedia's speedy reversion. Do they automate the supervision, or did somebody actually read through the modification and reject it in what felt like a minute?

Anyway, we thought it was the end of Wilt Chamberlain's Paint Ball Hall of Fame ... until this tool surfaced. It lets you search what wikipidia changes have been made from say, a range of IP addresses. In fact, it loads with IP range for your current location. As can be expected, Wilt Chamberlain's edit showed up under our work IPs.

It's kind of a creepy tool ... we were looking through the list and could sometimes guess who made the changes at work. Like, what are the chances somebody else at my work place will edit something about Ethiopia? (Thank god I don't have a wiki account :)

Of course it also has its good uses.

I forwarded a link to my tall, now ex-office mate, whose verdict was, "That sounds like a pretty sweet tool. It says to me: Run and hide!"

Pretty much.

Packing

I am officially procrastinating from packing ... and I will pay for it dearly ... soon.

The New Onion

2007-08-14T00:14:00.000-04:00

I started reading The Onion before they got a website, or before I knew that they'd one. Their newspaper wasn't easily available in my area so I only used to read it whenever I went to visit siblings. When I found out that they had a website ... I no longer had reason to visit the siblings. Now The Onion has started video transmissions ... I no longer have reason to be literate. Yay!

The first (three) are flat out hilarious.

Military Ban On Gays For Their Own Protection, Says General

Report: Many U.S. Parents Outsourcing Child Care Overseas

Study: Multiple Stab Wounds May Be Harmful To Monkeys

This is a great parody.

Live From Congress: Rep. Hardy Calls For A Ladies' Night Out

Talking of ladies nights, an American man was really talking of a 'ladies night out' time out. I guess everybody gotta get their 15 min of fame by all means necessary (I actually agree with him ... the issues just just doesn't seem worth the time)

Finally this, I just like the cover for Time magazine.

Time Releases Annual List Of Least Influential Americans

Multple Choice

2007-08-13T16:09:00.000-04:00

Select one of the following

a) huh?
b) woha!
c) wtf!?
d) all of the above.

for each of the news items below.

Item 1 : 'Mooning' student in African jail

Item 2 : Texas goes exectution-happy. Again.

Item 3 : Hint: If it's not India, the dowry always comes from the man's side. Repeat after me. If it's not India ...

Item 4: Warning : Do not approach the police while high, or while looking to get high

Stuck & Restless

2007-08-10T19:21:00.000-04:00

Getting stuck at airports is horrible. Partly because, well, it sucks. Also because it prompts me to do things I generally don't have time to fabricate. As it is I have to make a conscious effort to un-glue myself from my computer, but when I get stuck in a shitty airport with free wireless, what to do, what to do? Of course, there's a magazine in my bag ... but ... those papery things are so antiquated. It's more exciting to spend time on the computer trying to find a website that has hard-copy articles available online. Isn't ... it? Maybe I'm subconsciously an obsessive environmentalist. I've an aversion to leafing through dead leaves. Yup, that's it.

This is an attempt to de-glue myself from fabricating online adventures. (Maybe i should pick up WoW?)

I saw a workmate online and we started talking about a wedding he just returned from. He mentioned there was a gay reverend at the wedding who asked one of his buddies to a dance-off. At the dance-off the reverent started groping his buddy. Nice. I told him that's like a multi-purpose reverend ... of spiritual, entertainment and ... other values.

I'm not sure what led to what but my workmate then created a blog called "had-to-take-out-link-to-his-blog-coz-he-posted-the-image-below-w-my-full-name-which-is-a-no-no" - his line of thought when he's not talking work is often random and ridiculous, which makes him an awesome person to talk to.

Then we somehow got onto online ordinance. I mentioned I knew somebody who presided over a friend's wedding after getting his ordinance online. He'd to pay some minuscule amount but was legal enough to preside over the wedding ... which worked out perfect for the couple who were non-practicing Catholic and Jewish. That led to a google search and discovery of The Universal Life Church Monastery . Somewhere along the way I got ordained as :

I can get a prettier hard copy of my certification for some amount, which I've differed at the moment. Do you see the recurring theme here? Save the environment! Dyum, it's in my frugal blood.

It occured to me only after I submitted my real name goodbye that I'd not actually checked their tenet. What if they're into killing babies, i asked? "Even so, the certificate would be worth it", he assured me. Hmm. It turns out :

The Universal Life Church has only two tenets:

* To promote freedom of religion
* To do that which is right.

It is the responsibility of the individual to determine what is right as long as it does not infringe on the rights of others and is within the law.

And this is their logo:

I can live with that. In fact, I support that.

Is the church 4Real? I don't know. Regardless, you should henceforth refer to me as Reverend Tobian.

Where is this fucking plane?? I've run out of stuff to ramble about.

Not so mid, not so late

2007-08-07T01:08:00.000-04:00

A couple of years ago a few things came up and knocked some sense into my perspective of the world. First was the realization that I am fully responsible for my happiness, and the other was a realization that our bodies are, God forbid, fragile. For a while I didn't quite know how to react. At first I buried my head in a pile of work and by the time I was done working, I was lucky if I had time to sleep. After around 6 months, I burned out. I took a few days off and went on a long drive by myself. The drive spanned a few of days. It was interesting but didn't like being by myself much. When I got back home I was clear about one item : I did not want a life that I would look back and regret.

I went on a rampage. My weekends started getting booked 5 weeks in advance. I jumped out of planes, i splashed, i ran, i boarded, I danced, I sang (in the shower mostly), I climbed, I threw parties, organized trips, I drove ... my god, I drove.

Now it seems I've come to the end of the circle - once again I'm not quite sure how to proceed. My trip to Ethiopia was a good needed pause. In a way it seems to me I went from one state of non-thinking (working on end) to another (playing on end). On a good note, I don't regret either. But as I transition from my mid-twenties to not-so-mid-twenties, I have have to suck it up and ask, 'Where does this yellow brick road lead to?'

Somebody once told me, 'you can't reach your destination if you don't start out with a goal'. I didn't really have a goal over the past couple of years.

So, on this birthday, I have the set myself the goal ... to set a goal :)

For enduring the past few years' time and taste : Tizibt.

Tempted New York

2007-08-05T17:01:00.000-04:00

I had been thinking a lot about moving to Manhattan, but battling with the idea of trading my currently calm surroundings of statewide, littered 2 story buildings and strip malls for the hustle bustle of preoccupied, perhaps a tad self-important new yorkers pouring out of skyscrapers at odd hours of any day. I feel like if one has the opportunity, cities like London, New York and Tokyo are must-live-in places, especially in the absence of kids and family.

I gave my notice to the management office of my apartment and now, whether i like it or not, I've to be out of my place by the end of the month. Looking for an apartment is a daunting task. Looking for an apartment in Manhattan is a daunting task and a half. It so happens I had to be out in Ohio last week, and I’ll be back there again next week. I attempted a bit of apartment hunting this weekend and here Sunday evening approaches with nothing to rave about.

I went up in Spanish Harlem to see two apartments, one of which reminded me a the meqabir houses you'd see in the country side in Ethiopia - tiny, windowless and dark. The street scene, on the other hand, was my kinda scene. I've never liked prim and proper places. Harlem streets, in my opinion, have personalties you can never characterize. This time a rushed Hispanic man stopped me and fired a couple of inquisitive sentences. I responded, 'No hablo Espanol', with a weak smile in what I know is a decent accent (well, Americans have a knack for butchering pronunciations and I'm not there yet) . He looked at me for a second more and walked on. (Ok, I speak a bit of Spanish but I hear it less, and specially less when it's fired at me at 5 words/second rate). Then there was an old man sitting with a very nice pile of stereo system, drumming well (very well, to my untrained ears) to blasting Caribbean music. A block lower was a lady who screeched away on a microphone in Spanish. She paused in between to interject 2 or 3 English sentences, the gist of which was, 'Evil, evil is no good for you. Evil takes away your ignorance.' I do hope she meant innocence, or arrogance. Maybe she means both. Oh wait, the latter is ... bah ... who knows what she meant.

The better of the apartments was owned by a guy who turned out to be a funny Israeli who's lived in new york for 'toity' years. 'Twenty?', I asked. 'No, Toity'. Huh? 'Toity, toity ... three... zero'. Oh. I don't know if that's an Israeli thing. 'I hate rent', he told me. I told him, likewise, and if he figures out a way for me to have that apartment sans rent, I'd take it on the spot. He pauses for a bit and goes, 'You mean like a sugar daddy?' I guess I had that one coming. I told him that, in my book, would still be considered as rent.

I filled out an application and pointed out that somebody will have to clean the kitchen more. He called me back and said, 'let me see your knees'. What? 'let me see your kneeeees'. I'm standing right there in a pair of jeans. I stare on. I had no clue what he was getting at. 'Good knees!', he goes, 'Woman, get down on your knees and do some cleaning.' I briefly thought of a HBO documentary I saw last week of Billie Jean King handing Bobby Riggs a pig symbolizing male chauvinism at their Battle of the Sexes match in '73. But this man was laughing at his own joke so hard that I'd to let it go. Later we walked by the kitchen when he said, 'oh, gross', like a 13 year old kid. I said, 'Exactly!'. But surely, he must have seen it before.

On my way out of the city, I parked my car 'near' (4 avenues out) my office to grab my laptop. I was legging it and on the phone with a zemed when i noticed a car slowing down on my right and a man saying something which appeared to be directed to me. I figured he was asking for directions. I got closer to the curb, leaving a parked car between myself and this car. There were three men in the car, the one in the driver's seat yelled out,

'I've been waiting for you for 30 minuites. You never showed up.'

Hmm.

Hmmmm.

It took me a while to acknowledge that there was no way I could have misconstrued a question for directions into that statement. I start laughing and walk away. The car continues to crawl at my pace.

'Come on. Let's go have breakfast'.

I keep talking on the phone but the guy is relentless.

'What do you say ? Let's go to a MacDonald's'

At this point I start laughing again and ask my zemed when MacDonald's started serving a breakfast menu, and more importantly, when did pick up lines become so bizarre as, 'hey babe, let's go have breakfast at a MacDonald's'. I glance towards the car, nod my head yeah-rrrrite, and continue walking.

The next thing I know the guy has pulled the car into a spot by a fire hydrant and is following me saying, 'Let's at least have a talk, sweetie ... I'll make it up to you', when it occurred to me, holy shit, he thinks I'm somebody else.

I opted to bolt. I was in mid-town at 11am. I didn't expect anything weird to happen, but I crossed the street and hastened my pace. The next time I looked back either he'd given up the chase, or become indistinguishable in the crowd. I stayed in my office for an hour before I made it back in the streets again.

The thing is, when you start apologizing to a girl who you presumably ... let's say, slept with but can't even remember what she looks like, shouldn't there be a rule of thumb as to how far you'll go to apologize ... for whatever it is that you've done?

And for heaven's sake, don't take her to a McDonald's!

Lam alegn besemay ...

2007-07-29T22:00:00.000-04:00

I was talking to Wegesha earlier today and we got onto discussing Ethiopian Airlines. He says that they don’t treat Ethiopians well. Well, I just think they manhandle anybody seated in their Economy class. Then again, according to some material that’s been coming through email lists, a good number of Ethiopians are getting ready to file a class action suit against British Airways for delayed, lost, tarnished luggage and disproportionate compensation and lack of customer service thereafter. I can attest that my qiraqinbo on my way there and doro weT on my way back arrived punctually with Ethiopian Airlines. Gorf siwesd iyasasaqe new ... yemil wey yemil yemimesil teret ale.

So, I had been meaning to write about Ethiopian Airlines since my return but like many stories, it got forgotten. I flew first class on my way to Addis, and yelele tsimen iyashashehu, I came back on economy.

Cloud #9, as the call their first class was, well … delightfully empty, for one thing, but more importantly 100% black. I don’t know when I became a color conscious Ethiopian. Maybe years in the US does that to you, and besides US commercial flights almost never fail to disappoint with their one color business class lineup. This one was a rare sight.

The one thing that was disturbing was that the crew kept referring to me be antuta. ‘yemiTeTa yifeligalu?’ I kept wanting to look back to double check they were indeed referring to me, but like I said, the place was empty. At some point bichegirat my mom disrupted a conversation and ask, “ahun anchi sint ametish hono new yichin ‘irswo’ yemityat’?” The lady responded, ‘ay inema besiraw lemden new’. She easily has 10 years over me (or so I flatter myself). They refused to call me ‘anchi’. Finally my mom and I concluded, not only age, but money buys you ‘antuta’. Adis bahil new … temaru.

As I mentioned earlier I think Ethiopian Airlines manhandles anybody in their economy class. Inen gin yechegerengn was that they manhandled people in the first class, too. Let me explain. First of all, bemigib akuaya inae qoraT habesha negn. By that I mean I eat 10 kinds of vegetables, 8 kinds of cereal, 5 kinds of fruits, 3 kinds of animals and 0 kinds of shell fish. Maybe I’m off by 1 here and there (not about shell fish) but those figures are the universally acknowledged habesha truths.

Ihis? What do they serve in 9-gnaw Damena - Yejib Tila. Mushrooms, as far as I know are for kicking around the backyard and here I was, thousands of feet above the ground stuck with a mushroom on a fancy plate. Of the five courses, none of which fell under the universal habesha amegageb truths, I remember one that had those tiny leafed, thin stemmed things which I unmistakably identified as arem. As a child I remember that growing in wuha yequateru grassy areas during the kiremt season in Addis Ababa. Basically if they think that my ass is going to start eating meno and arem to attain the ‘desired’ level of western sophistication, they’re mistaken. A long time ago I remember Ethiopian Airlines first class had yummy injera as a meal option. Alas, this was one trip where they didn’t have it – and to think we were mid-flight on Fasika.

There were three flight attendants fully dedicated to the 5 people who were in business class. These women were so bored that they’d not let us rest in peace. I kid you not. They’d stop by our seats, “Lemindin new gin yematbelaw?” Lemin? Coz you’re feeding me CHid is why yemalbelaw. So I tried to kick back and sleep. Spacious, at least, you think. No. They kept hovering. Bichegirat every so often mom would nudge me and point at a concerned looking flight attendant to me to ask if she can bring me ‘something else’. Like what, girawa be koba this time? Ok. So the food sucked … for me. Whatever. Idmae le tsom yemaychal yelem. But why couldn’t I at least enjoy the space I paid for in peace?

I know, I know. They need a cloud #4. Bring down the fanciful menu and attention a notch down and I’m game.

(btw, I’m half kidding. It was my experience, and it really wasn't entirely enjoyable but if it seems like it caused me serious grief, it didn’t. It can always be better though :)

:)

2007-07-20T09:27:00.000-04:00

As I parked my car this morning, the last words I heard of the news summary on NPR was that EPRDF let opposition leaders out. Sure enough, Ethiopia releases protest leaders, BBC reports.

Three minibuses have reportedly left the prison while the group's supporters whistled and shouted for joy outside.

It's a happy day to be Ethiopian :)

A thumbs up to Meles Zenawi & co. It was painful. It was long and unnecessary, but it's done. yegzer selamta and "thank you" never hurt anyone, so thank you.

Death Penalty

2007-07-12T10:02:00.000-04:00

The Ethiopian court sentenced Mengistu H/Mariam, who's currently enjoying luxurious life in exile in Zimbabwe, to life imprisonment instead of the death penalty because it's 'unethical' to kill an aging man. Death penalty at this age would not be 'fair but a vendetta', they reasoned. As opposed to if he was younger where it would be like what, redemption??

Yet somehow seeking death penalty is so ethical for CUD leaders , hmm? Granted they've not been sentenced but it makes me sick to the stomach that they're tried in the same court and in the same manner as a man like Mengistu Hailemariam.

The moral of the story: if you want to be a politician in Ethiopia, make sure you seem like you're old & dying. And befriend Mugabe.

I have been reading People's History of The United States bit by bit. It's supposed to be the history of America you wont read in school text books. It's depressing. It details how native American populations were exterminated, how the will and culture of black people in America was systematically broken down unpon their arrival to the United States to beat them into submission. One thing I found 'amusing' is that most of the non-wealthy Europeans who originally came to the US apparently came indentured as house servants. They paid for their fare across the Atlantic through the promise of labor to masters who could sell and exchange them as property, much like slaves, except Europeans could eventually win their freedom. This is reminiscent of slavery systems in most of Africa. Fast forward to the present - I always find it amusing when I hear 'real' Americans (i.e. white americans) complain nowadays about there being too many immigrants (i.e. people of questionable color) since these Americans are clearly children of immigrants themselves. Now I'll add to my amusement by thinking of the many indentured European 'pioneers'. At least the Mexicans came as free people - should that count for something? (Me? No. I'm no immigrant. I'm a tourist :-) But I digress ...

So in People's History the manner in which parts of society that didn't own property were literally tortured into submission made it seem like I was reading about most of today's Africa. It's a chronicle of death, violence and betrayal that lead entire communities into seemingly resigned states of political existence.

The real moral of the whole story : the death penalty of any form was moronic, is moronic, will always be moronic.

Namesake

2007-07-10T21:11:00.000-04:00

I was reading a blog entry by Kal Pen where he said that Gogol, his character, did not have cultural struggles in the movie. In his opinion it was Gogol's mother who had ethnocentric issues to resolve.

I saw the movie and it really resonated with me. I am hard pressed to agree with Kal Pen in that his character had no identity conflicts. The one aspect of this movie that resonated so well with me was the idea of a first generation immigrant kid easily finding his niche in America but being unable to share his experience at home with wider America. To take an instance, scenes that followed his white, America girlfriend's first meeting with Gogol's parents were hilarious, but at the same time toe crunching for a viewer like myself that comes from a conservative non-PDA type culture.

Here was this American raised, Indian boy having gone through the typical suburban upbringing, done everything right, heading to an Ivy League school, landing his glamorous city job, and all the shebang that America is said to be great for. He glides through all this in style, albeit the occasional comments thrown in by his dissatisfied mother who thinks her child sees his time more fit to visit his American girlfriend and her family than his own parents. Ultimately he confronted by the death of his father and Indian mourning traditions which he is unable share with his girlfriend.

That mourning moment appears like his character had an Indian revelation but the underlying issue was that he never actually shared his life with his girlfriend. He shared her life with her instead and that is very acceptable and encouraged to/of immigrants in America. He played his American role like a well tuned fiddle to fit and be as invisible as possible within society. Not his fault. Not her fault. Not America's fault. It's just a fact of being an immigrant anywhere.

Sometimes I feel like I have multiple personalities. One that I have with Americans, another one that I have with immigrants in America and finally the my personality with Ethiopians, the last one being the closest to the real me. I'm not deceiving nor fabricating, it's just that I know limitations of my interaction with these different groups, and that's OK by me. But sometimes I realize that my interactions almost seem like work, like I have to actively monitor my boundaries, I am acutely aware of what fits in their world views and not. I wake up every morning and read the African news section of BBC after I keep up with 'normal news' that the rest of America might be reading(or not). My shelf has a pile of Amharic books that'll never be discussed at work or at my next BBQ. I like having another excuse to have a day off from work but beyond that I have no interest in July 4th celebrations and fireworks. Yeah, I can drag myself to somebody's garden cookout, but after all these years I don't look forward to that day even by the tiniest fraction of the way I miss yemeskel demera, buna'na qolo or nifro. True, I enjoy Japaneses cuisine and will take Roti Canai any day, but only because I can't get my qeTen yalech yeQibe shiro be'injera. And no, I don't ever tire of eating that stuff. How does one explain that? One doesn't. One can't. One just goes on to describe how good Roti Canai is. Really, if you haven't already, you should try it.

In Namesake I thought Gogol went through a similar experience. His father's death was a crosspoint of his two cultures. It was a moment he could not shelter his girlfriend from. It was a sombre and very traditional Indian experience which she tried to deal with in an American way. He had to be at home and with his familty, and it wasn't something he could compromise about. Inevitably it brought their relationship to and end.

In a way Kal Pen's right when he says Gogol did not have to struggle with his identity. He was a man in two cultures. He comfortably played both roles well and separately. His take on his father's death was not a choice he had to make - he knew the Indian way the only way to be and his explanation of his behavior was no consolation to his girlfriend. She was was never the one crossing boundaries. He always came to her ... until that point. So maybe he wasn't struggling with his identity, but he was still a victim of it, as was she.

To paraphrase Barak Obama's wife, she noted that human beings have a lot more in common on individual basis than we do as communities. Every day cultural boundaries are being trespassed by many of us. Differences become more noticeable when communities get involved. The plot of Namesake appeasers to be one such case.

Gudifecha - The Movie

2007-07-08T16:13:00.000-04:00

Ah, gotta love nothing-to-do weekends. I got to see Gudifecha as well. Ok ... this one I really liked. If you've not seen the movie, beware as this may be a spoiler.

There was a weird scene that had 2 ferenj girls and the main character sitting on nicely mawed lawn, pointing and chuckling at a magazine. The audience does not get to hear their conversation. The scene appears out of nowhere and has no follow up. Very disconnected. At the end the director explains he was trying to create contrast for the end of the movie where the main character was forced to resort to traditional medicine for an abortion. He said the same dilemma if faced by somebody from the countryside would not be as disturbing, but for a girl whose world view was so much wider (he called it 'modern' which, of course, bothers me) and had all resources to afford her better medical treatment was unable to get treatment because it's illegal in Ethiopia (he failed short of pointing out the legality issue - I don't know if that was intentional). The idea was good, but it doesn't make the scene any less weird.

During a shimgilina scene where the father was being asked for his daughters hand in marriage, the father asks back the amalajoch, 'habt nibretus?' It cracked me up. It's so true - there's an awkward obsession with wealth and ancestry in our culture. I was raised to respect self-made people ... easily reinforced in my family as my parents had no 'tiliq sew' ties. A few golden times I have seen my father mention the fact that his father was a farmer in the midst of conversations where people revel in 'Tiru zer minzar'. Very inappropriate, but oh, so pleasing.

During my last visit to Ethiopia an elderly lady started quizzing me about my family. "Yeman lij nesh?" it started. What a weird question, what if i'm an orphan? I stammered. "Ay welajochish ineman nachew malete new?", she clarified. I was wondering if she taught I didn't speak Amharic well at that point. I could not bring myself to give her any answer that would satisfy tradition. I gave her my father's full name and my mom's full name. There was an awkward silence in the room. My friend who had been sitting next to me felt the need to intervene. She gave details of my parents' careers. In the end the lady said, 'Ere? Ay ine inkuan alawqachewim'. I was setting there thinking, 'Well then I can assure you my parents sure like hell don't know you.' I vaguely felt evil, but I really dislike 'who's your daddy?' and 'how much money?' questions. If it seems naughty or crude to say in bed then it should not be uttered outside under any context ;-)

Scenes I liked
- the hand washing at the trad medicine lady's home
- any scene that had the second doctor (minus the part where he spoke English - which he spoke darn well, I might add) he really played the part of a doctor well, i thought. very convincing.
- the "man neh?" tebel scene with Yoseph. Hilarious.
- the "beyesus sim" tselot scene with Yoseph. Hilarious.
- most of the lighting in the movie. It shows they put effort.

I can't believe the two main characters kissed on screen. Damn. When did I become so conservative?

My First Time ...

2007-07-08T00:51:00.000-04:00

... watching an Ethiopian movie was today. Well, it was really yesterday and today. Yesterday I couldn't keep my eyes open long enough to finish it so technically the end was today. In all due fairness, I hope this doesn't make it seem like it failed to captivate my attention. I started watching the movie at around 12:30AM and as an early bloomer arogit, that was way past my bed time.

That and the movie didn't captivate me. Ok. That was a very round about way of admitting that I was bored.

It was called Semayawi Feres. When I bought it I asked the sales lady at the movie store to suggest the best two habesha movies. She didn't bat an eylid when she picked Semayawi Feres and Gudifecha. After I bought the movies her selection was endoresed by a random second and third.

I have not yet seen Gudifecha, but of Semayawi Feres I have to ask/note:

a) Why 'Semayawi Feres'? The plot is about a development document regarding Abay. I didn't see any feres nor anything that reminded me of blue in the movie, literally and figuratively. Does Semayawi Feres have a symbolic significance in our clutre that i'm unaware of?

b) What's with the background music in the midst of a dialogue? Like I said, kalegizeye arjichaleu and I sure like hell couldn't hear some of the stuff that was being said. Thank god for the subtitles in English, which brings me onto my third question ...

c) What's with the English (not the subtitles ... which I wasn't expecting but whatever. In fact I've to give mad props for some of the semi-normal translations) all over the place? Guramayle Amarigna is so 20th scentury ... even by Ethiopian calender. I mean, habesha set pleading with her man, 'pliss, iskindirye, pliiiiiiiiiis ... ", right in front of Tis Abay? Abay aTint binorew'na biQeber, meqabru wust yigelabeT neber.

d) so the theme can be summed up as, some engineer devised a way to perform controlled evaporation from the Nile to generate precipitation. He came form London to present his findings to the Ethiopian government, but there're bad guys who want to intercept his work. Somewhere in there it's implied that the guy has only one copy of the document even though he sports his laptop on a field trip. So the part I don't get is, to what end were the 'bad' guys itching to get their hands on this 'study'?

e) I found it interesting that the main female character, Firehiwot, was imprisoned for having written provocative material that irked the government. Absence of freedom of speech in a movie plot ... I can dig that.

f) There was a car in one of the scenes that undoubtedly was the worst air pollution offender I'd ever seen - worse than Trenta quatros and lonchinas back home. If that was a statement being made by the producers, mad props. If not, that car needs to be banned off movie sets and all roads.

'nuff for today.

Wede Dejen ...

2007-06-21T22:39:00.000-04:00

Sometime back ...

I hitched a ride with a family friend to Dejen. He also had his brother, an Imahoy and a doctor in the car. The menekuse lady was a very funny. She was as worldly as unworldly people could get. I mean that in a sincerely positive way. She could easily join in on any discussion … from politics to the economy. A long time ago, she told us, she and her siblings inherited a lot of land … rist, I guess. Her siblings sold their land and moved to Addis. She remained in the countryside, kept her land until Derg came along and made her land wurs lemengist. ‘yesheTe teTeqeme. Indene yale arrerre, menekose!’, she said. But her motto is still, ‘meret yigezal inji yisheTal?!’ She advised us to buy (ishee imahoy … as soon I a get the dough)

Yalsemahut gud yelem on that ride, including the ‘fact’ that katikala cures amoeba (yes, the doctor was of the medical variation but his protests went …joro daba … ) and that Katikala also clarifies dirty water (at this point the doctor looked like he’d a have fit in his corner), of hills called Ali Doro, the lifetime of mankind and Haile Gebreselassies’s dis-political career. I’ll share the last two.

The Lifetime of Mankind

In the beginning God, in all his fairness, gave all animals 30 years of life. Humans, dogs and donkeys used to live together trough their steady 30s. Then one day the donkey went back to God and said, ‘I don’t mean to be disrespectful but I really don’t want to live 30 whole years’. God was surprised. He asked why, and the donkey replied. ‘Inae alchalkutm. Wetche gebche besew meseqayet new, meweqer new, meshekem new. Lezih nuro 10 amet yibeqagnal.’ God asked, ‘are you sure, donkey?’ The donkey confirmed, so god took away 20 years of from donkey life.

Now the human overheard this conversation and right after the donkey left he approached god and said, ‘God, if you don’t mind, I’d like to have those 20 years’. Good agreed so now the lifetime of a human became 50 years.

Some time later the dog went to God and said, ‘God, 30 years is a few too many years for me. Could you please taking back some?’. Again god asked why. ‘Well, my life is a hopeless state of indenture. I’m either barking or begging for attention, food and shelter. It gets tiring after a while.’ So god granted the dog his wish and he took 10 years off of dog life.

Once again the human went and asked for the 10 extra years, and God granted them.

Ina ahun yesewin hiywot sitayut, the first 30 years are lived inde sew … you’ve no worries, you’re strong, you’re happy, you fall in/out of love … you live the life of a human being.

Then come marriage and children. The shoulders, knees and CHegura start hurting for no apparent reason. You become a slave to your job and the well being of your family. You toil, day in and day out, for the good of others. That’s 20 years of donkey life.

Finally the kids leave your house, your energy wanes and all you want in life is to spend some quit time at home where you’ll often be heard barking, ‘man new? … eh … beru tenkuakua?’ (woof!) ‘yachin buanbua man kefto yetewat?’(woof!) ‘wey zendroooooo! Yezare 30 amet bihon’ko ….’ (rowwrrrowwrrrwwwooooof!) Ineho you’ve reached your dog years!

Haile Gebreselassie

Apparently Haile recently committed a political gaffe, at least in the eye of most Addis Ababans. He must have attempted a reconciliation of sorts between the imprisoned leaders of CUD and EPRDF. Or maybe he was simply found in the company of the wrong crowd … who knows. I was told of ye were were were as, 'Haile iko ine Professor'n "be Meles imenu" bilo limaled isir bet dires hedo ...' At the mention of words like ‘imenu’ and ‘liyamalid’ I was beginning to tune out of the conversation when the end of the story struck me funny.

'Ina Professor Mesfin adamTew, "Sima Haile, ante keCHinqilatih yiliq igrih yishal’na … bel … bameTahbet wuTalign", bilew abarrut'.

I loved that line. I imagine it was ye Addis Abeba sew miTmiTa, but I liked it nonetheless.

Belu'sti ... I’m off to live whatever’s left of my human years.

p.s. To clarify to possible Haile defenders, i find that line about Haile funny. I'm not saying i think it. It's just amusingly put.

r u kidding me?

2007-06-17T16:11:00.000-04:00

my first reaction on seeing that plastered on the side of a car was ... the title.

I've heard the world 'parkiologist' thrown around habesha circles in the US, and when i was in HS one of my friends used to say that she wanted to do engineering. floor engineering. She was exceptionally good at physics and math and curious minds usually asked for details. She'd answer, with a straight face, 'it's primarily ... janitorial sciences'.

I once read a play called 'Beggiology' published by AAU - on the 'science' of begging in Ethiopia. I was too young but it was still bizarrely hilarious (or maybe it was bizarrely hilarious coz i was too young)

Still, a 'Parking Engineering' car?! Hmm. Where can i enroll?

So many careers ... so little info ... so little time.

I'm Coming Out

2007-06-14T23:27:00.002-04:00

Well, PhoTobia is. The qelawaCH types (:-) have already been to it from the 'Misc' section of links on this blog.

Next to internet, I can waste an obscene amount of time with a camera. PhoTobia is where internet meets my camera - a new and better way of wasting time.

Some more random pictures ...

Farm in Gojjam

Yeguada gidgida

Ye'ayate Dist

Home

View from home

Another Step Backwards

2007-06-12T06:23:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I try hard, very hard, to convince myself that our current leaders are good meaning co-Ethio citizens who care about our country... in their own ways which I am unable to understand. They're just embittered by the long struggle experience coupled with infantile Ethiopian politics (not to imply that they're any better at it). Then they do shit like this and my little theory crumbles.

This is a tragedy for the lives of these CUD leaders and their families, for Ethiopians at large ... and especially for our current 'leaders'. I can't help but think it's more so for our 'leaders'. A loss or a mistake acknowledged as can at least be a lesson learned. I fear that in EPRDF's case this is just an error. Period.

Indewaza ...years have passed since the last election. CUD leadership has not recovered its seats nor its verve in Addis Ababa and other urban areas. Instead the population has mostly recoiled back into by Dergue era like silence.

When I was somewhere in the countryside a shimagile man noted, 'Yhichi Qinjit iko tikikil neberech malet new ... mengist iko meriwochwan anqo yeTeyequt'n gin beyetera iyamuala new'. We laughed for the way he put it, but later the guys I was with who're residents of addis acknowledged that a lot had been lost, but a lot that's easy to gloss over had also been won. They said the government had brought about some changes to appease the people, at least areas where Kinijit had audience. (Or maybe it was just the right thing to do.)

Yes, these men and women are behind bars, but their efforts were not in vain. If yet another revolution is not the answer, then they have shown us that non-violent struggle is possible, that there's ground to be won - in patches. They have sparked discussion. They've made us think. They've given shape to an Ethiopian dream. There's only one way forward from here - the struggle for justice will continue.

I've lukewarm thoughts about some of the ideologies of CUD leadership and I may have said as much in some previous posts. But the way I see it, a French man put it well hundreds of years ago:

I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.

I'm not into violent struggle, but 'nuff said!

Kinijit, preach on.

p.s. here's some parting food for thought .... and mawerareja.

Gudifacha

2007-06-04T07:15:00.000-04:00

Today NYTimes posted an interesting article on adoption in Ethiopia, and how the surging numbers are finally raising eybrows.

On my flight back from Ethiopia there were no less than 5 families who had obviously adopted Ethiopian babies. Mother and father with all their toys and gadgets, and little habesha kids tucked somewhere there. There was an obvious camaraderie amongst adopting parents who'd occasionally stop to chat with other adoptive parents. The Ethiopian passengers were simply spectators. They (eh, we?) stared and stared away. If the parents noticed, it didn't bother them the tinest bit. I guess it's the end of their trip ... they must have had a lot of it already, enough to be desensitized.

At some point an Ethiopian woman in her 40s or 50s, beTam finTir finTir yalu setiyeo, approached myself and a girl behind me and said, 'deresku!' I figured she was talking to the girl behind me and I hope the most there was on my face was a quizzical look. Apparently the girl behind me had done the same so the woman continued, 'izich ga'ko neberku. formun limola sil botayen yazulign biyesh sihed alsemashim?' For a split second I was thinking the woman's talaqe so maybe i should be a little considerate. But man! The woman had so much energy ... she was like an a 5 year old with ADD right after you'd given him some sugar. Fiten koskushe I said, 'ine alsemahum' and turned my face away. I could hear the girl behind me saying 'inem alsemahun', but the conversation continued so the woman stayed on.

Was I glad I didn't let her in in front of me coz that lady made the most random comments in town. The one time she figured it'd be a good idea to include me to her unsuspecting audience list she said, 'ignih ferenjoch iko ye'agerun hitsan aguzew aguzew cheresut. tayachewalesh?' I threw another glance at some adoptive family for her benefit but that didn't satisfy here. She continued, 'agermum?'

I mumbled back that igna indemanasadigachew so I wasn't sure if i was in a position to comment. Apparently that did trick. She gave me a are-you-crazy look, turned around and never bothered to entertain me anymore. Oh well. "Minishim ayamregn, kemeqretish lela" indemilut ...

There is one aspect of adoption that I have a hard time not being judgmental about. Why do they put up kids who have parents for adoption? Adoption an abandoned kid is something, but taking a kid because the birth parents feel they can only support the kid until the day some foreign parents waltz in and fly off with the baby is something else. Like Madonna's case. I still don't understand why, if there is such an abundance of orphans in places like Ethiopia, they keep adopting kids with parents.

Some parents anguished, as did Karla Suomala of Decorah, Iowa, when she arrived in Addis Ababa to adopt 5-year-old Dawit and his 21-month-old sister Meheret.
“It’s hard to know what the right thing is to do,” Ms. Suomala said. “Should we just give all the money we’re spending on this to the children’s mother?” Ms. Suomala and her husband, David Vasquez, had already spent time with her.
“It was obvious the birth mother loved her children,” Mr. Vasquez said. “She said to us, ‘Thank you for sharing my burden.’ ”
.....
While the governments collaborate to protect a delicate adoption system from the perils of growth, adoptive families arrive each week in Addis Ababa to ease their children into new lives.
Last week, these included Mr. Vasquez and Ms. Suomala. While she had no trouble escorting Meheret from the orphanage, Dawit refused to budge, so Mr. Vasquez carried him toward the gate.
There, the child grabbed the bars and would not let go. Mr. Vasquez considered prying his hands loose and thought better of it. Instead he told Dawit that it was O.K. to cry.

I understand that raising a kid is a huge responsibility. But I feel the moment of realization is misplaced and somehow we have grown into a nation of being OK with it. In fact, it seems we've a system to support it. In a country that hesitates to discuss and provide all methods of family planning and STD prevention (people aren't sure if they should promote 'abstinence' for unwanted pregnancy or the use of condoms. The suggestion of pills for contraception is usually met with comments like, 'betekiristian'wa atqebelewim'. If the woman's body keteqebelew ine silebetekirstianu min agebagn?) I wish a lot more was being done to emphasize that getting pregnant is in itself a monumental responsibility.

Zis & Zat

2007-05-31T23:19:00.000-04:00

Great news ... but wait ...
April 1, 2007 was a wonder day ... for those concerned with specialized worker visa (H1B) applications. The cap of 65,000 was reached on the first day. On April 1, 2007 CIS was flooded with 150,000 applications prompting officials to lottery visas available.

So Americans feel we're invading their work space. Fine. The solution?

The Bill Will Eliminate The Current Application Backlog For Employment-Based Visas And Make 380,000 Green Cards Available Under The Merit-Based System - Up From 140,000 Employment-Based Visas Available Today

They'll keep the H1-B quota down but they'll increase the quota for Green Card applicants for skilled workers. (A H1-B visa worker will, at some point, pay tax like a resident, yet will never get benefits of SS and Medicare like a Green Card holder will.)

So, if I understand this, they don't want temporary skilled workers, but are fine with the ones that'll potentially stay here forever. Hmm.

Does that make sense to me? No. Does it bother me? Hell no. Good move, America! (and I don't say this just because it potentially makes my life easier ... but I really think the US can benefit more in terms of maintaining its competitive edge with the global market)

The best recourse for legal immigrants is ...
... to become illegal. Yup, we've heard it before.

Annual quota for legal skilled immigrants is miniscule compared to undocumented immigrants: Jay Pradhan, a Computer Programmer says, “The annual Green Card quota available to undocumented immigrants under the proposed Z visa would be approximately 2.2 million per year for the first 5 years. Compare this to the current legal, employment based Green Card system that faces backlogs of 5-6 years – not including the various processing delays. The annual quota of 140,000 Green Cards for legal skilled immigrants has been reduced to 90,000 instead of being increased. One wonders who the so called ‘Comprehensive’ Bill benefits? Certainly not the legal high- skilled workers, who have worked so hard and followed all Laws of this country.”

Pradhan needs to update his stats a wee bit, though.

Stephen Colbert on the new Bill :

"I totally understand the need for cheap labor. You see this Bill here, I've not had time to read it. I'm going to hire a Mexican to read it. "

Russians on Global Warming :

He said one million tons of aerosol would enable a reduction of solar irradiance at the Earth's surface of 0.5-1%, and a lowering of air temperature by 1-1.5 degrees Celsius

Pardon me if I don't know anything about anything but I'm sill apprehensive about pumping the atmosphere with sulfur compounds. Not much out there about this 'solution' yet, but I can't wait to hear more opinions.

What goes on in Vegas, don't stay in Vegas
... no mo'!

Google, in general : cool. This : not so cool.

Incidentally the way they generate the pictures is by having and army of camera mounted vehicles traversing the streets. So far they've done parts of Google's home cities, San Fransisco and New York City, and just to scare the Bachelor party lushes, Las Vegas as well. The Druge Report goes on to identify people outside strip clubs (of course, maybe he was just feeding the meter, or maybe he was supposed to be at the other end of town) and adult book stores(can't find the link anymore).

Yeah, the people part is worrisome. (Go ahead. Say you think i'm up to weird shait that i want to hide :-) ) The actual tool is, as usual, pretty darn impressive.

Gu-Ra-Ge-Ton!

2007-05-28T00:12:00.000-04:00

Description : (see for yourself)

Road Spam

2007-05-27T15:47:00.000-04:00

God bless America!

Learn Faith

2007-05-21T21:46:00.000-04:00

Someone asked what I thought of Ethiopia. I said, 'Well, I ... like it?' He asked what I meant. 'I mean as in if I could figure out a way to go back, I would love to. I want to live ... it.'

He was incredulous. He said, surely, I must have gotten a jaded view of the country. Life is not as rosy when one doesn't waltz into Addis Ababa with dollars.

I protested that it's not that there is nobody who's barely making ends meet, or probably that there're too many people doing exactly that. What I am taken by is that there's change that has come about from the people, in the people, by the people, and a lot that can still be done, of which some I think I can do, find challenging and find fulfilling. Can't say as much of my current job. Of course figuring out how to make the transition is not going to be easy, but hey, like wise man once put it to me, if you don't have a goal, you can't win, right?

We went back and forth and finally he said let's agree to disagree and we dropped the issue.

But it bothered me. How can one tell if one's deluding oneself, or just delusional. There's optimistic and there's naive. How do you draw a line without actually crashing? (OK, this is beginning to sound like a Sarah Jessica Parker Sex & the City rant-o-monologue)

Then a few days ago an email tumbled into my mailbox and it cleared my mind. I think it's worth sharing.

Africa and Win-A-Trip

By Nicholas D. Kristof

When I visited University of North Carolina recently, I ran into lots of students who were desperate to meet me to bolster their chances of winning the "win-a-trip" contest. But I also met one student, Loren, who didn't apply, and she gave me this thoughtful note explaining why. It's provocative, so let me share it in full:

Friday marked the deadline to enter The New York Times columnist Nick Kristof's second annual "Win a Trip with Nick Kristof" contest. Open to students currently enrolled at any American college or university, as well as middle and high school teachers, the contest offers one student and one teacher an all expenses-paid trip through Africa with the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist to gather stories on the impoverished continent.

The winners will not simply be explorers, but also reporters. The prize includes the chance - more accurately the expectation - to detail the experience on a blog on NYTimes.com.

Because I am currently a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I qualify to enter this competition, and have many reasons to do so. I enjoy writing, which would potentially place me at a slight advantage since Kristof acknowledges a preference for applicants with journalism experience. I maintain a persistent interest in Africa - I met my boyfriend at an event to raise aware about the genocide currently raging in the Darfur region of the Sudan. And I'm broke and have never been to Joseph Conrad's "dark continent," so a free trip to a strange land is appealing. Yet, I refuse to apply. I think the way Kristof has cast this trip is a disservice to Africa. Because I believe it the wrong way to motivate action, I am opting out.

Kristof insists on telling the story of a failing Africa when instead he could report on its ability to overcome. On the competition's webpage Kristof has posted a letter to potential applicants that provides this explanation: "Frankly, I'm hoping that you'll be changed when you see a boy dying of malaria because his parents couldn't afford a $5 mosquito net, or when you talk to a smart girl who is at the top of her class but is forced to drop out of school because she can't afford a school uniform."

Apparently, Kristof wants to find two Americans who he has decided do not understand how bad things really are in Africa, and rid them of their ignorance. It could work. Last year's student witnessed the death of a woman during childbirth despite the fact that both Kristof and his traveling companion donated blood in an attempt to save her. Though the doctor promised to help the young woman, he apparently ducked out the back door as she died. That was Kristof's story of Cameroon, a West African nation with tremendous ecological diversity and a per-capita GDP higher than that of most other African countries.

No doubt, such an experience would educate a student about a poverty that is more cruel and creative than our worst fears, and likely foster inspired journalism. But the story of Africa in turmoil is the African narrative that many Americans - and certainly those who read The New York Times - already know. It is virtually the only type of reporting that Western news outlets broadcast about the continent. Every American student who has to listen to National Public Radio in the car when Dad picks her up from soccer practice, or has had to read The Economist for a school assignment, or has read in a church newsletter about a local youth group's spring break trip to a rural African village knows that people in Africa are hurting. Maybe we haven't smelled an understaffed health clinic that cares for HIV-positive orphans, or walked through rows of coffee trees with a farmer whose young son was beaten into serving in a youth militia in a civil war between tribal groups whose names we can't pronounce and whose agendas we can't keep straight. But we know they are poor, and that Africa will break your American heart if its contaminated water doesn't kill you first.

Even those Americans who avoid the news have heard stories of Africa in crisis. Bono has told you. Or Angelina Jolie. Or George Clooney. We have seen something about helping to stop the spread of AIDS in Africa by purchasing a red T-shirt at The Gap. Or we've caught a sound bite about Bill Gates turning his attention to sick kids in Africa.

Americans don't need any more stories of a dying Africa. Instead, we should learn of a living one. Kristof and his winners should investigate how it is that Botswana had the highest per-capita growth of any country in the world for the last 30 years of the twenty-first century. Report on the recent completion of the West Africa Gas Pipeline that delivers cheaper, cleaner energy to parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Tell us about investment opportunities in Nigeria's burgeoning capital markets.

Sadly, it's impossible to report on Africa's successes without relaying its tragedies. Virtually every African victory is somehow also a story of malnourishment and malaria, misogyny and malevolence. That's important because Africa's horrors are massive and crushing, and demand attention. I agree with Pope John Paul II, who said "a society will be judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members." Clearly Africa will be the judgment of our global community.

Kristof knows this, of course, and I am certain he means well when he writes that his original purpose for the contest was because he thought that "plenty of young people [who] tune out a fuddy-duddy like myself might be more engaged by a fellow-student encountering African poverty for the first time." But they would also be excited to encounter African hope, something equally unknown to most Americans, students or otherwise.

So I'm asking Kristof to refine his summer travel itinerary to include a tour of a thriving organic farm owned and operated by a local Ethiopian cooperative. And the Ugandan health clinics that are reducing the number of AIDS cases despite a continuing guerilla war. And the wonderful "PlayPumps" scattered throughout the continent that provide safe drinking water via a pump system powered by children as they play on a playground. Brilliant idea. And something many people don't know about.

Africa needs a lot of things. It needs money and aid workers, vaccines and functioning governments. Some of those things can be provided by outside donors, and other can't. But universally, Africa needs us to believe in it. And that is something we have to be taught.

Source : Seth's Blog / NYTimes, N Kristof's Blog (subscription required)

Guzo'na Qiraqinbow

2007-05-13T07:48:00.000-04:00

I asked my mother for a list of people I should be buying stuff for before I headed back to Ethiopia. It's a strange and inconveniencing meTe (or so I thought) tradition. On first try she came back with 30 plus names, of which around 20 of I was familiar with. Being the meticulous woman that my mom is, she made sure to list next to each name how i was related to each person, their age or a vague approximation of their size.

I still went back for explanations.

Me: 'Who exactly are intina'na intina?'
My mom: 'Your cousin once removed Y's children (you never met Y - she used to live in Z) and her husband, who you've also never met because they got married after you left. Y passed away last year - it had to be AIDS, they call it TB, or something. Lemanignachewim, you should bring something for the kids, even for the baliyew , and also give him money when you see him.
M: 'I give him money?? Min biye? "Selam, inetewaweq ... and here's some money"?'
MM: 'Mts! Anchi yechegeresh is the one possibly awkward minute of giving money? Keep in mind he's to raise two kids by himself. That's chigir! Yawm beTena keqoyelachew aydel? Mtss! Bicha indefelegsh. I'm just suggesting.'

Hmm. Hmmmmmmm!

I met Y's husband and kids at their home.The daughter, who looked around 3 years old, was sitting in a bedroom as I walked in. I waved. Generally an Ethiopian kid who you've never met will look back at you like you're some sort of apparition, or be embarrassed and meshkoramem minamin. This one gave me one of the brightest smiles ever and waved back. By the time we were seated she had come into the room, done her greetings, and started telling us tales of how she saw a doro CHaCHut the other day. She was simply adorable.

Then I also made stops at other places where relatives told me, ' Teqorsh!' (i'm Teyim, doh!), or 'Kesash ... indae balefew amrobish iko neber ?!'(eh ... technically, i was a teenager then and i've actually since gained weight but whatever), and the best one, 'TeCHemadedsh aydel indae?! Weg gud ... yeNa bet setoch iko indih nen! Tolo meCHemaded . Hahaha ....'. (Am I a Wereqet?)

Um. Haha-not! Apparently 'yeNa-bet' setoch don't have thick enough skin, because at some point, given that i'm in my mid twenties, it was kinda beginning to get to me. WTF?!

I think sometimes Ethiopians say random stuff ... just for the hell of it. Yet I remember among the weirdest things when I first got to America were the fake smiles and random, hard to believe, but generally positive comments that people made.

I'd this wrap/skit in college that can only be described by one adjective : ugly. It had all colors imaginable somehow put into its design, or lack of, most would say. My non-American friends made it clear, on the first day, that it was the ugliest thing they'd ever seen. Yay! I decided it'd be my Sunday dress. Then I'd get stopped throughout campus, at least once a day, by some American woman who'd invariably say, 'I luuuv your dress. So unique! Where is it from?' Huh? Seriously.

American random behavior is generally positive but for an outsider it still seems so unnecessary. Now I think I've gotten too Americanized because those comments in Ethiopia seemed even more unnecessary to me. Why bother? What a waste of even small talk. Leaving some of the houses I was thinking of the many hours I spent shopping, my weekends, my after work hours, relatives who helped me do my shopping, their time and energy. It wasn't when I'd to drag my bags halfway across the world. It was ok when I'd to deal with a defiant (rightly so) United representative with my overweight luggage at check-in, or as i saw my 'travel' expenses keep taking on a hike even after I had bought my ticket. When I finally met some people the entire experience seemed more of an exercise of self-torture more than anything.

Then again, when I made stops at households like that of Y's family, I was glad that I had the excuse to meet them. It's like my grandma who insisted that I take back a range of items including lomi and shenkora ageda to my mom in Addis because, 'Ageru yishtetat inji!' (I ate some and left the shenkora after I explained to my grandma I'd be the one who'd eat it in Addis anyway, but delivered the lomi, etc. Eventually I consumed the lomi as well ... oh, well.)

Before my departure to Ethiopia I'd talked to a friend who told me he doesn't do the qiraqinbo. He only gives money to those who he thinks need it. Hmm. What an idea, I'd thought. But I also remember being a kid, and getting little things from family or my parents' friends who'd come to visit. It was actually kinda cool.

So the qiraqinbo tradition will stay in my books. "Ageru indishetachew." Perhaps next time I'll vaguely narrow down my intentions towards kids, and those who seem they could do with monetary support. Vaguely.

I'll also prepare to be all ears, tough ears, for Ethiopian-style small talk.

Abinet like it's 1999

2007-05-08T04:43:00.000-04:00

Passing through Debre Guracha we saw a sign that read, 'Tiru sira Delala ayasfeligewim!' Indeed.

Wegid Teddy. Nor Abinet.

Whatever is equivalent to peripheral vision for hearing, if you have it, all over Addis you'll hear a song that goes, 'Suse, suse ... irabem Timatem'. I finally broke down and asked a street vendor for the CD who sold it to me for $5 birr more than what I'd have bought it for in Dembel Mall (which prolly means it goes for another 10 or 15 less in Piazza ... or I could have meqemat-ed for free it in Merkato. But I digress.)

I'm no seasoned music (or anything) critic, unless meneCHaneCH counts. I bought this CD because I liked the first song. I wish i could tell you about the rest of the CD, but I can't. I should confess - I'm one of those people who listens to the same song 100 times if she likes it. The problem with this CD is that I happen to like the first 3 songs, Suse, CHuh CHuh and Sebeb. So, I have no clue what the rest of the CD is like.

Out of curiosity, I've skipped over to listen to Wuleta, for the title. I like it but I'm saving my customary repeat play for one of those long 90 mph drives. It has that perfect inguroro thing going on.

I can however attest that the first 3 songs were worth every besa santim spent (and ripped off) this CD. If you don't have it, don't copy it. Buy it!

No, I'm not a delala :)

p.s. My only complaint about this CD is that it should have been called 'Suse' ... I'm addicted.

p.p.s. After the 57th listening, here's the lyrics to Sebeb

tewat tewat silugn, wedijat teleyehu
lesew biye tewkuat, linor biye kesew
ante kalkegn bila, heda sitasayegn
keneberew biso, chirash CHemerebign

woohoho ...

Basebign basebign chirashun basebign
basebgin basebegn fiqrua CHemerebign
Basebign basebign ...

sew hulu simekregn let teqen tazibe
saygebagn kelibe
signoda gin yelem manim kaTegebe
siCHeneq besua libe
inen bicha bila lene bicha sitnor
andim qen lesua salnor
sithed afeqerkuat abragn hono...*
ilif new leka fiqir*

Indet hono, hono linor new
isu fiqrwa gud liaregegn new
tewat sibal CHirash motkulat
amTat alegn nebsem sasalat

Basebign basebign chirashun basebign
basebgin basebegn fiqrua CHemerebign
Basebign basebign ...

quTbu fegegtash zimitash CHenquachew
mikniyat sebeb honachew
athonihim silugn min larg amenkuachew
alweTam kejachew
min semetew new aytew negerign sil yane
azenshibign wey bene
"lemin" silalaslhin asatashign wene
ay alamnew aynen

p.p.p.s I still can't figure out the two lines with asterix (*) . Maybe at 98th. Suggestions appreciated :)

p.p.p.p.s. Did they misspell his name on the CD? Abenit? If there was such a word as, 'Aben', then Abenit sounds the feminine of that. I'd write his name as Abinet ... gin you know what they say about Habeshoch. 25% die kebeshita, another 25% from famine, 25% from Torinet... and the rest die bemayagebachew gebitew. The spelling of his name bizum ayagebagnim.

p.p.p.p.p.s. I spent about 30 min trying to figure out how to post a sample track, as per Yonas's request. Then I figured the easiest way out was to "politely" piggyback off of Nolawi's player. (Nolawi, I'm only testing ;-)

Track 1 - Suse:

Anonymous Browsing

2007-04-05T18:07:00.001-04:00

Normally when you get ready to travel you think of travel documents, bills, transportation, visas, your travel budget .... and sometimes, as when you go to a place like Ethiopia you've to think of how to avoid the thought police.

I had been meaning to look up a list of proxy servers (in case they don't let you search for proxy servers, too! Who knows.) So I finally did. But in the midst of it all I started wondering why the feature wasn't integrated into a browser. The idea of typing some URL back and forth, tinyUrl-ing and translating did not sound too appealing. Computers are about being lazy. So let me be lazy!

My first searches resulted in the ANOBrowser, "the number one browser for secure surfing without providing your true IP address." And humanity has never heard of it? Hmm. So I checked with CNet critics, who said

"...we found many of the built-in proxies simply didn't work, while users can't add new ones. Nor does the program have the ability to check server availability and connection speed. Its tabbed browsing feature does work well, although this is now a standard option even in IE itself."

Concluding,

"Given the rich feature set of other modern browsers, we would have a hard time recommending this buggy alternative to anyone."

Great.

Then this, "anonymous browsing mozilla addon", on Golgul search was golden. Mozilla has an addon called SwitchProxy which,

"... lets you manage and switch between multiple proxy configurations
quickly and easily. You can also use it as an anonymizer to protect your
computer from prying eyes. NOTE: In Firefox you can use the toolbar
element to save space"

And as we all know, Firefox is the best browser there is.

And this was posted by email.

Got Ethiopian?

2007-03-18T02:43:00.001-04:00

So, after a quasi-long hiatus I am about to head back to Ethiopia for four weeks. I have a wedding to attend, but other than that I’ve no agenda. I intend to venture out of Addis to visit a grandma and for the remainder of my time I’ll be Addis Ababan camper.

I have no intention of hitting the typical resort spots like Langanao minamin. I don’t want to fall trap to the culture of Diaspora Habesh on vacation back home who party incessantly or those who go back and hang out with folk from here.

I think I can easily spend days roaming the streets of Addis … but then I thought to myself … what would Jesus do? Um. Ok. Not. I just had to say that, but I thought to myself … what good is a blog but to ramble on?

I ramble. You ramble. We ramble. Perhaps you’ve some Addis ramblings for the inbound?

Mesgana

2007-03-18T02:02:00.000-04:00

Earlier today I had a conversation with a friend who claims he dislikes idealism. For example, he says, it irks him when Ethiopians nowadays say ‘Ideally we should make education available in multiple languages’. His solution? Be practical and force everybody to learn in one language. He has no preference whether the language is Oromiffa, Amharic, Tigrigna … even English. Just pick one for practical purposes and let the rest pick other languages the want at home.

Now I think that line of thought is too idealistic. It’s like saying, ‘why can’t we all just along?’ Dang! You can imagine the discussion didn’t get far.

I think educational institutions should only support as many students as they can teach, not as many students as they can reach. And teach they should with quality, where quality should, among other things, preserve one’s identity/background.

Anyway the point of the post wasn’t so much to rant about education in Ethiopia but to mention a dance group called Mesgana (which I’d have ‘spelled’ as Misgana. It’s funny when you can tell a non-Ethiopian person spelling an Ethiopian word. Like ‘Addis Ababa’ – there’s no way in hell those words were spelled by an Ethiopian. “New Father”? Mtsssss!)

Now Mesgana is quality and identity. Remember Hibre tr’it? Mesgana is hibre tr’it by little people. It’s a troupe of kids aged 7 – 13 who perform traditional Ethiopian dances to raise funds for the education of girls. In their own words:

The Children of Ethiopia Education Fund exists to improve the lives and futures of girls in Ethiopia; and to allow the opportunity for people in the United States and around the world, who have been more materially blessed, to give of themselves.

Their tour schedule for 2007 includes DC, Chicago, NYC, Denver, Salt Lake City and various locations in CA. Alas, that won’t be till August so watch these videos in the mean time, but keep them in mind, and try to catch them when they get to (hopefully) your area.

A Quickie

2007-03-08T10:01:00.000-05:00

And *$ backs down ...

I was actually going to write an article in defense of Starbucks, but ... bleh.

Great move Starbucks. Now i can have my frappuccinos in relative peace.

More Starsucks

2006-12-27T18:30:00.001-05:00

So 'Old' York

2006-12-21T19:29:00.000-05:00

New York is a great many things.

It's one of the few city-cities. Sometimes it's gray tall buildings, which seem depressingly grayer on cloudy days. It rat conventions in the subways. It's luxurious lofts, doormen, chihuahuas on the top and roach infested, closet sizes studios beneath. It's homeless men who claim the street like they've the space on a lease ... which reminds me of Addis. It's free stand up comedy a ride to your choice of destination (much love to the conductors on subways). It's people always in a hurry - possibly to the nearest coffee shop - stepping on your toes with their unnaturally high stilettos in the dead of winter (but, why, why, oh why?), and barely noticing. It's 'gentlemen' clubs in the middle of Time freaking Square.

As a self declared bumpkin, I dutifully take in this fodder for amusement purposes only. What I fail to understand and tolerate is hanging out with, say habehsa guys, and trying to catch a cab at the end of the night. Then I find the real rotten apple.

This is the routine.

The guys will stand at a distance from me and I'll hail a cab.
If cabbie thinks I look respectable (really, that should read as I don't look like i'm going to the Bronx) and that I'm by myself, then it will stop.
Sometimes the presence of hovering black men in the background is enough to send a cab to the furthest lane from my curb.
And accelerate.
If the cab stops but before entering the cab if I make the mistake of acknowledging the guys, it will speed off.

One of my friends brushed it off and said, 'you can't let it bring you down.' Me? Down? No, I think New York is pretty god dammed low, and some how everybody's fine's with it.

Madonna sings away ...

"If you don't like my attitude, then you can F-off
Just go to Texas, isn't that where they golf?
New York is not for little pussies who scream
If you can't stand the heat, then get off my street"

I guess I'm little pussy, so another drink for good ol'Joisy.

Somebody Else's Stream of Consciousness

2006-12-14T21:52:00.000-05:00

Apparently working full time and taking multiple classes in an area that's not one's forte is not good idea. Hard to write when not having had much to think. But thank God (?) for little mercies that come in spurts, nay deluge, of anonymous comments. If you've a lot of time in your hands (mind you, I'm barely 1/100th through it) , and by a lot I mean a LOT, then read the comment here by a certain (3nd) Anonymous.

I found it to be interesting, and at the least amusing.

So far my favorite part's been the word 'masculinization'. Is there a masculinizer, too? 'Can I have a bottle of masculinizer, please?'

Masuculinize is defined as, the tendency for women to engage in cursing, casual sex, or be quick to anger and violence.

Of course, if the masculines didn't have masculinized women to curse at, have casual sex with, abuse in quick anger or be violent towards, their masculinity will be all wasted. Lo and behold, no masculinized women!

Does this count as a post?

So 'Old' York

2006-11-06T10:32:00.000-05:00

Moved.

Date of a post should be date of posting, not date when when one composed its title!

****$$$$$

2006-11-02T10:17:00.000-05:00

It's quite likely that the name stands for 'studded with money.' The company formerly known as StarBucks, henceforth referred to as *$, is renowned for many things. Depending on who you talk to, *$ has made a name for good (popular?) coffee, bad coffee, fair-trade, unfair trade, eco-friendly, barely eco-friendly... But if there is one thing there will be a consensus on, it is the fact that *$ makes money. Some serious money.

Ethiopian farmers are not known for many things. Not that many people, even among Ethiopians, know much about them. But here are two things there will be consensus on - that they grow darn good coffee, and that they're poor.

*$, meet Ethiopian farmer. Ethiopian farmer, meet *$. The outcome? Explosive headlines.

"Starbucks, the giant US coffee chain, has used its muscle to block an attempt by Ethiopia's farmers to copyright their most famous coffee bean types, denying them potential earnings of up to 47m [pounds] a year."

Remember when Nestle sued Ethiopia, at (one of the many) heights of food shortages across the country? Well, Oxfam, along with many appalled parties, was all over the case until Nestle backed down.

Here is round two of fighting the giants. If you think yeHarer, yeYirgaCheffie and yeSeidama coffee deserve as much trademarking as over-roasted, caramel frosted, whip cream smothered coffee products of Starbucks, learn more and take action here.

Spread the word.

Morning Non-Thoughts

2006-11-01T09:24:00.000-05:00

Some people say their morning prayer.
Some people go for a run.
Some people drag themselves to the fridge to grab another beer to 'ease' a hangover from last night.
Some people walk the dog.
Some people do yoga.

I wonder if they also non-think:

If I should labor through daylight and dark,
Consecrate, valorous, serious, true,
Then on the world I may blazon my mark;
And what if I don't, and what if I do?
- Dorothy Parker

Who is John Galt?

Footprints

2006-10-24T23:53:00.000-04:00

There's a song about 'lemlem Ethiopia' stuck in my head. I just can't get the words out.

Our current government has/had this dream about an 'Agricultural revolution' in Ethiopia. It seems our lemelem country is particularly unviable for agriculture (I am assuming that's all Eth has and has already exhausted as a resource). More here.

It's very strange that Ethiopia's resource consumption ratio is as high as that of developed nations as the United States and countries in Europe, or as that of super-populated nations like India and China.

Having said that, I am be curious to know what figured into calculating the resource per capita ratio for those maps and figures.

Random stuff

2006-09-26T12:39:00.000-04:00

I like news. Random news. It makes my day. Not the CNN headline kind of bloody news of yesterday’s “20 more pople die in Iraq”, or today’s “21 more people die in Iraq, making that number a record for this week”. Really? Considering today is Tuesday, that’s one hell of a record. But does anybody dare aggregate the number since the War on Terror started manifesting 'itself' in Iraq?

Everything is sensationalized. Like the dead of summer and winter seasons in the US, where every region is always breaking some 40 year old record every year. Seriously, how’s that possible? If they can’t name it ‘the coldest temperature recorded in 40 years’, the weatherman will phrase it as ‘the longest coldest temperature recorded in the briefest period of night time in 40 years!’. Before your mind can even formulate a ‘Huh?’, the newscaster will take it from the weatherman and say ‘Thanks, John, for that wonderful analysis. Well, folks. You heard it. If it continues like that we’re going to have one verrrrrrrry cold winter. Let’s hope for the best. Stay warm, and that’s all for now from Channel 99”.

Huh?

But I digress. I like random news. Like the homeless people’s world cup currently being held in South Africa. Instead of petty weather news, I like to occupy my mind wondering how homeless people afforded the ticket to SA to play unprofessional football when I’m working obscene hours (well, at least in my mind ) and I can’t afford the time or money for a trip to SA. I hope this does not sound like I’m being sarcastic, bitter, or cynical. I’m not. I’m truly bemused. Somebody managed to pull a trick in 48, most likey developing countries to finance homeless players to scuffle half-way across the world to pay street football. And they found respectable venue. That’s a commendable feat.

The home team, Bafana Bafana,Version Homless, beat Chile but was then brought down to submission by Brazil’s Usual Suspects de las Favelas. I wonder if we’ve Ye Menged lay tedadaree igir kuas-tegnoch representing.

Then there’s this : the inauguration of a new service in Germany that ‘helps break up dead-end relationships’. You can chose to have them deliver the news by phone or in person. They can deliver it in a’ sympathetic or direct’ manner, and voila! You’re off the hook.

Ha ha ha ha. Gud’ko new.

Yes, I laugh. Until one day it happens to me.

Mean while, ha ha ha …

Wey gud!

2006-08-21T00:04:00.000-04:00

My mother would say, "YeqoTun awerd bila yebibitwan Talech". Or maybe she'd be more pithy and come up with a better one liner.

Here are a series of events that just ... hurt when one tries to make sense out of.

a) August 6 : The 'Islamists' take full control of Mogadishu, and start advancing north, increasing areas of Somalia under their control. The government of Ethiopia starts saying 'i'rrrreeeee!', and warns that if they advance withing 60 km of the Ethiopian boarder, then Ethiopia will take action. Let me clarify, in case there's any misunderstanding. We're talking 60 km inside Somalian territory. Apparently EPRDF is high on whatever their papa Bush is on, and think that they can pull the same shit America's pulling in Iraq (never mind the fact that Iraq has now degenerated into a state of civil war ... perhaps for Ethiopia that's no issue since Somalia has 'always' been perpetual a state of civil war).

There were reports of Ethiopian solders inside of Somalia. The Ethiopian Government denied it. The Somalian transitional government denied it. But the Islamists were convinced that Ethiopia wanted a hand in this. They finally declared jihad on any Ethiopians found in Somalia. (Ok, I'm Ethiopian but really, who can blame them?)

2) August 7/17 : Floods hit parts of Ethiopia, especially in the south and south east. The first of major reports coming from Dire Dawa suggested that about 200 people were estimated dead. A couple of weeks later another river overflowed killing 125 more people in southern Ethiopia. Thousands are reported missing or trapped.

Rescue workers claim that their efforts were hampered by the fact that helicopters couldn't fly to the disaster regions due to weather conditions, and the boats they were able to send in were very small. "We are trying our best", they said.

3) Aug 20 morning : The United States sends in its army reserve stationed in Djibouti to help with the rescue operations. Oh, how nice! (yes, as much as I like to sit and bash American foreign policy and its global irresponsibility, the US does have its many kind moments.)

4) Aug 20 evening : Ethiopian troops are finally openly present in Somalia. The BBC reports that they were seen approaching the city of Baidoa, the seat of government of the transitional government of Somalia.

We've people and villages getting swept away, lives being taken and destroyed by the hundreds and what is the Ethiopian army doing? Yelela swe guada gebto yifetefital. Ihis? We've other people's armies coming into our country to deal with our disasters.

"We're trying our best", they said. Best? Best? Does that imply there could be worse? Mts.

Swift Summer and a Balcony

2006-08-16T01:27:00.000-04:00

My apartment has a pathetic excuse for a balcony. I noticed the wooden thing they called a floor was only partially painted when I first came by to look. Oh, well. I figured it would be very unlikely for me hang out on a balcony to ... tan? Or something.

Anyway, I put a Walmart $15 hammock on two opposite railings and for a while it was pretty cool. It lasted me the fall (used a couple of times) and winter (forgot it existed). Spring came and I tried it out once. It looked shaky, but it was fine. Then a friend, who happened to be twice as tall and weighed twice as much, decided to try it out. Needless to say, he ended up on the semi-painted 'floor' with one side of the railings on top of his head.

He was okay. I promptly removed the hammock and anything that might indicate recreational used of the balcony and called the manager. Really. There was nothing in my agreement that said not to use the balcony as a hammock hanger. The next day somebody came by and put caution tape around it.

A month passed. The caution tape started discoloring, too. Considering I don't live on the first floor, I called the manager again with the friendly reminder that one can easily fall off my balcony in its current state. I was assured it would be fixed. Another month passed. I called again. This time a new lady told me the other manager got fired. OK. And the balcony? She asked me how long it's been, then proceeded to chide me for not having reported it earlier. Um. Hello? Caution tape? After a little barking she promised it would be fixed. It's been another month and a half.

Maybe I'll fall off the balcony and sue them.

In the mean time, I just received a strongly worded notice 'reminding' me that I haven't renewed my lease. If i do not sign and return the form by late August, they'll be forced to take legal action. M*****F****RS!

So I proceeded to log in and type here instead of signing my lease.

Anyway ...

Is 'agramot' a word? How? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TMfKVP-7Cg

Must listen, why not see ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxG0bl7DFiM
I could do with a CD, actually.

Whoa!I first heard about her at bernos.org, and now she's all over.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dlje9TApVH8&mode=related&search= (video to song mentioned in bernos)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZFJrAB0Czw (Interesting)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWSK2jAa8Ns&mode=related&search= (man in an apron!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?search=&mode=related&v=flxyUueeYUU (for some reason, its content was considered offensive to/by some and you've to log in to see it. Perhaps it's a lil' yemeteqe kelemednew stuff, but really, is freaking youtube!)

"Mahedoooo No, Harar"

2006-07-12T22:09:00.000-04:00

First of all, a big :-)

Then some lyrics:
"yemegalawa lij, yemitadrew dirE
simEn Tiriwna, limTalish berirE
meTichE liTeTa yegimel wetet
hod yemiayleselis, yemiyares anjet"

Also, some stoker-esque scenes that were reminiscent of "every breath you take, every move you make ...", until they ended in a rather amusing "lomi biewrewir aha ahaha, deretun metahut, aha ahahaha" way. Say, why is it that it never works for me when I hand men fresh lemons? In my case they bolt out of the kitchen swearing and muttering and stuff.

A fantastic lovers on a garee scene with a ferenj garee nejee (in pyjamas or was that a jelabiya?) and two habesh passengers. Good & Gud one!

Last and least, dude who popped up with the guitar, I must have totally missed the guitar in that music.

Well, it definitely entertained me. But then again, so did this.

Black Stars

2006-06-28T11:13:00.000-04:00

Win or no win, hats off the Black Stars. Looking forward to cheering them in South Africa next time.

Oh, and here's some South African Ghana vs. USA humour:

A friend of a friend (of a friend's friend friend) says he'll cheer for France in this World Cup because he believes that a truly African team. The French team's the face of the United Nations of (West) Africa. While this theory is almost as appealing as it is amusing, I'm going to shamelessly go back to cheering the Brazilians, as is the age old Ethiopian tradition. If they continue to play as haphazardly as seen so far, it should make for one helluva ride.

Why Sience is Cool

2006-06-28T09:52:00.000-04:00

Or better yet, why scientists are the coolest.

Street Children

2006-06-12T09:35:00.000-04:00

BBC photojournals the lives of street children in Addis:

"Across from the main post office, there is a sewage drain. It draws little attention.
Thousands of people walk across its steel bars every day without giving it a second thought. This is good for Mohammed and his friends. They do not want their home to be discovered."

Used to be good for them until it became good for you, BBC.

The Many Faces of Tobian

2006-06-10T09:56:00.000-04:00

Tobian in this blog is for e-Tobian or eTobian, otherwise written as Ethiopian. Or maybe it's the Amharican for a citizen of Tobia , a Tobiawi or yeTobia sew ...

Whodathunk Tobian is also a language currenlty spoken by about 100 (50?) indivuduals from the island of Tobi in the Phillipine sea.

The language tree goes something like Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian, Central Eastern, Eastern , Oceanic , Central-Eastern, Remote, Micronesian, Proper, Ponapeic-Trukic, Tobian

It also seems:

Both Tobi Island and Helen Reef have been invaded by Monomorium destructor, a so called ‘tramp ant' species that is widely dispersed by human commerce and trade. The ant causes extensive economic damage in human settlements by damaging fabric and rubber goods and removing insulation from electric cables. On Tobi Island particularly communication means (phone cables) and solar electricity systems are under threat but humans also directly suffer from the insects’ aggressive nature. The resident population in Tobi Island has decreased significantly due to disturbance by this ant.

Well, good luck and sabuho.

...

2006-06-10T09:32:00.000-04:00

A year since Ethiopians dared to demand that thier votes be counted.

Facelift coutesy of this Flickr collection.

wusedegn yalsh we de gas light
ibete molto gazna isat

(something i can't hear) soderen banay
shower iniwsed biret miTad lay

indachi lale shenqata lij
min yaregal kitfo bombolino in'j

Dereje & Habte

Chachi : things you don't see people in habesha libs do on TV often. The song's been around for a while, but I'd not seen the video.

Funny Meles interview. Again, this has been around for a while ... but if you've not seen it and you are too deep in love with Meles ...

Favoritelines : "yetNawa mist nat?" & "Inae I don't worry. Yichin libs man indesefat alwaqm. Des alech'N. Gezahuat. Lebeskuat"

Tintin and Tutu

2006-06-02T12:54:00.000-04:00

At first when I saw the headline I thought, 'surely, it must be another Tintin'. On BBC it said, "Dalai Lama awards Tintin and Tutu".

So I clicked on to see who on earth named their kid Tintin. To my initial relif, and subsequent amusement, it turned out it was good ol'Tintin of Tintin in Tibet , an adenture which, over half a century later, won him this award.

So the Delai Lama honored Tutu and Tintin in the same berath?!?! Ha ha! (well, the award was for the Herge Foundation, established in
memory of the author of the Tintin cartoon adventure books ... but that's a minor detail you don't get to until 10 years into the news article.)

In his speech, Archbishop Tutu paid tribute to his friend.

"I give great thanks to God that he has created a Dalai Lama," he said. "Do you really think, as some have argued, that God will be saying: 'You know, that guy, the Dalai Lama, is not bad. What a pity he's not a Christian'?"

Hmm ... I wonder ... what did Tintin have to say?

I liked Tintin. I guess I still like Tintin for old times sake. But since growing up, looking at some of the pictures, I'm less amused by the depiction of black characters. They're so ... Bamboozled!

So Confusious!

2006-06-01T18:01:00.000-04:00

I’m confused. If it’s not something to do with everyday drudgery, it’s to do with those high school (I hope!) kids who smoke pot in the laundry room beneath my apartment (what a choice of location if you don’t want to piss off strangers. ይጨብጨብቸላው), or with rare, but sufficiently convoluted

immigration laws … or something.

ለምሳሌ… when they say, “Those here for longer than five years -- an estimated 7 million people -- could earn legal work status immediately …”, does it mean that one had to be illegal for all of the five years? I’m wondering because suppose I hurried to violate my visa status now, and I have been in the US legally for longer than 5 years, do I still qualify for the amnesty? Alternatively, can I lie and claim that I lied when I first got my visa to enter this country, which will make my visa void, and thereby make my more than 5 years of stay in this country illegal? How about if I became illegal for the next five years? You see …I’m confused … unless I’m confused about being confused.

This, I believe, is the state my fiend calls ‘confusious’. I am confusious!

“ሌላስ?”, you say. I’m confusious because I don’t understand why EPRDF decided to ban all these blogs. I mean … no, I don’t mean … really, just why? Consider how many people have access to Internet. A diminutive proportion of the Ethiopian population. Consider what kind of people have access to internet. I would say Addis Ababans, in general, the same people that voted CUD whole heartedly into almost all their constituencies.

IMHO, all this is what habeshas aptly describe as, ‘He started from the ground and wanted me a thing!”. The government opened and stirred a perfectly content, ተከድኖ የሚንተከተክ ዶኬ. Now all this ሽሮ is መፈናጠቅing around, international journalist groups yapping, apolitical blogs are preaching censorship avoidance techniques, and amidst my confusion I have to go back and ask the basic question: all this for what? If Addis Ababans aren’t busy reading these websites and agreeing, they’re busy writing them. Are Addis Ababans about to change their minds and love EPRDF if they read or wrote less? Um. No. So ለማን እና ለምንድን ነው censorshiፑ?

Anyway, the fact that EPRDF tried to do something about the blog situation means that it’s tickling some people in the government the wrong way … which naturally leads this former Addis Ababan to the conclusion, nay affirmation, that something very worthy is being said here. Something so worthy that perhaps it should be spread beyond the Diaspora and internet-accessing Addis Ababan populations. These blogs should be made into a (bi-)weekly newspaper.

Between Aqumada’s poetry and essays from funny, yet misogynistic students of medicine, Enset's unconventional wisdom, Weichegud’s acerbic commentaries, Ethiopundit’s unrelenting politi-economico-blows, Seminawork’s ፍቺ of ወቅታዊ ጉዳዮች, Bernos’s … well, ምን ያልታሸ መድረክ ቀረ?, Meskel Square’s የአደባባይ ምስጢር, CoffeeChilliSun’s ጸሃይ አያስሞቁ ፤ ቡና አያስጠጡ ፤ ቃተኛ የሚያስቆርሱ መጣጥፎች … እንዲያው ምኑ ቅጡ … herein lie the perfect fodder for a pot luck publication.

I say, somebody should select articles from the past week (with the consent of the bloggers, of course), print it, and sell it cheap, darn cheap (well, no need to pay reporters, after all) just in case those who cannot afford time & money for Internet in Addis miss out on the best of የተወገዙ bloጎች.. .

No?

Yes?

No?

Maybe?

Curiously, I’m now a lot less confusious. Really.

Got my route laid out and my mind is clear
Got my pen and my pad, gonna get it all down
'Cos words are a road that lead outta town

Like The Pot Calling The Kettle Purple

2006-05-29T22:47:00.000-04:00

Isaac Asimov supposedly once asked his daughter, “Why is the sky blue?”, and she’d confidently responded, “Because it’s not purple!”. That sure beats delving into refraction and the electromagnetic spectrum.

In English, color is a funny thing.

I came across an article entitled “Meles vs. Mengistu: The pot calling the Kettle Black”. The point the author made was that Mele himself has a lot to be judged by and when it gets to his turn, “One hopes it does not take 15 years for justice to be meted”.

Yeah, Meles sucks. Yeah, Mengistu sucks. However, my preoccupation with the article was more to do with its title. This title would obviously make no sense if it was “Meles vs Mengistu: The Iris calling the African Violet Purple”, or “Meles vs. Mengistu: The Dough calling Snow White”. My gut instinct was that the origins of "The Pot Calling The Kettle" is from times when being black was of lower stature in Western cultures. So I did a little bit of research which revealed other ways of looking at the proverb.

The saying 'that's like the pot calling the kettle black' is a very old saying. It means 'You've no real cause to say these things to me because you fit into the same category' or more simply 'look in the mirror, you're no different'. But the part about the pot and the kettle comes from way back in history, probably when the western U.S. was first being settled, and people cooked with cast iron pots and pans. The tea kettle was black, the dutch oven cooking pot was black and so the analogy was formed 'pot calling kettle black'.

I could almost believe this except “the post calling the kettle black’ is usually said by a third person looking at the ‘pot’ and the ‘kettle’ from a higher ‘moral’ ground and passing the judgment that the ‘pot’ and ‘kettle’ are both worthless.

But then Blonde Justice delves into its origins from “Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins” which gives two possible meanings. One is that calling the kettle back is ridiculous because they are both black. “The other theory is that the pot was black but the kettle polished copper and the pot, seeing its own blackness reflected in the shiny surface of the kettle, maintained that the kettle, not it, was actually black.”

Hmm. Let's keep in mind this is coming from dictionaries that define themselves with currents of time. Like the way The Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary copy I had while growing up had sample sentence to go along with words. For the word famine, and that sentence was ‘Famine in Ethiopia’, which of course was very true in 1984, and still is true now. Hopefully it will not be true in another half century or so, but my copy of the dictionary will still be around.

So …to believe or not to believe? I dunno. I say we change the proverb to, ‘The pot calling the kettle purple’.

Another English term that bugs me is ‘white trash’. I am pretty sure I had read Maya Angelou’s ‘I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings’ before I came to this country, but … I don’t remember what I felt about it. Years after I came to the US, and having had a different view of the American ghetto than what’s depicted in ‘Coming to America’, when I opened the book a second time, the term white trash stuck me funny. The narrator, who was black and poor, was referring to poor white people as ‘white-trash’. Perhaps this is the case of the pot calling the kettle purple.

What finally struck me about the term white-trash was that it is so offensive to black people. And to all other people of ‘color’. A black person with a low socioeconomic status is simply called a black person. A Latino with a low socioeconomic status is called a Latino. After all, what is so strange about these people being poor? A white person who is poor is not just white, but a white-trash, the scum of what should otherwise be a spotless race. White needs hyphenation, the rest are trash anyway.

Is there another way of looking at it?

Ah. God bless America, indeed! Yibarkat'm, yimarat'm!

The Real Rant

2006-05-25T00:20:00.000-04:00

For anybody who’s bothered to read my posts from over a year ago, it’s pretty clear that I take my CUD with a grain of salt and Tena’Adam. Then I gave it all up and switched onto other issues some time after the elections because … all sides became nauseating.

I have been trying to write an article on CUD for over a month, but every time I start to write it, I keep thinking about all those people in jail and I have to let go of the idea. Poletikam be yilugnta – gud ikno new!

But then came the story of Alliance for Freedom and Democracy (AFD) which jolted me back to reality. In fact, it sent me running to my copy of Nelson Mandela’s “Long Walk to Freedom”. Time to question my South African history.

Ok. So the South African struggle was at some point backed by a military branch. In fact, when Umkonto we Sizwe, the military branch, was formed in 1961, its commander in chief was Nelson Mandela himself. During the next 30 years of the guerrilla army’s existence, the organization attempted to sabotage capabilities of the Apartheid government, and the government returned the favor by labeling the freedom movement as a ‘terrorist organization’. Initially Umkonto we Sizwe started` off with attacks on government/infrastructural targets, but eventually it moved onto urban warfare and inevitably civilian casualties.

So why did news of AFD send me running to this piece of history? Because AFD didn’t make sense. And I had to verify that, despite my vehement opposition to armed struggle, the South African resistance actually had some semblance of sense. In South Africa the army branch was ideologically on the same grounds as ANC, and therefore a logical extension to ANC. It was not attempting a revolution, it was not drawing out a civil war, it was not exterminating whites nor fighting to evict them. It was destabilizing an exclusive white South African government and the structures that enabled its existence. It was inflicting an economical wake up call to make white south Africa realize that the country’s future will have black written all over it, whether Afrikaners liked it or not.

In an enduring statement at one of his trials, Nelson Mandela once said,

“I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

The point is that it is his cause that he is willing to die for. When ANC wants to fight it gets ANC people to fight for it.

So what is CUD(P) doing? It realizes that it can’t motivate the exhausted we-love-one-Ethiopia yuppies to fight for its cause. Instead it aligns itself with LFs who’re willing to die for another cause, like OLF and ONLF. Lovely! Just lovely! If CUD’s not willing to die for a cause, then they’re not worth the cause and the cause is not worth it, so they should quit and desist before they send that poor country off on another half a century loop. Personally I would not lift half a finger to pull no god dammed trigger to fight EPRDF, nor will I encourage even a willing member at the farthest end of my extended family. Obviously, neither would CUDistas

Besides, what exactly will AFD be fighting? Is it going to go for a civil war? Like the ones we had been fighting since 1950s? Like the ones that brought us a lovely government called EPRDF?

A year ago, on the wake of elections when EPRDF banned demonstrations my thoughts on the matter were conflicted. In theory, it was wrong. You can’t ban dissent in the name of maintaining democracy. However, in practice we don’t have democracy because we have not developed the democratic culture. By ‘we’ I don’t mean our government, I mean we, the Ethiopian people. Whatever is lacking in our leadership is lacking in us as a society. My thoughts then were that Ethiopians forget that the very symptoms they fear in others are the symptoms others fear in them.

On the same note, I don’t think another civil war in Ethiopia will bring us leaders any less jaded, bitter and myopic than the ones we already have. We produced this government, and we’re fully capable of repeating history. Just like EPRDF has spent too many years out in the bushes disconnecting from civility, ability to discuss and compromise, so will this era of freedom fighters. In the end, we can’t ask nor expect the new breed of ‘liberators’ to be any better … when we have not put enough effort to be any better ourselves.

Interlude to rant ...

2006-05-24T13:02:00.000-04:00

Good one, McGruder ;-)

I wonder how much of this is true - we do things because we've paid for them, and we pay for them because … we do!

A month ago I went to the dentist, not because I had to but because I was about to cancel my dental plan (I come from a proud no-to-dentists family that believes in good tooth cleaning, ideally with mefaqia, kaltechale be brush and kolgate, and none of that dentist hogwash) and i felt it was a waste to have paid for my plan and not having done something with it. So I made an appointment with a dentist and found out what I expected - disappointment and a waste of my time. No cavities. Some cleaning. The lady commended me for doing a good job of keeping regular appointments as evidenced by healthy looking teeth (um ... how about this is my first ever visit to the dentist? - She looked at me funny) Will i consider taking out my wisdom teeth in the near future? She said they may impact the rest of my teeth. May. Right. Um ... I may ... in the future, but if my Dad's fine with them, maybe I'll be, too.

I still pay $15 for basic cable. I definitely don't watch it, or even know what channels consist of the basic cable. I don't think I've gone past channel 11, and those lower channels I get from antenna anyway. In any given week, I don't think I've ever watched more than 5 hrs of TV. The $15 this has not inspired me to watch more TV, but its wastage, along with my other (lack of) habits has not inspired me to cancel either. Maybe one day, I may ...

WH*AT?

2006-05-22T13:55:00.000-04:00

What?

Gud iko new ... ishee beqagn, beqagggnnnnnnnnn crazy.

In short,

"A historic meeting convened, by the Coalition for Unity and Democracy Party (CUDP), the Ethiopian People's Patriotic Front (EPPF), the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), the Sidama Liberation Front (SLF) and the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces (UEDF), at Utrecht in Netherlands, from 19 to 22 of May 2006 has successfully completed by forming the Alliance for Freedom and Democracy (AFD) and elected its officers."

"The new Alliance Freedom and Democracy (AFD) says it will focus on peaceful struggle against the government but the armed groups will still stage attacks."

"The Alliance includes the rebel OLF and ONLF groups, which are campaigning for greater rights for Ethiopia's Oromo and Somali communities respectively."

Be'isat lay CHid new yemibalew?

(BTW, to whomever wrote that for BBC, that article is darn confusing.)

Rant to be continued kesira wouCH ...

Crazy.

2006-05-09T00:22:00.000-04:00

Yeah. Like I said, me like crazy.

This is pretty impressive for an habesah. Normally we like to hide our names & faces ...

Maybe it's me ...

2006-05-07T11:57:00.000-04:00

It's not even that I fish for music stuff!

Anyhooo ... I've not yet worked through why this was aseqTaCH but ... it was.

I guess I don't see what the point is (publicity for the artist, somebody's home video, art project ...?) Anyway ... you know what they say about Ethiopians: 25% die from civil wars, 25 % from famine, 25% from AIDS, etc. and the remainder 25% bemayagebachew gebtew.

And right now, thisu beTam ayegabagnm ...

Time

2006-05-03T22:04:00.000-04:00

Time is money.
There is a time and place for everything.
Time cures all things.
Time flies.

The funny thing I have found about keeping journals/blogs is that they help you measure time. Wasted time. I dind't do anything I would consider fruitful in the past 3 weeks (besides going to work - not that I'd a choice. I guess time is, indeed, money. ) and yet I couldn't even bring myself to sit down for ten minutes and put down my thoughts.

Americans like claiming that they don't have time. But seriously, how busy can life really be? I think it has become a culture to think that Americans are busy.

If I fail to call home on a regular basis, other members of my family cover for me by saying i've been 'busy', and that excuse always works like a charm. In fact the standard habesha description for uncommunicative people is "min yidereg ingidih ... nuro'ko ruCHa new!".

Ok. I understand there are some people who work two jobs. Maybe those people are truly busy. But what's with the rest who work, say 10 hrs a day. Let's say they sleep 6-7 hrs, and commute for 30 - 60min round trip. That leaves 6 hours free per day. Lets say another hour or two for taking a shower, meals etc. Abesha people in America don't have to do zemed Tyeqa (ok, locations that are recreations of Ethiopia on the wrong side of the Atlantic, like DC, don't count), leqso, daily beteskian mesalem .... and to prove we've the time to waste, many among us will not miss the routine entertainment, be it a party or a wear-out-the-seats session at Starbucks. If there is a time and place for everything, then place seems to be the key word.

So how did we acquire the "ruCHa nuro" reputation? I for one feel like i'm wasting shitloads of time. Yes, time is flying ... but no, i'm not feeling cured.

Headlines of the (last) week

2006-05-03T20:22:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I worry for the "American" part of this blog's description. But when I don't have to, I worry even more.

Here is a farce of the American justice system. Don't get me wrong - if I ever had to be tried in court (obviously due to some confusion ;-), and I had a choice of courts, then surely an American one would still come out on top. But every so often you have to stop and wonder.

One of my friends who in grad school jokes about how his jury duty calls consist of going for the selection process and somehow always getting rejected. He claims the less 'provably logical' you are on paper, the better a juror you make. As of recent observations from trial Zecharias Mousssoui's trial proceedings, now it also seems the less English you speak, the better a juror you make.

The word the juror looked up was "Aggravate"which, I guess, is not necessarily an everyday word, but then again, what kind of words are used by lawyers?

My guess is, in the future we'll hear of American jurors uttering:
"Excuse me. Allo? Allo ....what me do here? ... oh. Ok. So if me not under arrest, me go? No? ... "
"May I ask when do we'll get to my case, becoz I didn't mean to kill her ..."
"Your honor, we find the prosecutor guilty as charged!"

Moving on ...

The "Failed States Index" by the apparently not-so-estieemed Foreign Policy has finally been issued for 2006. Ethipia placed 26th on the Rankings . I've to say we've not topped the worst rating for any of the categories even in their eyes. The entire African continet, however, has managed to register all countries but 4 (South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland & Madagascar) at some level in the 'Failed States Index'.

Now, to the BIG question: Pakistan??? What the hell is Pakistan doing in the top 10 list? Pakistan between Afghanistan and Haiti?

I don't think so.

Then again, there are some other interesting in order, like Russia at 43, Ertirea at 54 and China at 57.

Hmmm.'Nuff said.

Ah, ኮምጣጤ!

2006-04-13T23:19:00.000-04:00

I bumped into this hilarious parody at Yekolo’s blog, which led me to a Website of The Nonsense (Warning: approach in full armor! Rudeness, acrimony and obnoxiousness, all in the name of good humor, abide) and then to a discussion which revealed the source of the parody, an interview with Zeritu Kebede, at the one and only, Addis Live! (Warning: if you’ve not been there already, then you’re missing the essential some-some of habeshatude!)

So … the interview was … ምን ልበላችሁ …አለ አይደል … umm … በቃ …ቂቂቂቂቂቂ ….(Ok. There’s only so much Zerututalk I can write!) … excruciating! It was insufferable. Agonizing. It brought back memories of first days of ፍስለታ ጾም when I was a kid, you know, right around 2PM, in time for የምትፈናከት የቀትር ጸሃይ, when they’d start lining us up, all unknowing, sin-less, ረሃብ የቦጨቃቸዉ kids so we can መቁረብ, and for one moment, እግዜር ተእምሩ እያልቅ, there’s … harmony, as discord ceases to exist in the minds of millions of Ethiopians – albeit all children – across the country as they stare up at the adults, making it seem like their stares were actually directed to the heavens in piety and awe, while in fact all were whishing that this process would end, like, now, as in አሁኑኑ፥ በቃን፥ ደከመን፥ ራበን፥ ሰለቸን፥ ቄሱም ጉሮሯቸው ነቃ … where is …እንትን … what was it …why are we here … ረሃብ makes one delirious … eh …አዎ … where is … ቁርባኑ? Give me .... whatever it is now and let it all be over. Now, goddammit! (and BTW, እግዜርዬ ይቅር ይበለን for having these thoughts). Yup, that was her interview. Where exactly was it going, and why was I following?

Every whisper (“Baby”, not seductive!), laughter, ‘Arif’ …. አሰቃቂ … goddddddammn. The thing was supposed to last 1 hour and I was watching the time counter on WinAmp tick, thinking እውነት? .. ሌላም ልትይ ነው? ተይ እንጅ? ወይ ጉድ … እስቲ? So I kept going. Sadomasochism 101: Theories of Habesh Molqaqification.

Then the time hit 33 minutes and something changed. Nothing really happened - I just came to the realization that this girl was …. f***ing crazy! They say ማር ሲበዛ ይመራል … well, here’s one for you : ኮምጣጤ ሲበዛ ይጣፍጣል. I LIKE HER! Me like crazzzy. She’s crazy. Have I stressed that enough?

We keep complaining about how habesh are bound and held back by ይሉኝታ, “ሰው ምን ይለኛል” mentality, unfaltering attachment to our “Ethionpian-ness”, our great history and long traditions, that we have an unfaltering definition of education as the fields of science, engineering/medicine and success is defined by those and only those.

This girl doesn’t have an ounce of ይሉኝታ left (or born) in her, her Ethiopian-ness needs a classification of its own. She is more of a candidate for a ፈረንጅ whose soul was stolen by aliens, implanted into an Ethiopian skin, and dropped on the Abyssinian highlands by some cosmic fluke. She has an unabashed lack of appreciation for … almost anything Ethiopian (oh wait, no … can we surmise that she likes አንጀራ, but obviously not ዳቦ?). This girl … has almost no appreciation for education, nor does she seem to have had much of it, for that matter. Not only does Zeritu not care about what the public says of her, she doesn’t seem to care what her አብሮ አደግ thinks of her (or what Zeritu says of her!) Above all, we’ve to give this to her … she’s young, successful and ደፋር to the point of አይን አውጣነት!

Well, አዳሜ ሃበሻ … be careful what you wish for … the 21^st century delivers to you, “Baby”, with a banging style.

Having said that, I should also note that I don’t like her music. Here’s the problem: you know those Ethiopian songs that are so looooooong that even if you start off liking the song, 7 minutes later (Efrem Tamru is notorious for this) you ready to break the radio, or into a deliverance prayer, because you feel … nauseated? The problem with her music is that I can only listen to the first one minute before the impatient brain cell starts screaming ‘next!’ Her stuff is mildly refreshing, but not captivating.

Unsurprisingly, her music reminds me some pop songs I’ve heard on some US rado station that never quite made it to the top charts. Now, I didn’t even listen to Britney at the height of her career and I was still a teenager. When I listen to Zeritu’s music, I feel like I’m doing it a favor in the name of it being Ethiopian (and damn – she doesn’t even care!) I fear that one way favors can only go for so long.

I may refrain from listening any further interviews with Zeritu (coz now it’s flipped back to ማር ሲበዛ ይመራል, you know), but I will look forward to her next album. I hope that by then she’d have grown a little bit more of … substance, while maintaining her dis-Ethiopian Ethiopianness intact.

Yup, yup …. I dig this chick, man. She’s crazy.

Headline of the Week

2006-04-13T23:13:00.000-04:00

"No African country is objectively spending enough on defense," says Eboe Hutchful, executive director of the Ghanaian think-tank, African Security Dialogue and Research (ASDR). This was announced at a conference on military budgetary processes in Africa, held in Addis Ababa. Hmm. Oh, you mean buying Hummers to mow down civilian protestors is not …‘strategic’ enough for military spending?

EPRDF does not have time, need or desire to be objective about its military spending. Why strategize when all you have to do is shoot when in doubt, and also shoot any Ethiopian who dares question this approach. Is ASDR crazy? Advising prodigal African governments to spend more money to better strategize how to blow money … to kill more Africans? I am not sure what I find more offensive – the conclusions of the conference, or the fact that the conference was held in the first place.

What the hell is ASDR anyway?

Also, “Business in Africa”, do a lil’spell check on your news items, please.

Daily Prayer

2006-04-12T00:30:00.000-04:00

Ha ha! Funny (minus the part about "thy womb ...")

http://users.evtek.fi/~kibreaba/meles.html

Where is Dedesa, anyway?

Power to the wonders of backtracking URLs. I came across this page that had a good range of oldies that'd eluded my ... pitiful collection. And to think, just the other day I was reading about respecting Ethiopian artists' copyright ... (which, btw, I sympathize with but since it cannot be technologically helped, i think artists should look into other ways of making themselves more attractive... including looking into producing an entire album - or almost - of worthy music so that some of us will actually bother to get off our arses to buy their stuff. How often does that happen in the Ethiopian music scene? I don't mind giving money to charity. But when i give for charity, I'd like to call it charity, not music shopping. I mean, for example, are these people tax deductible? .... pardon me, April 15 ደርሶኮ ነው!)

Anyway, some of the stuff on that page, I don't think most of can go out and buy even if we wanted, or so I tell myself ;-)

አይጥ ሞትዋን ስትሻ ስታበዛ ሩጫ
ሄዳ ታሸታለች የድመት አፍንጫ

So I continued to dig ...

South Park on Ethiopians. I've heard about this episode. Still haven't been able to catch the whole thing.

But then it got better ...

This music video, Cheferaw DERA - Henok Abebe, puts a smile on my face.

... and better ....

Nanu Nanu Naye with Israeli accent. What more can one ask? Good stuff. (No really, it's Mi'Maamakim from Idan Raichel - now this album I will buy).

How was that for random?

Headline of the Week

2006-04-06T00:23:00.000-04:00

I think I should dedicate a post per week to ridiculous news headlines. Last week's was Nigeria/Liberia/Sierra Leone and Taylor. This week it is:

[Drum roll]

[Better yet, imagine the first 15 secs of the song 'Sunday, Bloody Sunday']

I can't believe the news today
I can't close my eyes and make it go away

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4879822.stm

Africa, bloddy Africa.

The man took a shower to wash off HIV? Hmm....

.....hmm. A moment of silence, please. Let's mourn what a life could have been, but isn't.

My defense for Thabo Mbeki on what I believe is a misquoted statement on AIDS from 10 years ago in discussions with Americans (usually neCHoch, lemin yihon? They can't tell Timbuktu from Pretoria, but they all know that quote from Thabo Mbeki.) has not even rested yet. And now this? This?

I considered reading the article again in hopes that I would find a way to justify the statement as another misquote. Then it struck me that ... I really don't care. I give up. But I'm convinced this guy committed the rape. From his actions, he seems so dense that he probably doesn't know the difference between rape and consentual sex.

Anyway, they keep saying the woman is HIV positive. What about Zuma, when was the last time he was tested? He behaves like an irresponsible HIV+.

How long
How long must we sing this song?
How long, how long?

Blog Stock Market

2006-04-04T21:04:00.000-04:00

I came across this ... concept(?) It's a Blog Stock Market. It tells you how much your blog's worth on the 'market' in B$ currency. Apparently this one is worth B$1,402.79. Bicchhhaa? Mts!

The better value for me was that I bumped into a bunch of interesting blogs, of which some ethio-centric ones were ...

Ethio-Probe On Ethiopian current affairs. No joke zone.

Ethiopian Cartoons. Like it says ....

Ethiopia and Me , an interesting Indian woman in Jimma, with lots of interesting comments, and ... some "weTa weTa'na inde shembeqo, tenkebalele indemuqeCHa" ones:

"The people of Ethiopia have been in bondage for too long. They dont have freedom of speech, their democracy sucks, they are not developed..... India represents everything they long for - the right to do what they want, speak what they like, move forward with the world, wear colourful clothes and have pretty women (pretty as in white pretty woman)."

Hmm.

Organic Ethiopia on social democrats, coming to you in Swiss. Few posts, but still interesting. Curiously my kind of stuff, actually. I really think the CUD has some very good people, but some real crazy ones as well. Berhanu Nega would be one of my favorites. I'll reserve the 'Not Favorites" list for the time after EPRDF stops being so ... fascistic.

Elena in Ethiopia". Like it says ...

What am I missing?

2006-03-28T22:58:00.000-05:00

Every so often something so idiotic happens in Africa that one has to pause and wonder if it happened at all. If one is unable to convince oneself that it did not happen, then unfortunately one has to ponder if perhaps one is too intellectually challenged to fully comprehend the situation. The recent news about Nigeria offering to "give up" Charles Taylor to Liberia, Liberia failing to carry through, and his inevitable 'escape' has served me as one such occasion.

To maintain my sanity and preserve my optimism for our beloved continent, I'll write off this entire useless flaw of information as byte hiccups. Surely, my network card must have barfed on my screen, or else it couldn't have ...

UPDATE: So they 'caught' the guy (hmm ... and why was he getting out of a plush looking Nigerian plane? Is 'hijacking' going to be among the list of his cirmes. Oh, wait, no. Could it be that Nigeria was facilitating his 'escape'?) Some funny comments on his arrest continue to humour me.

ቴዲ መቸ አፍሮ

2006-03-28T22:38:00.000-05:00

Yup. That's his middle name. From butt shakin’ to belly piercing, hip wining, MJ’s “Thriller” ripping action in his videos , Teddy A(la)fro is paving new grounds in the Ethiopian music video scene. There are at least four of his videos at Habesha Hookups (በነገራችን ላይ I thought when they said ‘hookups’ that they meant …you know. . . እ ንትን ሲሉ . . . ምናምን. “Hookup video” ብሎ ለላ? Annnnnnyway!) You may have to skip over some other videos in between. Alternatively, some of the vidos in between were interesting, too. There is a rap song, primarily in English but with Amharic chorus, that sounded kind of cool.

Much like western music videos, these ones also flaunted their share of women (to a little more than what I’m used to) by habesha standards. Some focus on the back side (Yo, there’s this woman shakkkking it ነው የሚባለው!), pierced belly, etc. The one thing that was decidedly missing was the bust area. Ha ha! ገና እዛ … አልደረስንም? ደንባራ prepubescent camera - አደናቅፎት ከፊትዋ ተንከባሎ ሆድዋ ላይ ኣረፈ. Somebody once said how for Ethiopians, beauty still starts and ends with ፊት/መልክ. The rest are accessories.

In Lampadina, there was something about the way he was smiling that reminded me of Jamie Fox’s depiction of Ray Charles.

UPDATE: Somebody commented that they couldn't see Teddy Afro's stuff on the link provided above, and it seems like they rotate the videos. So the only one I can see now by Teddy Afro is "Promise", the one about Bob Marley. Instead, though, I saw some disturbing shit! I don't like Miss Whatever competitions, as it is. "Miss Ethiopia North America"? First of all, WTF was that?? Couldn't the video possibly have been just a lil'more flattering? There were some shots in there fittting a prelude to a porn video. Secondly, call me ... whatever you like, but if you've to strut it on stage, it ain't worth it.

Adam and Hewan, 6000 Years later

2006-03-22T19:12:00.000-05:00

Recently habesh men and women have been going at the sex blame (በላት! በይው! ኧረ በላ ት!) game at አቁማዳ. I’m unable to think of a reasonable gender perspective on my side because … I don’t believe such a thing exists. In fact, I’d like to think that the very problem which these people have been discussing exists because ….people believes it exits. You think. Therefore it is! . . . and the sooner people submit to the idea, the better for single people!

The topic is a ደባሪ recurring theme across cultures whenever differences between men and women are mentioned. One typical argument is that the sexes are genetically ‘wired’ to behave differently. To be more specific, the arguments usually follow the lines of defense for men (that men have raging hormones and insatiable desires and that when they fall off the wagon of … eh … commitment) or accusations pointing at women who should be more nurturing, e.g. willing to ‘look out’ for their man, cook and soothe, etc. (Pardon me if there’s a lack of positive spin to this genetic argument with regards to women … unless positive means something entirely different to you, in which case we’re all good).

I am in no position to argue the veracity of the above statements one way or another. Instead I have a question: ግን የምለዉ … እኛ ጉሬዛ ነን ድመት? Do we have to jump to every banana or ክር that comes our way? የደርግ elementary books used to say “ሰውን ሰው ያረገው ስራው ነው”. Well, ስራችን ምንድን ነው? I don’t think we’re genetically wired to build bridges, sky scrappers, tools and computers. We do it because we see the need for it. What I don’t understand is why people fail to see the same need, or fail to accept that such a need exists, when it comes to their personal lives. Since when has "I'm genetically wired to die. Therefore if I see my impending death, I will not react, regardless of whether I believe I can alter the outcome" become a valid argument? Basically people are saying, 'I feel. Therefore I am.' Ok. So do ቦቢና ውሮ. How long till reincarnation?

I don’t think we were wired to get married. I don’t think we were wired to believe in a god or in gods. I don’t think we were wired to appreciate the music we grew up hearing. A significant portion of our behaviors are picked up through a systematic conditioning process that we affectionately call ‘culture’. And culture is dynamic. It bends for the remover to remove, or for the innovator to add.

So, what’s my take on the sexes being wired differently? It’s possible, but is of no consequence. Mostly I see effects of culture all around me. If we don’t like the state of our existence, it’s our place to change it. We forge our way instead of waiting for natures write out our destinies. Relationships are not meant to please the whole world – it’s just between two people. If a need arises, in a relationship that’s worth keeping then we have to rise to meet the need. But we can’t impose on or sit back and expect from the other person. At best the issue can be resolved through discussion. At worst, somebody has to move on. Not every person likes to build bridges, paint paintings or be a politician. Not every woman likes to cook, nor every man not to cook. Perhaps they never will.

In the end, if we try to climb the wrong tree and find that we don’t like it, the problem is not the tree, but the fact that it’s the wrong tree. And that is not the tree’s fault. To be mad at the tree … is so Hewan blaming it on the snake. So thousands of years ago. Haven’t we learnt better since?

Next ...

ሳይቸግራት ሞታ ታስለቅስናለች

2006-03-20T16:17:00.000-05:00

This news item makes me laugh. It's really sad. But it's so twisted that it's also really funny (Well, if you're a cynical African.) Apparently Nigeria has a political system based on ethnic representation, much like Ethiopia. According to the report, clashes broke out in Nigeria over census reports as "The headcount is highly sensitive, as funding and political representation depend on the results. " Currently "No-one knows how many Nigerians there are - and the authorities are too afraid to find out".[Emphasis mine]I remember when the Ethiopian census results were announced in the early 90s, everybody was claiming that they were fabricated. Back then they simply ignored the numbers.

Unfortunately, the way we've been going, one day Ethiopia will also start to react to issues as Nigeria. We'll be scared of our own shadows, too afraid to know anything about ourselves.

ፊዼል ሖይ

2006-02-17T11:28:00.000-05:00

በቀደም ለት የሆነ ብሎግ ላይ በፊደል post ተደርጎ አየሁ. ይህ ለሙከራ ነው Maybe I'll make the rest of my posts in Amharic (as soon as i figure out a speedier way of typing Amharic ;-).