There's no such thing as a stupid question, but...

Best line from today's walking tour in Old Dhaka--a bearded older man turns to me while I'm walking and asks, "Bideshi, na?" This translates to, "Foreigner, no?"

I wonder what he would have said if I had said no?

These boots are made for walkin'

Today I did a walking tour in Old Dhaka with the Urban Study Group, which is dedicated to raising awareness of the need for historic preservation in the old part of the city.

I had done one of the walks before and had always remembered it as something I felt I should do, but not a very fun activity. Last time I went during the rainy season, which meant it the entire 3+ hours alternated between being very very hot and raining, meaning we would all trudge on under umbrellas, no longer even trying to listen to the guide as we took great pains to avoid piles of wet Old Dhaka sludge.

But today's walk was actually quite enjoyable! It was the perfect time of year, I guess. We had our first thunderstorm (first rain of any kind in months) this week--accompanied by insane hail, I might add--which cut down on the dustiness that overtakes the old town in the dry season. But it's not too hot yet, so overall the timing was ideal.

Here's a view of our tour guide, Taimur from the Urban Study Group, telling us about the Binat Bini Mosque, seen in the background:


The theme for the day was crumbling beauty, sadly. All the buildings have fabulous architectural details but are falling apart. An example:


Another example, accompanied by monkeys:


You may not be able to tell in this photo, but the monkey on the right doesn't have a nose--just a gaping open nostril-hole where a nose should be. Crazy bad-ass.

A day well spent, all in all--it was good to get out, especially after a mopey sick-feeling day yesterday.

Some lists

An exercise in getting over a mopey day:

Things I am happy about right now:

1. Gatorade is tasty. So are Carr's Water Crackers, if you really chew them and savor their flavors and thank them for not upsetting your stomach.

2. I finished the Cairo Trilogy! Accomplishment.

3. I will probably be doing well enough to go on the walking tour I signed up for tomorrow.

4. Okay, I am running out of ideas.

Something about Dhaka belly, a headache, over 70 mosquito bites, and a lingering cough just doesn't add up to happiness. Blah.

Well, this isn't a good place to end at all. How about things that could make me happy in the near future?

1. Bhutan, the land of Gross National Happiness!

2. Starting a new book with a slightly faster pace.

3. A walking tour tomorrow... getting out and seeing the city for once.

4. Going home and seeing my family and my dziadziu and my friends in 4.5 more months!

Pizza pizza

I am, right now, so incredibly thankful we registered for a pizza stone. And so incredibly thankful for the lovely person who got it for us. Because guess what? The pizza in Dhaka that is not made on our pizza stone is not so good. But ours really, really is.

I didn't even stop to take pictures.

Books. Or, The Slow Boat to Egypt.

Do you ever read a book that just never ends? I feel like this happens to me more than other people because I am always reading books to prove points, more than because they are actually interesting.

Right now I am reading the second book in Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy, called Palace of Desire. The first book in the trilogy was slow. I have already ordered the third one, and that will likely be slow too.

You know what the best book I read in the last year was? Netherland. This is a apropos of nothing, except to tell anyone who's listening that they should read it at any cost. Especially if, like me, you have an incredible fondness for the American Dream.

Back to battle. Less than 100 pages to go.

400 Years of Capital Dhaka

Today I attended the opening of a very interesting exhibit at the Asiatic Society called "400 Years of Capital Dhaka." This is part of a larger three-year celebration of the 400th anniversary of Dhaka being named the capital of Bengal in the Mughal Empire. (Sure, it stopped being the capital of Bengal for a while in there, but who's counting?) Anyway, the exhibition contained photos and artworks documenting Dhaka at different points.

But my favorite parts were the displays of various objects, quotidian and precious, contributed by Old Dhaka families for the exhibition. Apparently there were many more objects offered that had to be turned away. These items--pottery, inlaid jewelry boxes, a doll's bed, an old phonograph--clearly represent things that people value and have passed down within their families, in some cases for hundreds of years. The love and history emanating from those objects just made them, for me, so much lovelier than even the most beautiful works of art. Though I must say, a series of paintings of Dhaka's riverbanks from 1840 was pretty neat--the city is unrecognizable.

And the best part of all? For a cultural attache, attending an event like this is considered work. Yup, my job is pretty sweet.

Food glorious food

As promised, whether you wanted it or not, pictures of food. Somehow nothing turned out looking that impressive, but it sure tasted good. Steak in a red wine and butter reduction, caramelized corn with mint, and cream biscuits (with a view of my Valentine's Day street roses, which James sent the driver to get--he proudly announced that he got the cut-rate ones, saving an entire 5 taka, or 7 cents, per flower):


And, in a blurry shot, my personal favorite--Chocolate Idiot Cake with honey ice cream:


Tonight we go out for part II of our two-day tradition--February 15th is the anniversary of when we first started dating (seven years ago today) (though not really actually the anniversary of our first date... it's confusing), which is the night we always go out to eat, avoiding the previous night's Valentine's Day massacre of quality standards at restaurants everywhere. So off we go...

Holiday blues

Happy Presidents Day! I love getting American and Bangladeshi holidays off. And Happy Valentine's Day! I am told it is also Chinese New Year (which will likely matter to us a lot more two years from now). Really, a bonanza of holidays.

Of course, it's been a bit tough to make the most of this three-day weekend when I've been sick--again! I managed to go ages in Bangladesh without being sick much--one nasty stomach virus and not much else. Now in the course of 3-4 weeks, I've just been sick constantly--first bronchitis, then a bad cold with a fever and everything. I've been feverish several times in the last few weeks, which is crazy considering I haven't had a fever since childhood. Yup, it's official--I am falling apart.

So in the course of three days, it looks like I will have left the apartment exactly once, to go to the Commissary and get ingredients for tonight's dinner. James and I always cook on Valentine's Day, and we won't stop now. I am trying David Lebovitz's Chocolate Idiot Cake recipe, and it's in the oven right now. I am sure I will take many poorly-lit shots of our dinner tonight, so hopefully that is something to look forward to for all of you.

Hopefully by next week's three-day weekend I'll be feeling a bit livelier.

Cruisin' together

I generally find the annual Cruise Issue that the New York Times Travel section does to be among its least interesting offerings--better than the issue dedicated to skiing, but otherwise pretty much a loser.

But they totally cheated and made the lead article about a woman chartering a boat to take her and 79 of her friends down the Nile. Um, awesome. I am very inspired. Who wants to do it??

I will insert one of my pictures of Egypt, from May 2007, just because:

Doubts? Never.

The other day on the A-100 Yahoo group (to which I am still subscribed in order to monitor the POL register for James because he claims that if he joined it himself the crazy people would just make him nervous), someone posted about their concerns that the Foreign Service wasn't for them, as people do from time to time. The familiar pattern of reactions ensued: a few people wrote back saying that if the person wasn't 100% committed, they didn't deserve a slot and should leave for someone more desperate and therefore more deserving (?); then others wrote back and slammed those people for making the forum less supportive; then lots of others wrote in about their doubts, some of which sounded less than impressive, in the vein of "My entire goal in life since the age of six has been to join the Foreign Service, but now I wonder if I'll miss my favorite coffee shop, so, you know, we all have doubts."

At times I feel like maybe I should stop just selfishly monitoring the board for my husband's sake and actually try to write helpful responses to people's queries and dilemmas. But there are always so many voices chiming in--a cyber-cacophony, in fact--that I never end up managing it.

In my opinion, it's once you get to post that the doubts can really start. Before I got into the Foreign Service, it was all, oh my gosh get me away from this horribly boring job and let me doing something exciting and meaningful and live in cool places yay! A year and a half into my first assignment, though, it's easy to wonder about what I gave up--life in my favorite city in the world, a well-paying and completely undemanding job that let me live the way I wanted to (i.e. not working too many hours), a lifestyle so filled with novelty and culture and delicious food that it sometimes now seems like a dream--exchanged for a city that its own denizens will admit is not much in comparison. Bangladeshis love their country, but it's never Dhaka that is the subject of romanticized visions of the homeland.

Do I regret it? Despite what the preceding paragraph may imply, the answer is not at all. I am doing what I want to be doing professionally. Not that I am working crazy hours, but I don't mind working the way I used to--my work is varied and often quite fun.

And personally, my endless wanderlust is satisfied. I am always looking forward to my next vacation to an exotic new place, and I'm always not that far away from a new assignment and a new (albeit temporary) home to get to know. Much as I loved, loved, loved New York, I was constantly scheming about how to leave it for foreign climes. Within the space of a year, I vacationed in Argentina, Egypt, Greece, and Turkey (with a few vacation days tacked onto a business trip to London). If only for the sake of my wallet, it's definitely helping to start out closer to vacation destinations in Asia during this tour.

Not that I am ever exactly sure where I'll end up later on... starting a long-term career path at the age of 23 can be a risky business, and much as I feel like a grown-up, youthful passions for one thing or another can fade. Maybe by 33 I'll be ready to live in one place and never move again. But then again, that doesn't sound like me.

This made me laugh for ages

Unhappy hipsters.

Just read it.

Good news, bad news

My stomach is not really being the champ it usually is, so I am enjoying an oh-so-enticing dinner of toast tonight. But it gives me a chance to ponder that age-old question: how do they get the little holes in the English muffins???

For the last few days we had Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Judith McHale in town. Everything seemed to go off pretty well, and none of the events for which I was site officer crashed and burned, so good start. Here is an article from the website of the Awami League (current ruling party) on the Under Secretary's meeting with the Prime Minister. It notes, "US Ambassador in Dhaka James F Moriarty, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister MA Karim and Special Assistant to the Prime Minister Abdus Sobhan Golap were also present."

Okay, so my presence was not noted, but there I was, Third Secretary to the stars! It was pretty exciting. It was a great opportunity to try my hand at note-taking during a big meeting, especially before I head off to Beijing and become Entry Level Officer #143 (fifth row, twelfth from right).

In other, less delightful news, a giant cloud of dust has descended on Dhaka. It is difficult to breathe. Sorry, that was a downer. Imagine some singing, dancing clowns or something to end this post. Except don't imagine them in Dhaka because they might be choking on the air.

Best. Article. Ever.

“I used to like ‘My Way,’ but after all the trouble, I stopped singing it,” he said. “You can get killed.”

The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”

...

“ ‘I did it my way’ — it’s so arrogant,” Mr. Albarracin said. “The lyrics evoke feelings of pride and arrogance in the singer, as if you’re somebody when you’re really nobody. It covers up your failures. That’s why it leads to fights.”

From the New York Times: "Sinatra Song Often Strikes Deadly Chord"

Weekend over already?

This has been a busy weekend that has made me pretty excited to have three-day weekends the next two times around (Presidents Day and a local holiday, Mother Language Day). Yesterday we woke bright and early for the Public Affairs Office picnic. For the second year running, I was a prize winner in the annual games (third place in pass the pillow, aka hot potato). This year we picnicked on the grounds of the museum in Sonargaon, the ancient capital of Bangladesh where, sadly, pretty much nothing of the old city is left. Alas. But you can use your imagination.

Today we rested and shopped at the Commissary (it's the little things that get exciting after a while--we are all abuzz about the shipment of Breyer's ice cream that's been received) before I headed off to a reception with the visiting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy. Tomorrow I'm gearing up for more meetings around the visit, which should actually be pretty exciting.

But it also means getting up a bit early, so that's all for now. We're having a mild "winter" in Dhaka--the highs are in the high 70s. It is pretty much not registering for me, though even Americans are claiming it was quite cold while I was on vacation.

Small blessings

I have eaten sushi twice in one week in Dhaka, and here I am to tell about it--a marvel.

It's the little things. Not that the sushi was very good.

Food and the written word

Mmmm sweet sweet Nagasaki. This is seriously an amazing Japanese restaurant hiding in an unassuming neighborhood in Dhaka. The hellish traffic is the only thing keeping me from eating there every night. Yum yum yum. Sure beats my lunch today of stinky fish and boiled radish.

Plus, we finished off the night with more of the chocolate bourbon cake from James's birthday. Amazing.

In other news, this poem made me want to write again.

Guess what? I don't have time. As Virginia Woolf once said, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." I have neither money that I don't have to work for nor a room to my own name, unfortunately. Anthony Trollope managed to combine his writing with a career as a public servant (did you know he invented the red pillar mailboxes you see in Britain?), but that involved waking up at 5am every day, and hello, have you met me? That's not happening.