Here's the thing...

After a question from my mother about whether I was still 'gainfully' unemployed I got to thinking about the fine line between 'gainful unemployment' and 'painful unemployment'. It's a fine line, you know. When I moan about my new state in life I find that I'm plied with helpful advice from friends like, 'stop whining, I can see you've been too molly-coddled,' or, (and my personal favorite) 'why don't you get a job?' A job? Now there's an idea! Why didn't I think of that one! So, I turn to the blog which is the only thing that makes me feel as though I am a successful human being these days. Ok, while not exactly successful then at least participating in the great human drama we fondly refer to as, life. Unemployment definitely has it's upsides…namely that you can sleep in as long as you like and spend an inordinate amount of time watching bad movies and reading bad fiction and generally loafing about in the manner th...

Alexander Solzhenitysn said that we should own only what we can carry with us. We should know language, know countries, know people and let memory be our travel bag. Living as an exile from Russia he knew what it was to continually leave things behind and as I pack up my apartment in expectation of leaving I wish that could say that I too own only what I can carry with me. But life, I've found, is the continual accumulation of stuff and clutter. Having lived as a nomad for the past ten years it's amazing the sheer volume of things that I have slowly acquired. Things that I don't need but like to have around. The sieve from Zambia, my grandmother's table cloth, the marble carving of a Chinese junk, the matrooshka stacking dolls. It's also amazing how quickly it can be packed away into boxes and shipped off to storage. (I may not be good at many things but packing I can do.) Looking at the corner where all the packed boxes are stacked I try to think if there were a fi...

from The Urbanite - http://www.urbanitebaltimore.com/janissue/whatyourwriting.htm After I spent nearly a thousand dollars and six hours at the Motor Vehicle Administration, my 1989 Mazda passed the state inspection, and now the back of my car proudly displays a new Maryland plate. However, the screws holding the Washington, D.C. front plate have refused to budge, giving my car a disconcerting—if not illegal—dual identity. In downtown Baltimore you’ll find me working for a large humanitarian aid organization in disaster response. We work in places where people, sometimes against their will, sometimes by free choice, are thrust into new environments amid unknown faces, languages, and cultures; people who, like me, suddenly find themselves dependent on the kindness of strangers. “Is Centre Street that way?” I ask the man at the bus stop. “Honey!” He laughs and points in the opposite direction. “Turn around!” This, I think, is how refugees, hurricane victims, or newcomers...

Ok, so seeing as my sister has yet to ban me from posting despite no longer being anywhere exotic I’m taking that as indication that she so deeply enjoys my writing that she wants me to keep posting. Hello from London!…where the bombings continue to dominate the news and the plucky Londoners continue to get on board bues and the tube without batting an eye. It really is something the way they’ve rolled over the incident as though it were common occurrence. However, it is in keeping with their national character that displays no public emotion under stressful circumstances until some seemingly random tragedy sets the country off and then displays public emotion wholly out of all proportion to the actual event - ie. the death of Princess Diana. Last night I went to dinner with friends who live between the Liverpool Street and Altgate East stops and they were completely preoccupied with the latest questions on the investigation and not at all concerned that the trains being picked out...

Apparently, my sister has forgotten to change the password settings which still allows me to post! (Lucky, lucky YOU!) Am no longer in Indonesia - PRAISE THE LORD! - but am in Ukraine and thought I would send an update on the scene here from the U.S.’s new best friend - sorry UK. I was last here in November, immediately prior to the second election of orange revolution fame, and was curious if upon return I would find the country different…well, at all. I have to admit that I was skeptical. The U.S. is notorious for getting behind the revolution du jour and then forgetting about it while the new government slides into the same corrupt pit into which the last one lived. Then, six or so years later, we rise indignant shaking our head and wagging our finger and help a new government ascend the throne. It’s a beautiful system, actually, we feel good about ourselves and isn’t that what’s important? I digress… The question remains how is the orange revolution doing six months on? And, ...

I arrived back in DC late Monday night - having left in a blizzard and returning to summer – which made me feel as though the weather had decided that spring just wasn’t worth the effort. Apart from someone kindly declaring a federal holiday there wasn’t much fanfare for my return. A Chinese woman on the plane next to me puked on my feet when we landed, which robbed me of that thrilling moment of touching down on American soil. It was strange to leave Indonesia just when things in the relief effort were getting started and my three months there seemed both very long and very short. The past months have blurred together in a whirl of helicopter flights, stories, articles, earthquakes, snorkeling, and housing and fishing projects. At the end of it, I find that most of the work I did was on a computer in an office - mundane and removed from people’s lives. It never quite seemed to live up to the romantic moniker, ‘humanitarian aid’ it had b...

1. You see a chicken crossing the road and you spend a good ten minutes seriously considering why the chicken was crossing the road. 2. You’re so tired that you can sleep in any sort of contorted position in any sort of vehicle driving on any condition of road. 3. You’ve reached that special state of zen so that even when your driver decides to play chicken with a TNI army semi it doesn’t phase you. 4. The malaria medication runs out. 5. It drops to the low 90’s and seems cold. 6. You forget what warm water feels like…or why anyone would want warm water for anything. 7. You walk into a western-style toilet and have to stop and think how to use it. 8. Batting mosquitos with an electrified/glorified badminton racquet has become your idea of a ‘well-spent evening’. 9. The thought of eating another kernel of rice makes you physically ill. 10. You can no longer tell if you’re actually in an earthquake or imagining it…and you don’t really care.