I still feel vastly inadequate

I mostly have the boringest life one could imagine, so I don't post here that often. I hope you'll forgive me. Tonight, however, I had dinner in Newton, MA with a bunch of Stanford students (including one of Andrew's fellow Miltonians) and then went to a Black & White themed party at Jackie Weiss' Brookline apartment dressed in women's underwear.

There may be pictures on facebook. Also, the more I think about how I could never run for public office, the more I'm conviced that merely knowing me might be an impediment to the rest of you ruling the world someday. But maybe not. Best of luck.

Two more things:

1) I'm coming back to Stanford in three weeks or so. I'm thinking about trying to pick up some part time work until school starts (though this isn't totally necessary), but if you have any ideas, let me know.

2) I've been hanging out in Boston a lot lately. Ashwin when we get our apartment in Cambridge next fall, we're going to have a lot of fun.

How Hot Are You?

12. You meet a wizard in downtown Chicago. The wizard tells you he can make you more attractive if you pay him money. When you ask how this process works, the wizard points to a random person on the street. You look at this random stranger. The wizard says, "I will now make them a dollar more attractive." He waves his magic wand. Ostensibly, this person does not change at all; as far as you can tell, nothing is different. But--somehow--this person is suddenly a little more appealing. The tangible difference is invisible to the naked eye, but you can't deny that this person is vaguely sexier. This wizard has a weird rule, though--you can only pay him once. You can't keep giving him money until you're satisfied. You can only pay him one lump sum up front.

How much cash do you give the wizard?

Holy crap

You guys would totally not believe the stuff that's happened to me in the last two months. First, as I was lugging Joel's giant eye-sore of a couch up to the third floor of Xanadu, I lost my footing and the damn thing slipped. Onto my foot. Crushed it totally. So obviously living on the third floor of a building with a shattered right foot sucks balls but not nearly as much as the run in I had with that crazy religious nut out in White Plaza. I was going to lunch one day and he started yelling at me for who know what reason and I asked him a simple religious question (Was Jesus Jewish?) and the guy flipped a shit. It was like I insulted his grandmother.

But whatever. I got over it. In the meantime, I've been dealing with the entirety of China in Hoover Tower which has been pretty freaking awesome. (Did I mention it was opposite day?)

I'm glad to hear that everyone is doing fine and dandy. Sorry about not posting more regularly (or at all). Conference services/VIS/URP stuff/Joel's mom have been owning my ass. I'll try to keep up.

Oh, and I didn't actually break my foot or anything. I've picked up lying as my new hobby. That and choking hookers.

But I wasn't kidding about your chair being a total pain Joel. You better get that shit before summer's out or I'm throwing it off the roof. In a loving manner of course:)

Update...

I haven't had internet at home for a couple weeks now, so I can't really remember when I last checked the blog or posted to it. I try to refrain from doing much personal stuff while at work, but for so many reasons (aforementioned lack of internet at home; general lack of work to do, and complete lack of anything with a deadline attached; little to no oversight of what I'm doing while at work), I spent most of today e-mailing, reading news (well, kind of part of my job...kind of), doing some DM work, and now catching up with this wonderful site. I am completely intrigued by Em's account of Guatemala, and I can't wait to catch up with all of you in person this fall. It sounds like there will be endless lunch-time fodder, and we all know deep down that we'll be eating plenty of meals on Durand's porch regardless of whether we're living there.

DC on the whole has been really wonderful. I like the city a lot, though I hate humidity more and more with each passing day. Fortunately it's been pretty mild since I got here, but occasionally there are those nights when a three block walk leaves me drenched in sweat. Yum. Work is generally pretty boring. The one huge upside is that they don't seem to care how often I leave to attend hearings on the Hill, seminars put on by one of DC's million think-tanks, or other events that I can in some way argue contribute to my understanding of the issues I'm working on or my position as a well-informed citizen. In other words, I can go to anything I want. Luckily, I really like most of my co-workers. The other fellows are all sharp and fun to hang out with, and I'm bummed that most of them will be taking off in the next few weeks to have some time off before they head back to school in mid or late August.

I spent last weekend in the Twin Cities with my family. My uncle threw an engagement party for my sister and her fiancee in St. Paul, and we spent some time with his family in Minneapolis too. They dragged me to my first (and, god willing, last) bridal shower...yikes. When not with family I spent every waking moment reading the Deathly Hollows. I won't say anything beyond the fact that I loved it from start to finish and plan to read it again as soon as Sam is done (or perhaps sooner...).

It's a long summer, but somehow I already feel like it's nearing the end. I think it's because August is just a week away, meaning I only have another month before honors college. I haven't started any of my reading, and although I'm not really worried about it, it's just one more thing to toss onto the to-do list. With Sam and Jess both gearing up for grad school tests (GREs for the former, LSAT the latter), a small part of my mind is also much more acutely attentive to the decisions that await most of us in the coming year.

Good Thing There Are Iraqi Frenchmen in Chimaltenango

Hi guys,

All continues to go not as planned in Guatemala, but hey you know those interview questions when you have to come up with kick ass stories for which you aren´t culpable, well I have more now.

Everythings going great with the survey. In the last month we´ve seen more of this country than most Guatemalans see in their lives, we´ve seen natural beauty to match Eden, and I can at least hold multi hour conversations in Spanish even if I still sound like those the equivalent of Chinese grocers in the Sunset. It looks like we can probably get 1000 of these surveys, including about 6500 people probably (since each ones about a household and households are pretty big).

But then on Saturday one of our backpacks got stolen on a bus. Which really was rather unfortunate seeing as it was valuable out of all proportion to its size: money, wallet, credit cards, drivers licence, passport, camera, USB backup, journal, master copies of all of our documents, shuffle, two pairs of glasses, books, oh yeah, and our computer, with a bunch of our data. It really was a nice little moment stopping traffic there and yelling at the bus driver in Spanish for not locking the back door while hundreds of people swarmed us to take part in the melee. Thank God there was this autoshop owner there who it turned out was an Iraqi who´d moved to France and gotten citizenship then wandered over to Guatemala to fall in love and run a mechanics shop while living off the fortune he made on US defense contracts to make guns for Israeli soldiers. Oh yeah, he was Catholic.

So now we´re leaving Guatemala a little early because we can´t do the last third of our work (entering data in Excel, ohsomuchfunyouhavenoidea) without our computer. But we´ve still made quite the run of it. Suffice it to say I´ve definitely never spoked so much in my life nor been this unstressedout in all of college. Quite a good little country for me. Like Andrew I´ve had quite a few other random adventures, throwing myself off of bridges and spraining my back, talking politics and drinking Cuban rum late into the night with Jesuit priests in no electricity little villages where the people speak 8 different languages, etc. But those until later.

Glad to hear that everyone is at least alive and more or less well. Miss you all.

P.S. Andrew you owe me a copy of the book, which you´ve owed me for about a year now so it´s really gathered interest and you probably owe me all of your articles you´re writing down there now as well. Oh, and Stegner´s Angle of Repose is amazing. I love Stanford, everyone should read it.

Watch Steve's Wet Dreams?

Here's the Chuck Klosterman Question of the Week:

At long last, someone invents "the dream VCR." This machine allows you to tape an entire evening's worth of your own dreams, which you can then watch at your leisure. However, the inventor of the dream VCR will only allow you to use this device of you agree to a strange caveat: When you watch your dreams, you must do so with your family and your closest friends in the same room. They get to watch your dreams along with you. And if you don't agree to this, you can't use the dream VCR.

Would you use the VCR?

Still Alive

Hi, I'm not dead yet. I thought I should let people know that.

I have actually been having a great time in Kampala. I'm frustrated this morning because my Editor is incompetent. But I honestly can't complain about that too much as everyone in government is incompetent too, which is why my job is extremely amusing. I have finished two detailed articles profiling a member of parliament and a crippled homeless guy. I have a lot of sources for these articles and so I spend my time wandering around the city and bothering important people. I can't do that today on account that there is literally a damn monsoon outside so I'm stuck in a very large and very empty hotel, where I get internet for free because they assume I'm a guest. It is just great being white in Africa. Every morning I pass a school on my way to work and its like a parade. Much waving. Kids yell mzungu (white person) happily. Still I don't get as much attention as Maura, who is a perennial star with Ugandans who find her quite foreign looking.

I am living with Jeff Love, Melina Platas, and Maura, but also to a degree Nate Falck and Dave Herbert. Dave is, of course, always fun. Our best adventure so far was being the only mzungu at a born-again christian fundraiser thrown by a USAID worker who admitted that, though she found Jesus, she still needed to be heavily medicated to get through the day. GOOD STUFF! I've also gone through the African rituals of playing three card poker in a seedy casino while drinking gin and tonic and the always wonderful being harassed by hookers wanting green cards. Uganda is a fine country and reasonably safe but people still want out. THe other day a grown man in a suit offered me his resume on the street. It is difficult to react to these things.

I should be leaving soon to head up to Murchison Falls to shadow park rangers. I'm excited about this because I will get to see Giraffe and because it is, probably better than the original plan, which was to go on an anti-poaching patrol, which would have probably required a flak jacket.

All in all, I've been very happy here. Though I spent an odd amount of the first week and a half drunk on beer processed from Nile water, things have calmed down now, which is fine. Jeff is a lovely house mate and Maura and Melina live in another little house next to us. There are flowers and its normally sunny. My days are tiring because you have to pay attention at all times because when you are as conspicuous as I am people pay attention to you.

I have a great deal more to say because I have been having adventures and living in a very surreal way but there is more time. I have to go over to the Wildlife Association. I have to get in touch with a disgraced member of parliament and I probably have to apologize to the British High Commission for hanging up on their PR representative. All in a days work.

Oh, and the book is going well. Though it gets put on hold, like email, because power comes and goes. I do read the blog though and it really makes me smile. It makes me happier when I pass a sign next to the Ugandan Golf Club which says, "Golf Balls Kill." And I smile at the many possibilities for Ani and Ashwin everytime I step over a leper. Truly, the world is your oyster. Oh, and Anthony, the coffee is terrific.