The Secret of Snagging a Man?

Yesterday, I was sitting next to a girl who was reading a book with intensity. When I looked over, I could see she was reading the "Nagging NO More" chapter, from a book called "Why Men Love Bitches".

I checked out the review for the book, and they are positively glowing!

Hum, maybe I've been using the wrong tactic all these years...

My Sister's Month in Tanzania

My sister is a medical student in Sydney, and doing a one-month internship in Tanzania. Here's what she has to say of her travel and first day there.

Date: Monday, December 6, 2010
Location : Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on the Way to Tanzania

Hello hello,

Me voila larguée à Dubai quelques heures... heureusement qu'il y a de l'internet gratuit! Après mon vol de Sydney à Bangkok, et de Bangkok à Dubai, je vais bientôt entamer mon vol Dubai-Dar Es Salaam, et ensuite le chauffeur de taxi m'emmène au couvent (!) pour que je puisse dormir, et va me récupérer pour me déposer à mon bus le lendemain. Ouf!!

Ok, miss you! Just letting you know I'm still alive. Dad, I used your credit card to buy a coffee, I hope it's ok (felt a bit silly to change currencies just for that).

Bises,
[007’s Sister]

Translation

Hello Hello,

Here I am, left to my own device in Dubai for a couple of hours… thankfully there’s free internet! After my flight from Sydney to Bangkok, et from Bangkok to Dubain, I will seem start my flight from Dubai-Dar Es Salaam, and after that, the taxi driver will bring me to the convent (!) so I can sleep, then he’ll come to pick me up to drop me off at the bus the next day. Oy!

Ok, miss you! Just letting you know I'm still alive. Dad, I used your credit card to buy a coffee, I hope it's ok (felt a bit silly to change currencies just for that).

Kisses,
[007’s Sister]

Source

Date: Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Location: Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania

Coucou famille!

Me voila donc enfin à Dar Es Salaam.

When I got to the airport it was a zoo to obtain a visa-- vous connaissez tous comment cela se passe donc je skip les détails! Mais je m'en suis sortie. J'ai récupéré mon sac (toute suite j'ai vérifié que rien ne manquais... tout était là, sauf le mobile merdique que Scott m'avait prêté pour l'Afrique. Merde! C'est bizarre d'ailleurs, ils ont laissé tout le reste. Enfin bon), et je me suis dirigée vers la sortie, ou le chauffeur de taxi m'attendait bien avec une pancarte "[007’s Sister]", malgré mon heure-et-demi de retard.

Évidemment-- j'ai changé mon argent australien en schillings, et j'ai tenté de m'acheter une carte pour téléphoner-- bien sûr, je me suis fait rouler (parait-il, il faut "register" les SIM cards avant to pourvoir les utiliser... détail qui m'a couté milles schillings, voir un dollar!).

Ensuite on se dirige vers mon couvent (et oui maman, mais pas Catho--Pentecostal). Là, j'apprends qu'en fait mon chauffeur n'est pas Juma mais son ami... je suis ni surprise, ni ravie. Bon, il est sympathique et je lui apprends du français en échange du swahili. Je ne doute pas qu'il m'a roulé pour le prix du taxi, que j'ai quand même tenté de négocier... mais il est 3 heures du mat' a Sydney et j'avoue que je suis bien crevée!

J'ai pu prendre une douche (ma dernière pour longtemps, je pense), et j'ai mangé au couvent... miam! Maintenant, au lit, j'ai un bus à attraper à six heures du mat demain.

C'est marrant, être ici me rappelle beaucoup Mada... mais il y a de la construction partout et j'ai même vu des feux qui fonctionnent sur la route!! Un pays qui à l'air de bouger, il n'y en a aucun doute.

Gros gros bisous, j'écris à toute vitesse dans mon journal et je prend plein de photos,
Deso pour les erreurs de grammaire...

[007’s Sister]


Translation

Hi Family!

When I got to the airport it was a zoo to obtain a visa—you all know how that goes so I’ll skip the details! But I figured it out. I went to pick up my bag (I immediately check whether anything was missing… everything was there, except the shitty cell phone Scott had lent me for Africa. Shit! It’s weird in retrospect, they left everything else. Oh well), and I went to the exit where the taxi driver was waiting for me with a sign “[007’s Sister]", despite my hour and a half of lateness.

Naturally—I changed my Australian money into Schillings, and I tried to buy a card for the phone—of course, I got conned (apparently, one has to “register” the SIM card before being able to use them…a detail that cost me a thousand Schillings, or a dollar!).

After that we go in the direction of the convent (and yes Mom, but not Catholic—Pentecostal). There I learned in fact that my driver was not Juma but his friend…I’m neither surprised, nor happy. Despite that fact, he’s pleasant and I teach him French in exchange for Swahili. I have no doubt that he had me for the price of the taxi, despite my tries to negotiate… But it’s 3:00 a.m. in Sydney and I have to admit that I’m really tired!

I was able to take a shower (probably my last one for a long time), and I ate in the convent…Yum! Now in bed, I have a bus to catch at 6:00 a.m. tomorrow.

It’s funny, being here reminds me a lot of Mada [Madagscar]… but there’s contruction everywhere and I even saw traffic lights that work along the road ! A country that seems to move, there’s no doubt.

Big big kisses, I’m writing very fast in my journal and taking tons of photos. Sorry for the spelling mistakes…

[007’s Sister]


Date: Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Location: Muheza, Tanzania

Hello hello,

I'm in Muheza! The bus ride was looooong, but I didn't read a single sentence-- my eyes were glued to the landscape... I'm really in the foothills of Mt Kili... [Mount Kilimanjaro]

Anyway, tonight all of the muzungus are having dinner together (it's a Tuesday night ritual; we students are also going to draw up a cooking roster), so I don't have time to connect my laptop to the wifi hotspot at the hospital (pretty fancy huh!). I just went to town (were I was less mobbed than at the train station), I can hear a cow mooing outside of my windows and kids playing soccer. We have no running water and the elec cuts out more often than not, but the students (all Aussie) seem very cool. I am the only one who came out here alone!

The hospital is... Very different. Let me wait until I spend some formal time there to describe it further.

Also, send me texts!
Sent from my iPhone

Source

All I need for Christmas...

... is money!

I've been a bit poor lately, often drawing into my savings account to make ends meet. BUT I shouldn't even complain because I have a job, and I probably make much more money than the average American (or French person for that matter).

Nonetheless, I've decided to be reasonable with my expenses this year, especially on the decoration front. So this is what I came up with (please excuse the blurriness of the pictures, they were taken by cell phone).

Made from a bright Banana Republic shopping bag, cheap craft paper and dull crayons. I bought the Stars in a store that promoted fair trade, and are made from raffia fibres from Cambodia.

Close up of the wreath in question.

I adorned my stairway with multicolored spice packets from Madagascar, red bows and wooden toys that my mom had as decorations for our tree from 1978-1996. (I don't know why the bottom of the picture looks hot pink, but I like it... Hum, food for thought for when I decide to repaint my house).

Cambodia, Part 4

In preparation for the races that happen during the Water Festival in November, the villagers bless and christen their pirogues.

According to Wikipedia:

It is called the 'Water Festival' by Westerners because people pour water at one another as part of the cleansing ritual to welcome the new year. Traditionally people gently sprinkled water on one another as a sign of respect, but as the new year falls during the hottest month in South East Asia, many people end up dousing strangers and passersby in vehicles in boisterous celebration. The act of pouring water is also a show of blessings and good wishes. It is believed that on this Water Festival, everything old must be thrown away, or it will bring the owner bad luck.

The ceremony start with religious blessings.

The buddhist priests then sprinkle the boat and crew with water.

The crew rolls her down the steep banks and takes her on her first voyage on the Mekong River.




One of the French/Cambodian lady accompanying me at this ceremony was strongly asserting that she'd be out of the city during the Festival as "it gets so incredibly crowded it's a zoo here in Phnom Penh, and I want to be as far from the Festival as possible".

This was a eerily prescient comment as on November 22, 2010, according to the Guardian:

More then 300 people died in a stampede at a water festival in Phnom Penh tonight, according to Cambodia's prime minister.

Hundreds more were hurt at the event, on a small island in a river in the capital, as the crowd panicked and pushed over a bridge to the mainland. Some who tried to flee were crushed underfoot or fell into the water.

That's the end of my little exposé on Cambodia folks, but this really doesn't do it justice. It has a rich history, mainly influenced by buddhists art and philosophy and is a really nice country to visit, especially if it's your first time abroad as the people are kind and not at all pushy. But its recent history is also worth looking into, especially during the period of the Khmer Rouge (1975-1979) a period of communism where the intellectual elite (especially the French speaking Cambodians) where systematically murdered during a genocide.

Cambodia, part 3

I'm not sure how to describe the food exactly, but there are a lot of recent Chinese additions to the meals (such as spices, sauce and other ingredients).

We ate a lot of rice.


Tried a common dish called Congée, which I suspect is deviled or rotted eggs (here in a plate with shredded carrots, salmons and cheese).


And I tried to eat Tarantulas, just for the sake of it. They are suprisingly sweet and soft on the inside, though quite crunchy on the outside. I tried my best to much two of the three, but just couldn't bring myself to finish the dish. It made me queasy (which is a sure and sad sign that I'm softening in my old age).

(Me, pretending to be excited about eating tarantulas)

Cambodia, part 2

In Phnom Pen, the motorcycle is King... and often modified to resemble amorphous food stands, or rather sophisticated vehicles to transport people:

Pirogues are also a pretty popular way to get around. Sometimes, you can find entire families living in these slim wooden floats, outrigged with motors.



The National Museum of Cambodia in the Capital holds inestimable collections of Buddahs, old scrolls and decorated stone carvings... Unfortunately, the inside is not ideally maintained (most likely due to lack of funds) but the structure and gardens are beautiful.

Various Odds and Ends of Travel - Cambodia, part 1

I don't know what's wrong with me, but I've been really bad at blogging - I recently went paragliding in France and facilitated a "mock" exercise on a pandemic outbreak of Influenza in Benin (in French no less!), and I didn't even write about those... Blame it on the constant moving around, the house renovations and general laziness.

So let me catch you up on my most recent trip to Cambodia for work. I'll talk about the fun stuff only because if I talked about work, I'd have to kill you (sigh, just kidding... if only my work could be so exciting).

As you can imagine, Cambodia is very lusciously green. Awww, it felt good to be back in the near oppressive humidity of a tropical country...

Rural houses are funny little things, much like Dr. Seuss' dwellings, with a pointed roof, a second floor on stilts, and family life taking place underneath the raised floor of the house.

Humped cattle also benefit from the shade underneath the house

12-year old girl looming silk/cotton scarves - the amazing things is that my hometown (Lyon in France) was an old silk town, and we still see these looms in museums. I didn't know people actually still used these!

Close up of the complicated machinery of the looms

12-year old boys, of course, get to hang out and play, while their sister/cousin works up to 6 hours of day making the weave.

Upstairs

Sadly, I don't have a lot of pictures of the upstairs :/

Here's a friend in my room, helping to hang the curtain rods up. We didn't have a ladder so we used my (antique) dresser to hoist ourselves up. Also, my friend is, errrm, detail orientated (shall we say) and measured many times to make sure they were COMPLETELY straight. It took a long time.



My bro caulking the outside of the office windows. Sigh, I wish someone had mentioned that all the windows needed to be caulked before the torrential rains started falling. Also, I tried to do some windows myself, but I could tell from his "ya that's pretty good sis" that it was a poor attempt at best. Hey, I can't be good at everything!

Skylight in Upstairs Bathroom

While in mid-progress...


Friends admiring the finished product. It's a truly a thing of beauty. Must post actual pictures of it soon...

Living Room

Two views of the living room before I got that awesome blue sofa from Room and Board. Updated pictures coming soon I promise! See that lamp on the ceiling? Sadly it was the only original feature that was salvageable :(

The roomie cleaning the ceiling lamp parts. I've known him 5 years and I've never seen him so concentrated. By the way, this took hours. The grim was pretty thick.

Kitchen and Dining Room

Ugh, the kitchen and the dining room were pretty darn dingy before the renovation. Here they are now, without the old wall separating the two. I found a coin dating from 1928 in the dust of construction there.

Same picture, less crap on the surfaces. Nice kitchen island! Don't you love the bright yellow color? Well I do, and mom helped to pick it out, so be nice. The dangling pendant lamps came from my parents house and were part of a connected three-lamp pendant. Looks sleek and nice in this kitchen (not so much in theirs). There's deceptively little storage space in this kitchen, thus the need for the closet in the den...

Fridge, containing the essentials.

Friend, trying on a funky urchin-like lamp (made from recycled plastic bottles and bought off of Etsy) for size. It's still not yet hung. Ugh, I'm so lazy...

Roommate hanging some of his modern artwork on the wall. He's a whizz at hanging. He really is. Though I made him hang about 80% of the pieces on all our walls, so I'm sure he was cursing his special gift at some point.

Den

The den off of the kitchen was the only room where the wooden floor was not salvageable. A minor miracle given that all the floors were covered with: a layer of rotting carpet, a foamy cover, glue, and in some cases, dark brown paint. They had to add new wood, but the rest of the house is original. Since there's only two small closets in the house, I asked my dad to add a closet where you see the Dyson (not mine, though I wish it were) and other cleaning products.


Dad and I in the closet. Before you get the misconception I had anything to do with it, let me admit that I didn't help a bit. Also, please excuse the appearance of the workout clothes...

I also got a second bathroom built opposite the closet with the First-Time Homeowner credit President Obama gave me. Thanks Obama! The den in now considerably smaller than it was before, but the closet and the bathroom as so useful I don't regret building them.

Backyard

This is what my backyard looked like while the contractors did their 2 months of renovation (bordering on a gut job). Except the pile was usually three times as high, and full of errand cats. Thank God the neighbors never complained of it. A ridiculously small open-back van hauled the trash during many trips to clear the backyard. It was almost comical to see the towering Pile O' Stuff it could drive away with.

My friend courageously came to visit when he was in DC (he lives in NY) to see the progress of the house. Though the picture is very dark since it was taken from the basement, you can see the bright sun shining on the trash in the backyard, and my friend valiantly showing enthusiasm in taking pictures of the progress.

Aaaaah! Much better! The grass was almost completely dead from not seeing the sun in 2 months. Fortunately it all grew back very quickly... And it's now 100% crab grass and dandelions.

My Bad

I've been embarrassingly remiss in posting new pictures of my place... Here are some for y'all to enjoy. **Eventually** if I get my act together, I will post before and after pictures. Sorry, my bad.

Enjoy this renovation of a Petworth, DC home...

Just for the sake of posting...

Alright, thanks Steve in Wisc. for your email - I have been completely remiss in posting on this blog.

Mostly because I don't get excited about news things + I'm tired after a long day at work + my small camera got stolen in Croatia so I can't post pictures as easily as before + I'm still working on my house.

But, just for the sake of posting, here's what I got in preparation for the fall:

Ben Simon Tennis Lacet Gris Foncé

They're French shoes we used to wear in my International School about 14 years ago. And they're just now starting to be cool in the States. Pretty neat huh?

Beauty and the Geek

As you may know, my sister is a super star. She's a medical student at the University of Sydney, she does research on the side, and researches and helps to produce a weekly science radio show called Diffusion Science Radio.

Last week, the cast did a very interesting piece on the TV show called Beauty and the Geek dispelling the myth that geeky guys are socially inept and whimpy, and pretty girls are dumb and superficial. This is what they had to say about it.

Source

This Explains So Much!

I'm moving to Iowa City!

Timeline of a Dryer

Source

You'd be surprised how useful a dryer is. Sure, you may fancy yourself a new-age hippy of sorts, but let's be honest: a dryer is much more useful than a cloth line when you have few clothes, need them unwrinkled for the next work day, and have a damp basement.

Well, when I bought the house, the inspector told me the dryer was working fine (and that the roof was sound, ya right). It took my roommate about 2 weeks to convince me that it actually wasn't drying at all, another 2 weeks for me to test it out, and 1 week to order it at Home Depot.

When it came to the house, 1 full month after we'd moved in, the Home Depot guys took a quick look at my basement, and announced that I needed a GAS dryer, not the ELECTRIC dryer I ordered. Oh boy. I didn't even know gas dryer existed.

Took me another 1 week to go to Home Depot to ask for a reimbursement, and figure out how to order a new one. 1 more week for me to get my money back, and finally order a new gas dryer. I was extremely meticulous in the online purchase, making sure that it was gas, I got the extra cord and duct, asked for removal of the old machine and installation of the new one.

So, almost 2 months after moving in, we should have a dryer on Tuesday! Wish me luck!

I'm staying cool and calm, because things could be worse, way worse. Case in point: the story of a woman who went 2 weeks without a toilet (read on to see what she did in her apartment to compensate), and 1 month without a shower.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/garden/15remodel.html?pagewanted=2&hpw