Pardon my recent, multi-month, blogging laziness my dear fans… or magnus, to be specific… I can make up gazillion of perfectly reasonable and worthy excuses, but I refuse to lower myself to this level… it was laziness… laziness… and pure lack of motivation… that’s that….
Given that it’s the end of the year… I figured I can put together something for the departing 2007… and what a fine year it was… it started out in late February, with whiffing and sneezing moi arriving into the snoozing arms of Magnus at Addis Abeba international airport. From there, a few life changing and near life ending experiences later, I came out with a fine photo album, a few more friends and tales of madness and ineptitude that I will be sure to be reciting to my grandchildren 60 years from now…
From there things got more serious.. I had to work on firing a particularly worthless employee of mine… without getting the axe myself… a feat I apparently pulled off with great success…. Except that this lesson in management and human resources wasted a good several months of my career…
And from there, right as I was about to re-orient my sloth-like post-MBA career… just as I was about to peak out into the great wide world to see what fine opportunities are out there for a bright boy like me… there comes the now legendary credit crunch of 2007… and there I am, wasting a perfectly beautiful summer locked up in the office trying to save somebody else’s money and somebody else’s job for reasons that are still not perfectly clear to me…
Then of course there were the trips with Mila to Belize and France… which were good and healthy for I managed not to get us into any legal trouble and my only death-defying inclination was the 70 mile/ hour drive in our Yaris from Monte Carlo to Nice at 4 in the morning, with Timbaland…
Anyway… end of all ends… the year was great and successful… thanks mainly not to the above near debacles… but to the great improvement in my life, health and social standing… (though I am still a fat, overfed pig)…. And all of these, can of course be credited to Mila… that’s that…
Now onto planning our New Years party which I have a feeling will be an absolute organizational mess…
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Incoherent composition of literary genius
OK… mila is in the other room reading claudia’s book… and I am blogging… half ill from the cheeseburger I stuffed down my throat half an hour ago at some half seedy, half yuppie joint on upper west side… actually there was nothing seedy about it… the place was just dark… and you could clearly tell the yuppiness of the establishment by both the number of regulation finance employee blue shirts worn by the clientele and the wide selection of over-priced and obscure foreign (most likely Belgian) beers….
Anyway… today had my first writing class… actually… now to think of it… really my first writing class… its called something like intermediate fiction… its suppose to help lazy bastards like me complete our life goal of writing a thought out and meaningful and of course commercially successful novel… as a consequence… we will achieve some degree of financial freedom, quit our current miserable jobs and develop a combination of drug/ alcohol/ pain killer habits… we will of course hate outselves more than ever… but it seems like any semi-reasonable life endeavour eventually ends up there… how do I know you ask? This is how my friends – I spent my formative years caddying at a jewish country club… for a bunch of very rich jews… a fair number of whom were self made men… men who were successful in their careers (mostly lawyers and dentists) and achieved if anything a healthy degree of ‘freedom’…. What this freedom seemed to entitle them is to unfathomable degrees of whining and self-pity… a strong sense of your own rights… and an iron will to not over-tip any given member of country club staff (myself included) by a number greater then $5…
Anyway… I forgot where I was going here… the writing class… yes… so I sat in the class… one of 12 devoted pupils – we are like the 12 tribes of Israel… and I choose myself to be Rueven – the cooking tribe… why – I don’t know but it seems the most practical of all of them… let the Levites pray and the Benjamenites rule… or whatever it is… I will stick to cooking bland and unoriginal gastronomical cuisines of Eastern Europe….
The class itself was fine… we had to write spontaneous essays about ourselves and our scars… on both of them I think I wrote the most volume for the least quality… though the one line about me being like a diseased pig seemed to draw a reaction… what was good was that everyone was outside the field of finance… something I assessed immediately, even before the formal introductions… how you might ask? Easy – I was the only one with the sociopathic vulture stare in his eyes… everyone else was calm, seemingly well adjusted and even thoughtful… though there was an older librarian… I respectable looking, older bearded Jewish man who somehow inserted his life story the fact that he has a small p(*&s… but even this managed to come out cultured, in a modern sort of way…
And the class was fine and I spent the good first half of it feeling superior to everyone since I was the asshole from structured finance and no one there knew what a real asshole from structured finance really is like… now to think of it, no one there probably even suspected that such a thing as structured finance even exists… but that’s besides the point… so anyway, there I sat, overlooking everybody, thinking what sheep they are… knowing not a thing of life… for after all, who knows something about life but one who lives in a mad and cannibalistic shop I call my employment… and this feeling of superiority lasted until we started reading our pieces… and I started listening… and it started coming out that everyone here can write… and write pretty originally… and even with a bit of surprising flair… something really surprising to me since the way I see things in this world, no one can have surprising flair but me… but surprised I was… and was… and was… until it was my turn to read… and I looked at my scribbled handwriting... and had a thought in my head that even I cant read my own chicken scratch… and then started talking… or I mean reading… and missing the punctuation marks that I failed to put down in the first place.. and tripped over sentences… and words and nouns and adjectives… and finally over everything… including the diseased pig remark… until it came to me that I was no longer an evil structured finance vulture, by a blush red 31 year old… reading out loud his spontaneous prose for the first time…. And that despite all my personal assurances of self-genius… I was quite average in this room… maybe even below the median… and that if I am to make any headway in this sort of thing… this blushing and stumbling and mumbling and mis-punctuation might have to go… and maybe, just maybe I’ll have to put some honest to god effort into what I do… but again… that requires work and focus and concentration and thought… and where is a scraggly finance finance vulture like me to find these….
Anyway… today had my first writing class… actually… now to think of it… really my first writing class… its called something like intermediate fiction… its suppose to help lazy bastards like me complete our life goal of writing a thought out and meaningful and of course commercially successful novel… as a consequence… we will achieve some degree of financial freedom, quit our current miserable jobs and develop a combination of drug/ alcohol/ pain killer habits… we will of course hate outselves more than ever… but it seems like any semi-reasonable life endeavour eventually ends up there… how do I know you ask? This is how my friends – I spent my formative years caddying at a jewish country club… for a bunch of very rich jews… a fair number of whom were self made men… men who were successful in their careers (mostly lawyers and dentists) and achieved if anything a healthy degree of ‘freedom’…. What this freedom seemed to entitle them is to unfathomable degrees of whining and self-pity… a strong sense of your own rights… and an iron will to not over-tip any given member of country club staff (myself included) by a number greater then $5…
Anyway… I forgot where I was going here… the writing class… yes… so I sat in the class… one of 12 devoted pupils – we are like the 12 tribes of Israel… and I choose myself to be Rueven – the cooking tribe… why – I don’t know but it seems the most practical of all of them… let the Levites pray and the Benjamenites rule… or whatever it is… I will stick to cooking bland and unoriginal gastronomical cuisines of Eastern Europe….
The class itself was fine… we had to write spontaneous essays about ourselves and our scars… on both of them I think I wrote the most volume for the least quality… though the one line about me being like a diseased pig seemed to draw a reaction… what was good was that everyone was outside the field of finance… something I assessed immediately, even before the formal introductions… how you might ask? Easy – I was the only one with the sociopathic vulture stare in his eyes… everyone else was calm, seemingly well adjusted and even thoughtful… though there was an older librarian… I respectable looking, older bearded Jewish man who somehow inserted his life story the fact that he has a small p(*&s… but even this managed to come out cultured, in a modern sort of way…And the class was fine and I spent the good first half of it feeling superior to everyone since I was the asshole from structured finance and no one there knew what a real asshole from structured finance really is like… now to think of it, no one there probably even suspected that such a thing as structured finance even exists… but that’s besides the point… so anyway, there I sat, overlooking everybody, thinking what sheep they are… knowing not a thing of life… for after all, who knows something about life but one who lives in a mad and cannibalistic shop I call my employment… and this feeling of superiority lasted until we started reading our pieces… and I started listening… and it started coming out that everyone here can write… and write pretty originally… and even with a bit of surprising flair… something really surprising to me since the way I see things in this world, no one can have surprising flair but me… but surprised I was… and was… and was… until it was my turn to read… and I looked at my scribbled handwriting... and had a thought in my head that even I cant read my own chicken scratch… and then started talking… or I mean reading… and missing the punctuation marks that I failed to put down in the first place.. and tripped over sentences… and words and nouns and adjectives… and finally over everything… including the diseased pig remark… until it came to me that I was no longer an evil structured finance vulture, by a blush red 31 year old… reading out loud his spontaneous prose for the first time…. And that despite all my personal assurances of self-genius… I was quite average in this room… maybe even below the median… and that if I am to make any headway in this sort of thing… this blushing and stumbling and mumbling and mis-punctuation might have to go… and maybe, just maybe I’ll have to put some honest to god effort into what I do… but again… that requires work and focus and concentration and thought… and where is a scraggly finance finance vulture like me to find these….
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Burma news
here are some CNN reports from Burma... pretty upsetting stuff
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/10/02/myanmar.unrest/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/10/02/myanmar.unrest/index.html
Monday, October 1, 2007
A response blog
OK, so I want to start off tonight… by giving full props to my man Magnus for leaving a blog worthy commentary on my entry from 9/24 (and especially referring to it as his rant – that’s all me baby)… I have pasted his comments below for they are well worth of ‘front page’ treatment… and front page on Sivyxa… is high end real estate indeed…
Now let me address some of Magnus’s points… regarding the fact that UN assembly is in NY is an honor… I know… though unfortunately most of us… especially myself… take no advantage of this whatsoever… except for wondering through the UN park once every seven years… looking at the black overfed squirrels who reside there – they are fat and obese creatures indeed… and then posing for pictures next to the well hung elephant whom our own beloved despot, rudy-boy guiliani tried having de-masculanized…. Thank god the elephant is still in one piece, all pieces included…
To a degree I feel like my complaint is still valid… but yea… I guess end of all ends… I don’t have a car… I do take the subway… and all the hoopla surrounding these hypocrite gatherings really is kinda funny to watch… especially when one of their motorcades gets stuck in Rockefeller center traffic and you see the secret service agents start going apeshit…. (this I witnessed on Friday)…
Next point on Magnus’s commentary – my boy Mahmoud Ahmadinejad… I still stick to my guns here… I do totally agree that he should not have been allowed to stand on his Hitler pulpit and spit out his usual idiocies… on the other hand… I am not sure trying to embarrass and humiliate him was the best way to open up a ‘meaningful’ dialogue… for after all, all good people of Persia are going to hear is how their elected representative (Hitler was kind of elected too, now to think of it) got treated like a one eyed leper at a beauty colony by these ingrate American intellectuals…
Magnus – regarding beating you to Burmese commentary – I didn’t think of it before – but the pleasure is all mine J
And finally regarding Burma… who the hell knows… end of all ends… I hope it sorts itself out… what else can be done, by us at least, outside of telling anybody and everybody what an unbelievable place it is – I am not sure…
On other points of the day… I was provided these two fine youtube clips in the last couple of days… one of them is by a deranged queen of a Britney spears fan… and the other (in Russian) is by the mayor of my beloved hometown, Kharkov… both qualify as perhaps some of the funniest things I have ever seen in my life…
Now let me address some of Magnus’s points… regarding the fact that UN assembly is in NY is an honor… I know… though unfortunately most of us… especially myself… take no advantage of this whatsoever… except for wondering through the UN park once every seven years… looking at the black overfed squirrels who reside there – they are fat and obese creatures indeed… and then posing for pictures next to the well hung elephant whom our own beloved despot, rudy-boy guiliani tried having de-masculanized…. Thank god the elephant is still in one piece, all pieces included…
To a degree I feel like my complaint is still valid… but yea… I guess end of all ends… I don’t have a car… I do take the subway… and all the hoopla surrounding these hypocrite gatherings really is kinda funny to watch… especially when one of their motorcades gets stuck in Rockefeller center traffic and you see the secret service agents start going apeshit…. (this I witnessed on Friday)…
Next point on Magnus’s commentary – my boy Mahmoud Ahmadinejad… I still stick to my guns here… I do totally agree that he should not have been allowed to stand on his Hitler pulpit and spit out his usual idiocies… on the other hand… I am not sure trying to embarrass and humiliate him was the best way to open up a ‘meaningful’ dialogue… for after all, all good people of Persia are going to hear is how their elected representative (Hitler was kind of elected too, now to think of it) got treated like a one eyed leper at a beauty colony by these ingrate American intellectuals…
Magnus – regarding beating you to Burmese commentary – I didn’t think of it before – but the pleasure is all mine J
And finally regarding Burma… who the hell knows… end of all ends… I hope it sorts itself out… what else can be done, by us at least, outside of telling anybody and everybody what an unbelievable place it is – I am not sure…
On other points of the day… I was provided these two fine youtube clips in the last couple of days… one of them is by a deranged queen of a Britney spears fan… and the other (in Russian) is by the mayor of my beloved hometown, Kharkov… both qualify as perhaps some of the funniest things I have ever seen in my life…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU-WwG9-LAI&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fforum%2Emediaport%2Einfo%2Fread%2Ephp%3F5%2C425346
Finally… on other matters… a special threat goes out to Lena & Yoga for brainwashing my Mila into thinking that Southern France is quaint and boring and not worthy of a first European visit… the guilt trip on this one, my friends, will be quite large… trust me!!! It took me a full evening last night to sort the mess you made out!!!
MAGNUS’S COMMENTARY –
On Myanmar - first off all, the thought of you beating me to commenting on this issue has hampered my productivity at work all week. Secondly, I think you are very right - The people of Myanmar are on their own. Sitting as they do in the shadow of and under the protection of China, Nobody will do Anything to help them - not if they lined up their people outside a pagoda and chopped their heads off one by one on CNN. Sanctions don't mean anything to a country with three trading partners - China, India and to a small extent Thailand - who won't participate. As long as all those brainwashed eighteen year olds in the army keep taking orders to shoot from the Generals, the nation is screwed. It makes me angry, and it makes me upset - but there's nothing I can do about it.On having the UN in New York - dude, deal with it. What I wouldn't do to have the world's decision makers - or scratch that, anything of enough international significance so that it would be worth spending a career working on - at my family's doorstep. New Yorkers, unlike the rest of Amercia you're blessed with a functioning public transport system - use it. I've never understood why one would want a car in New York anyway - it's consistently faster to walk across town. Here's an idea... congestion charge...Ahmadinejad - I did not approve of the rude name calling. But everything else I thought they did right. Of course they were right to invite him - students and faculty got engaged, and intellectual debate and awareness was stimulated. Those voices calling in outrage for him not to be allowed to speak - I hate to point this out, but that's just another form of the self-righteous cencorship he practises in Iran. As for how to manage the discussion and letting him say what he wanted to say - the man is an accomplished demagouge. He could have stood there for hours and spewed propaganda, some valid and some not. But the only way the discussion has any value is if there is frank debate. Not rude debate - but ask the tough questions, and when he doesn't answer, tell him he didn't answer. It's the same as a TV interview - if you want something new to come out, ask some real questions.Enough ranting for now...
Sunday, September 30, 2007
My rather disorganized commentary on Burma
So I have been an absent blogger for the past week or so… despite a slew of important events that obviously are in dire need of comment from my end… As an excuse for this I will use 2 very important but pathetic factors… first is the vicious cold that attacked me in the middle of perfectly fine autumn weather… rendering my brain, and hence blogging ability, utmost useless… second is the sudden internet crash that brought all my important, life sustaining activities to a halt on Thursday evening… In retribution for this unacceptable mishap, I have cancelled my subscription to HBO (deemed worthless anyway by the conclusion of Sopranos a few months ago)…
Anyway… about the most important news event of the past week… and for me, probably the last year at least – the unrest in Burma… or as the media decided to call it – the Saffron revolution… a cute & modern name by the way… given that we had purple, orange and cedar revolutions in the past couple of years… and that’s not even counting the coup in the all-important republic of Kyrgyzstan, who name/ colour I have already forgotten…
With this in mind… I’d like to also ask for a moment or two of silence to the most idiotic and absurd of all tyrants/ dictators… who just happened to drop dead just a few short months ago… Yes… the wise and ageless seer of Turkmenistan –
Turkmenbashi himself... many a despot in human history has mercilessly murdered friend and foe alike… many a dictator has led his country into humiliating ruin… many a tyrant has lived in lavish palaces while his people starved… nothing out of the ordinary here… but to have the gall to rename the calendar in his own honour… now that’s priceless…
Anyway… the events in Burma… in the last week I think a lot of us went from very excited, to hopeful to dejected… the popular uprising, the saffron revolution, looked great and promising… especially for the media… but end of all ends, at this point at least, looks like it ended up nowhere… or to be exact – with a lot of people hurt or worse… and little actual results to show for it (that’s if we don’t count the cover of the Economist as a result)…
now of course I might be an undue pessimist here… and given the fact that the situation in the country is truly humiliating… for anyone and everyone involved… some good might come out of this… for after all… the powers supporting the junta – Russia/ India/ China really don’t want a public relations nightmare with the West over this… and I am sure somewhere in the bottom of their hearts, even the evil generals running the country might have a soft spot for actually doing something positive and not having their historical legacy be a giant blemish on Burmese long and storied history…
But fact of the matter is that change for Burma must come from the exact same source as the problem – the military… all of monk & citizen protests, all of international sanctions and condemnations will do very little good… until something within the military itself gives… and by this I mean independent of what some crabby old general says or orders, someone still must execute… and as we saw last week, when the average soldier is willing to follow orders, no matter what the popular opinion on the street is… the results will be quite negative… for after all soldiers have guns and average people do not…
So what must happen? Well if we take a look at the history of the Russian revolutions… in very broad and simplistic manner… what was the difference between the revolution of 1905 and
October 1917? In the former, the street stood up in outrage – i.e. the proletariat masses… while both the army and the peasantry did not budge… Result – a bloody putdown…. October 1917 – all major classes of the population, starting with proletariat and liberal intelligentsia all the way through peasantry and the armed forces were deeply unhappy with the situation at hand – a horrific & pointless war (WWI) and economic ruin at home… Hence, when the revolution was launched, not only was it driven by the working class & liberal intellectuals (as is the case in Burma), but also by the very soldiers who were suppose to protect the ‘home regime’… And as a matter of fact, the whole success of the communists during the Russian revolution and subsequent civil war hinged on the fact that they were able to recruit the best and the brightest of the army to their side… And this I have so far not seen in Burma… for all the popular protests… for all the newspaper headlines… and revolting pictures of massacre and murder… there has not been one mention of the Burmese army ‘crossing over’…
And once again… to stick to the Russian angle… if we even go to the Moscow coup attempt of 1992 or the Orange revolution in Ukraine… what was the difference… in the former – it was the fact that general Lebed (now long gone) disobeyed a direct order and put his tanks in front of the Parliament on the side of the ‘democractic’ government… and that in Ukraine, when Kuchma ordered a forceful dispersion of the protesters camped out in Kiev’s main square, the head of the Kiev military district told him to go f*&cjk himself and walked out…
And this leads to my next question… is the ‘absolute’ removal of the generals in the best interests of Burma as a whole? On that I am not so sure… for while there are practically no positives to these baboons being in power, there is one distinct thing they do bring to the table – order and stability… for we must remember that the country in question is not a uniform entity like say Portugal (I was going to say Belgium… but just remembered that its trying to split itself in half)…. And that burma is full of various ethnicities and nationalities… most of whom have centuries long hatred of each other and would probably like nothing more than to go slit their neighbor’s throat, Balkan style… and much like Marshall Tito did in post WWII Yugoslavia… the generals are probably deserving of some credit in keeping at least this part of the Burmese equation under relative control…
Now if the generals were all of a sudden yanked from their palaces… Saddam Hussein style… would there really be anyone in place to control various ethnic tensions and movements? For remember, there have been at least a dozen of these nationalistic revolts going on around Burma in the last decade or two (like say Karen National Liberation Army)… For lets be students of history here and remember how much we all hated evil old Saddam, and how we really wanted him deposed… and how nobody (outside my grandfather) ever mentioned the fact that without Saddam, and the Republican guard, and the secret police, the good people of Iraq would all of a sudden lose their minds and start killing each other in ever more liberal and creative fashion…
So with this in mind… As much as I want to say down with the generals and the evil dictatorship and in with freedom and liberty… I am really starting to think that slow and steady might be the best way to do it… Think Chinese version of communist capitalism… granted in a lot of ways its not inspiring… but it sure as hell beats the Russian ‘lets go capitalist overnight’ experiment of the early nineties…. So a meaningful solution would be perhaps for the generals, in kind response to the current mess and of course to the 2008 Olympics in china, to start slowly and steadily relinquishing control… not all at once, mind you… but slowly and steadily… liberalizing the press… allowing free, uncorrupted enterprise… inviting foreign investment… while giving themselves a chance to bow out with grace and good face… while building mighty pagodas in the plains of Bagan to make up for all the world of sins they have committed in the last 50 years….
Anyway… about the most important news event of the past week… and for me, probably the last year at least – the unrest in Burma… or as the media decided to call it – the Saffron revolution… a cute & modern name by the way… given that we had purple, orange and cedar revolutions in the past couple of years… and that’s not even counting the coup in the all-important republic of Kyrgyzstan, who name/ colour I have already forgotten…
With this in mind… I’d like to also ask for a moment or two of silence to the most idiotic and absurd of all tyrants/ dictators… who just happened to drop dead just a few short months ago… Yes… the wise and ageless seer of Turkmenistan –
Turkmenbashi himself... many a despot in human history has mercilessly murdered friend and foe alike… many a dictator has led his country into humiliating ruin… many a tyrant has lived in lavish palaces while his people starved… nothing out of the ordinary here… but to have the gall to rename the calendar in his own honour… now that’s priceless…Anyway… the events in Burma… in the last week I think a lot of us went from very excited, to hopeful to dejected… the popular uprising, the saffron revolution, looked great and promising… especially for the media… but end of all ends, at this point at least, looks like it ended up nowhere… or to be exact – with a lot of people hurt or worse… and little actual results to show for it (that’s if we don’t count the cover of the Economist as a result)…
now of course I might be an undue pessimist here… and given the fact that the situation in the country is truly humiliating… for anyone and everyone involved… some good might come out of this… for after all… the powers supporting the junta – Russia/ India/ China really don’t want a public relations nightmare with the West over this… and I am sure somewhere in the bottom of their hearts, even the evil generals running the country might have a soft spot for actually doing something positive and not having their historical legacy be a giant blemish on Burmese long and storied history…
But fact of the matter is that change for Burma must come from the exact same source as the problem – the military… all of monk & citizen protests, all of international sanctions and condemnations will do very little good… until something within the military itself gives… and by this I mean independent of what some crabby old general says or orders, someone still must execute… and as we saw last week, when the average soldier is willing to follow orders, no matter what the popular opinion on the street is… the results will be quite negative… for after all soldiers have guns and average people do not…
So what must happen? Well if we take a look at the history of the Russian revolutions… in very broad and simplistic manner… what was the difference between the revolution of 1905 and
October 1917? In the former, the street stood up in outrage – i.e. the proletariat masses… while both the army and the peasantry did not budge… Result – a bloody putdown…. October 1917 – all major classes of the population, starting with proletariat and liberal intelligentsia all the way through peasantry and the armed forces were deeply unhappy with the situation at hand – a horrific & pointless war (WWI) and economic ruin at home… Hence, when the revolution was launched, not only was it driven by the working class & liberal intellectuals (as is the case in Burma), but also by the very soldiers who were suppose to protect the ‘home regime’… And as a matter of fact, the whole success of the communists during the Russian revolution and subsequent civil war hinged on the fact that they were able to recruit the best and the brightest of the army to their side… And this I have so far not seen in Burma… for all the popular protests… for all the newspaper headlines… and revolting pictures of massacre and murder… there has not been one mention of the Burmese army ‘crossing over’…And once again… to stick to the Russian angle… if we even go to the Moscow coup attempt of 1992 or the Orange revolution in Ukraine… what was the difference… in the former – it was the fact that general Lebed (now long gone) disobeyed a direct order and put his tanks in front of the Parliament on the side of the ‘democractic’ government… and that in Ukraine, when Kuchma ordered a forceful dispersion of the protesters camped out in Kiev’s main square, the head of the Kiev military district told him to go f*&cjk himself and walked out…
And this leads to my next question… is the ‘absolute’ removal of the generals in the best interests of Burma as a whole? On that I am not so sure… for while there are practically no positives to these baboons being in power, there is one distinct thing they do bring to the table – order and stability… for we must remember that the country in question is not a uniform entity like say Portugal (I was going to say Belgium… but just remembered that its trying to split itself in half)…. And that burma is full of various ethnicities and nationalities… most of whom have centuries long hatred of each other and would probably like nothing more than to go slit their neighbor’s throat, Balkan style… and much like Marshall Tito did in post WWII Yugoslavia… the generals are probably deserving of some credit in keeping at least this part of the Burmese equation under relative control…
Now if the generals were all of a sudden yanked from their palaces… Saddam Hussein style… would there really be anyone in place to control various ethnic tensions and movements? For remember, there have been at least a dozen of these nationalistic revolts going on around Burma in the last decade or two (like say Karen National Liberation Army)… For lets be students of history here and remember how much we all hated evil old Saddam, and how we really wanted him deposed… and how nobody (outside my grandfather) ever mentioned the fact that without Saddam, and the Republican guard, and the secret police, the good people of Iraq would all of a sudden lose their minds and start killing each other in ever more liberal and creative fashion…
So with this in mind… As much as I want to say down with the generals and the evil dictatorship and in with freedom and liberty… I am really starting to think that slow and steady might be the best way to do it… Think Chinese version of communist capitalism… granted in a lot of ways its not inspiring… but it sure as hell beats the Russian ‘lets go capitalist overnight’ experiment of the early nineties…. So a meaningful solution would be perhaps for the generals, in kind response to the current mess and of course to the 2008 Olympics in china, to start slowly and steadily relinquishing control… not all at once, mind you… but slowly and steadily… liberalizing the press… allowing free, uncorrupted enterprise… inviting foreign investment… while giving themselves a chance to bow out with grace and good face… while building mighty pagodas in the plains of Bagan to make up for all the world of sins they have committed in the last 50 years….Monday, September 24, 2007
3 issues of the week
So I’ve had a wonderful weekend… starvation on Saturday… drunken mess on Sunday morning… first free ambulance ride on Sunday evening… and a fine round of golf on Monday (outside the fact that I got outplayed by an 89 year old man)…
I have two things on my mind tonight… no… actually three… first of all – the most noble of them… the current events in Burma are quite exciting… and perhaps even promising… who knows what would actually happen if the military junta over there did get overthrown or pushed aside… perhaps controlled dictatorship is better than absolute chaos… something that’s a distinct possibility for a conglomeration of nationalities and ethnicities that Burma is… but on the other hand… having traveled there… and
experiencing possibly one of the finest weeks of my life on Burmese soil… remembering the countless people who approached Magnus and I wanting to talk about ‘freedom’… perhaps this will turn out for the best… and I must say… the one thing I am looking forward the most for tomorrow, is researching the events there further and trying to think up of a way of getting involved… but that’s the young Pioneer (see communist brainwashed youth) speaking in me …
Second thing is the semi-absurd fiasco of a United Nations assembly we are having here in New York this week… first of all, now that UN is an established organization with clear standing in this world… there is no more reason to have its headquarters in New York… I realize we are the capitalist capital of the world, bla bla… but does anyone outside here know the absolute disaster we, new Yorkers, have to live through each time these talking heads come to town? I mean its nice and all to know that of all the places in this world, it happens to be here… but on the other hand, when you see five miles of traffic down second avenue… or five square blocks cordoned off by secret service for the president of Zambia… one really has to ask if maybe Rochester or Albany or maybe even Lexington, Kentucky would be a nobler, saner choice for everybody invovled…
My second thought on this UN thing is the visit to New York by our favorite Hitler wanna be, Mr. Ahmadinejad… I don’t know if anybody followed this, but I thought his treatment at Columbia was an absolute disgrace… Especially considering the heat the school took for having him speak there… shit… if you are going to let him speak… at least treat him hospitably… instead the man gets introduced to the audience as the ‘honourable tyrant and dictator’ by the president of the school of international relations… and then gets grilled in a highly rude fashion about his esteemed opinions on the Holocaust, 9/11, etc… now I think this Ahmadinejad guy is an absolutely petrifying combination of street-smarts, charisma, assertiveness and delusion… and I really think his opinions, as outright mis-informed and absurd as they are, are driven by one underlying motivation – “Persians are somebody… and don’t you forget it.” So hence I think a lot of his foot stomping idiocies… from his theories on homosexuality to Iranian nuclear problem, really boil down to the fact that Persia (i.e. Iran)… much like Russia, India and China is finally ready (or thinks its ready) to assume to dominant position on the world stage… A position occupied for a long long time by tall white, blonde men… So with this in mind… I think if Columbia was to invite this guy to ‘speak,’ it really should have given him an opportunity to do so in a respectable and hospitable fashion… for no matter what his actual opinions are, he is without a doubt their ‘guest’… and if you don’t like the guest, what he is wearing, how he smells or what he talks about – don’t invite him into your house… but if you do… common courtesy and respect are not unreasonable to ask for…. And again, while being highly, even aggressively, ‘questioning’ of Mahmoud’s words and thoughts would be OK – he was after all there to defend his views… right… Being an unhospitable demagogue (as the head of Columbia’s international relations school was) is still inexcusable… and really does put our country (the good old US of A in a terrible, closed-minded and ignorant light abroad)
My final point of concern for today is of the nauseating variety… I have to compose a ‘telega’… translated as a complaint letter in English… about one of the superiors… it wont be an actual letter… but essentially talking points for the conversation ill be having with another of my bosses over this lovely gentleman… the great part of this is that end of all ends I think its all pointless anyway… and I am doing this under the guise of ‘not taking any shit’… instead of actually defending some ‘career’ position I might have… anyway, the ‘telega’ will consist of one giant point – this guy is an absolute dickhead… and a few supporting arguments… like he is fond of accusing without bothering to learn the facts… he tries to single out without any reason… and overall, his main motivation seems to be quite KGB’ish… dig up all the shit possible… put it in one big pile… and start tossing it against the wall to see what sticks… screw everything else…
I have two things on my mind tonight… no… actually three… first of all – the most noble of them… the current events in Burma are quite exciting… and perhaps even promising… who knows what would actually happen if the military junta over there did get overthrown or pushed aside… perhaps controlled dictatorship is better than absolute chaos… something that’s a distinct possibility for a conglomeration of nationalities and ethnicities that Burma is… but on the other hand… having traveled there… and
experiencing possibly one of the finest weeks of my life on Burmese soil… remembering the countless people who approached Magnus and I wanting to talk about ‘freedom’… perhaps this will turn out for the best… and I must say… the one thing I am looking forward the most for tomorrow, is researching the events there further and trying to think up of a way of getting involved… but that’s the young Pioneer (see communist brainwashed youth) speaking in me …Second thing is the semi-absurd fiasco of a United Nations assembly we are having here in New York this week… first of all, now that UN is an established organization with clear standing in this world… there is no more reason to have its headquarters in New York… I realize we are the capitalist capital of the world, bla bla… but does anyone outside here know the absolute disaster we, new Yorkers, have to live through each time these talking heads come to town? I mean its nice and all to know that of all the places in this world, it happens to be here… but on the other hand, when you see five miles of traffic down second avenue… or five square blocks cordoned off by secret service for the president of Zambia… one really has to ask if maybe Rochester or Albany or maybe even Lexington, Kentucky would be a nobler, saner choice for everybody invovled…
My second thought on this UN thing is the visit to New York by our favorite Hitler wanna be, Mr. Ahmadinejad… I don’t know if anybody followed this, but I thought his treatment at Columbia was an absolute disgrace… Especially considering the heat the school took for having him speak there… shit… if you are going to let him speak… at least treat him hospitably… instead the man gets introduced to the audience as the ‘honourable tyrant and dictator’ by the president of the school of international relations… and then gets grilled in a highly rude fashion about his esteemed opinions on the Holocaust, 9/11, etc… now I think this Ahmadinejad guy is an absolutely petrifying combination of street-smarts, charisma, assertiveness and delusion… and I really think his opinions, as outright mis-informed and absurd as they are, are driven by one underlying motivation – “Persians are somebody… and don’t you forget it.” So hence I think a lot of his foot stomping idiocies… from his theories on homosexuality to Iranian nuclear problem, really boil down to the fact that Persia (i.e. Iran)… much like Russia, India and China is finally ready (or thinks its ready) to assume to dominant position on the world stage… A position occupied for a long long time by tall white, blonde men… So with this in mind… I think if Columbia was to invite this guy to ‘speak,’ it really should have given him an opportunity to do so in a respectable and hospitable fashion… for no matter what his actual opinions are, he is without a doubt their ‘guest’… and if you don’t like the guest, what he is wearing, how he smells or what he talks about – don’t invite him into your house… but if you do… common courtesy and respect are not unreasonable to ask for…. And again, while being highly, even aggressively, ‘questioning’ of Mahmoud’s words and thoughts would be OK – he was after all there to defend his views… right… Being an unhospitable demagogue (as the head of Columbia’s international relations school was) is still inexcusable… and really does put our country (the good old US of A in a terrible, closed-minded and ignorant light abroad)
My final point of concern for today is of the nauseating variety… I have to compose a ‘telega’… translated as a complaint letter in English… about one of the superiors… it wont be an actual letter… but essentially talking points for the conversation ill be having with another of my bosses over this lovely gentleman… the great part of this is that end of all ends I think its all pointless anyway… and I am doing this under the guise of ‘not taking any shit’… instead of actually defending some ‘career’ position I might have… anyway, the ‘telega’ will consist of one giant point – this guy is an absolute dickhead… and a few supporting arguments… like he is fond of accusing without bothering to learn the facts… he tries to single out without any reason… and overall, his main motivation seems to be quite KGB’ish… dig up all the shit possible… put it in one big pile… and start tossing it against the wall to see what sticks… screw everything else…
Friday, September 21, 2007
a restless farewell...
Its Yom Kippur… one in the morning… I’ve been starving myself for a good six hours now… the lips are dry… the head is spinning… is it the lack of food… the lack of water… or the copious amounts booze I drank last night that make me feel so damned crazy???
Yes… last night was a true success… myself and two of my dear b-school friends went out to a ‘gastro-pub’ in alphabet city… who the hell came up with a name ‘gastro-pub’, I don’t know… to me it sounds like it could be one of two things… either a thing metrosexual… and hence unmanly… or an intestinal disease of vicious nature the clears one and all in its path… including the two boiled eggs you had for breakfast this morning… pieces of cheesecake floating around your innards from the night before… and even that tiny speck of pot you swallowed by accident while trying to clear your ancient pipe… right after the shower… and about ten minutes before you took off for work… the day was starting on a frantic note you see…
Anyway… if I had to choose one… I guess I’d have to go with the metrosexual thing… which is of course nauseating… but in a lax, pathetic, you can deal with it once every other gibbous moon sort of way… and that’s what it turned out to be… a very chic and modern sort of establishment… with white toothed waitresses… a wine list… and a menu exotique… full of garbled foods I never heard of… as well as fine cheeses and mussels and things of that nature…
Anyway… the drinks were as fine and as merry as drinks get… and I can get into this big whole complimentary shpiel about how great life was… and how drunk we all got… and yaddi yadda yadda… who cares… nobody wants to hear about the glories of my life… especially me… What I want to talk about are things dark, disturbing and unjust… perhaps bizarre, cynical and uneven… but certainly never happy, cheerful, well adjusted or even reasonable…
So this is where we get back to reality… for yesterday really was a momentous day… outside of the fact that I got into a screaming match with my beloved managing director (of finger pointing glory described in an earlier blog)… anyway, to focus on the story at hand… yesterday was a very important day in my life… it was a time of season… a time of change… a time to live… and a time to die… but before I totally go off on this tambourine man jibe… here is what happened…
I went out and got myself a digital camera… a digital camera of big expensive variety… the type you see geeks all over the city carrying, wrapped around their wrists, flinging around like sort of yo-yo’s… occasionally stopping to capture a particularly artistic shot… like say of a traffic light that’s not red, not green but in that fluxed state of yellow…. And the thing is that after spending half a month’s worth of my salary on a piece of electronic equipment, you’d figure I’d be feeling like a million bucks… I’d be feeling like I did something great and important… something that gave me a bright outlook on tomorrow… something that changed my life… (for that kind of money it better!)… but no…. I felt like a filthy traitor…
I felt like a filthy traitor because while my new camera is of the digital SLR variety… and its big and its heavy and its shiny and purports to make a great photographer out of me… at home… while I was out blowing my hard earned pennies on this piece of technological wonder…. There lay a black camera case… black in nominal terms for now it’s a combination of black and yellow from all the dust it collected in nether reaches of Ethiopia and Sikkim and Burma and Guatemala and who the hell knows where else… and inside that dusty black camera case is another piece of electronic equipment… not nearly as pricey or fancy as the one I just spent half of Kolkata’s GNP on… but valuable none-the-less… though a bit scratched up and dusty… and perhaps malfunctional and occasionally unreliable… but end of all ends… deeply… deeply… oh so deeply beloved…. And yes… I am talking of my best friend – my Minolta Maxum 5… of discontinued model variety… with eternal grease on the shutter button… hopeless scratches on the lens… and a film rewind mechanism that does whatever the hell it pleases… some people call it backwards and ancient… many a photography expert has laughed at me for still using a ‘film camera’…. I’ve sometimes wondered what the hell I was still doing with it… say when some of my finest pictures from Belize got exposed or overlayered thanks to the afore mentioned rewind mechanism boo boo…. But end of all ends, I LOVE MY MAXUM 5…
And now… like a filthy poseur… like a dirty traitor… I was abandoning my truly beloved, my truly trusted, my truly battle-tested companion for a hunk of metal that every six figure making, former Metallica loving, artist-wanna-be lugs around more for show than any artistic merit in of itself… and there I sat last night… drunk as an overfed swine… choking away on cancer sticks… listening to Cure… and looking at that black camera case on the floor… thinking of all the good times we had together… like when I fell in shoulder deep into monsoon swollen stream in Luang Prabang, Laos… and I thought my Maxum 5 was a goner… or when I took a bit of an aggressive picture of a very large African-American gentleman selling rags on Broadway and 27th… and we had to hold on for our dear life for that man, all six foot seven, 300 pounds of him, was coming to kill us both… or when I kept on pulling it out of my bag as I wondered through the woods of Sikkim and my Mexican companion kept on demanding to know why I was taking so many pictures…. Or shit… that time in Rangoon… where that lovely older gentleman approached me as I was smoking a cig… and talked to me… and my Maxum 5 was there… holstered in my bag… my trusted companion… my friend… (I am starting to get weepy)… what a filthy traitorous swine I real am….
Yes… last night was a true success… myself and two of my dear b-school friends went out to a ‘gastro-pub’ in alphabet city… who the hell came up with a name ‘gastro-pub’, I don’t know… to me it sounds like it could be one of two things… either a thing metrosexual… and hence unmanly… or an intestinal disease of vicious nature the clears one and all in its path… including the two boiled eggs you had for breakfast this morning… pieces of cheesecake floating around your innards from the night before… and even that tiny speck of pot you swallowed by accident while trying to clear your ancient pipe… right after the shower… and about ten minutes before you took off for work… the day was starting on a frantic note you see…
Anyway… if I had to choose one… I guess I’d have to go with the metrosexual thing… which is of course nauseating… but in a lax, pathetic, you can deal with it once every other gibbous moon sort of way… and that’s what it turned out to be… a very chic and modern sort of establishment… with white toothed waitresses… a wine list… and a menu exotique… full of garbled foods I never heard of… as well as fine cheeses and mussels and things of that nature…
Anyway… the drinks were as fine and as merry as drinks get… and I can get into this big whole complimentary shpiel about how great life was… and how drunk we all got… and yaddi yadda yadda… who cares… nobody wants to hear about the glories of my life… especially me… What I want to talk about are things dark, disturbing and unjust… perhaps bizarre, cynical and uneven… but certainly never happy, cheerful, well adjusted or even reasonable…
So this is where we get back to reality… for yesterday really was a momentous day… outside of the fact that I got into a screaming match with my beloved managing director (of finger pointing glory described in an earlier blog)… anyway, to focus on the story at hand… yesterday was a very important day in my life… it was a time of season… a time of change… a time to live… and a time to die… but before I totally go off on this tambourine man jibe… here is what happened…
I went out and got myself a digital camera… a digital camera of big expensive variety… the type you see geeks all over the city carrying, wrapped around their wrists, flinging around like sort of yo-yo’s… occasionally stopping to capture a particularly artistic shot… like say of a traffic light that’s not red, not green but in that fluxed state of yellow…. And the thing is that after spending half a month’s worth of my salary on a piece of electronic equipment, you’d figure I’d be feeling like a million bucks… I’d be feeling like I did something great and important… something that gave me a bright outlook on tomorrow… something that changed my life… (for that kind of money it better!)… but no…. I felt like a filthy traitor…
I felt like a filthy traitor because while my new camera is of the digital SLR variety… and its big and its heavy and its shiny and purports to make a great photographer out of me… at home… while I was out blowing my hard earned pennies on this piece of technological wonder…. There lay a black camera case… black in nominal terms for now it’s a combination of black and yellow from all the dust it collected in nether reaches of Ethiopia and Sikkim and Burma and Guatemala and who the hell knows where else… and inside that dusty black camera case is another piece of electronic equipment… not nearly as pricey or fancy as the one I just spent half of Kolkata’s GNP on… but valuable none-the-less… though a bit scratched up and dusty… and perhaps malfunctional and occasionally unreliable… but end of all ends… deeply… deeply… oh so deeply beloved…. And yes… I am talking of my best friend – my Minolta Maxum 5… of discontinued model variety… with eternal grease on the shutter button… hopeless scratches on the lens… and a film rewind mechanism that does whatever the hell it pleases… some people call it backwards and ancient… many a photography expert has laughed at me for still using a ‘film camera’…. I’ve sometimes wondered what the hell I was still doing with it… say when some of my finest pictures from Belize got exposed or overlayered thanks to the afore mentioned rewind mechanism boo boo…. But end of all ends, I LOVE MY MAXUM 5…
And now… like a filthy poseur… like a dirty traitor… I was abandoning my truly beloved, my truly trusted, my truly battle-tested companion for a hunk of metal that every six figure making, former Metallica loving, artist-wanna-be lugs around more for show than any artistic merit in of itself… and there I sat last night… drunk as an overfed swine… choking away on cancer sticks… listening to Cure… and looking at that black camera case on the floor… thinking of all the good times we had together… like when I fell in shoulder deep into monsoon swollen stream in Luang Prabang, Laos… and I thought my Maxum 5 was a goner… or when I took a bit of an aggressive picture of a very large African-American gentleman selling rags on Broadway and 27th… and we had to hold on for our dear life for that man, all six foot seven, 300 pounds of him, was coming to kill us both… or when I kept on pulling it out of my bag as I wondered through the woods of Sikkim and my Mexican companion kept on demanding to know why I was taking so many pictures…. Or shit… that time in Rangoon… where that lovely older gentleman approached me as I was smoking a cig… and talked to me… and my Maxum 5 was there… holstered in my bag… my trusted companion… my friend… (I am starting to get weepy)… what a filthy traitorous swine I real am….
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