(Sorry for the pictures. The first day that I could go out and take them, it was hazy). It's been five years that I left Africa.......so when we landed at 430am, I was not sure what to expect: excited on the one hand but nervous on the other. I have to admit that I was also mentally prepared to go to battle, given all those years I spent fighting my way past corrupt officers, police, and officials asking for cadeaux and threatening you. But to my surprise, everyone was calm and friendly. So we snaked along the Cape from the airport [View Full Entry]

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http://www.thecompassculture.com/subs/feb09/03.html [View Full Entry]

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This year's Beirut Marathon invited local NGOs to set up water stations for the runners. We were assigned to Kilometer 25 in Jal el Dib. The migrant workers and social workers from Ethiopia set up a microphone and loudspeakers, saying, "Ethiopia, Ethiopia, go, go" when the Ethiopian marathon runners passed by. When a runner from Iraq or Egypt passed by, they were yelling, "Marathon, yalla, yalla!" I didn't think that cheering on some runners could be so fun, but it was a great to be dancing and clapping and encouraging them on as they passed us by..... The guy with no [View Full Entry]

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Okay, I'm cheating on this blog because I live here. Ashrafieh has converted from a posh district of the city to a large construction site. Literally, it's nearly every block that has a new apartment building coming up. What's happening? At about 6am, small groups of Syrian construction workers start walking up the hill from Sodeco to various construction sites around the district. Each one in almost business-suit long pants, carrying his lunch in a plastic bag, heads for the buildings. By 7am, pumps are pumping, engines are humming, hammers are pounding, metal is clanging, dirt is [View Full Entry]

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I feel guilty to say this but when I lived in Tirana, in a way I felt a bit bored and understimulated. I didn't see alot of culture or arts in play. The city's residents seemed a bit conformist to me and the entertainment options seemed limited. Now, on this trip, I see a new Tirana. The residents are going through a transformation where there is more diversity, more demand for culture, arts, style, entertainment, etc. The city's visual appearance is changing to become more modern, bigger, and more prosperous. There is more activity everywhere. Today, I walking from the apartment [View Full Entry]

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After Lufthansa refused to allow me to change my ticket to Georgia, I have decided to spend the rest of my holiday in Tirana. Actually, it's very good because I am really enjoying having the time to spend here and re-connect with this place where I used to live. The transformation of Tirana into a modern European capital is amazing. Today, I was walking near the lake and I was just taken by the beautiful of the lake, the pine trees, and these huge mountains to the east. It's really a beautiful and under-appreciated country. South of the lake is a [View Full Entry]

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We left an empty, hot Tirana on Sunday morning and took the three hour drive down south to Vlore. The road passes through Durres which had become a parking lot of cars with foreign plates--Albanians home for the summer holidays--and teenagers on holiday walking to the beach. The road winds down along the coast, past some abandoned factories, empty railroad tracks, and a million roadside restaurants and gas stations. The roads follows the thin coastal strip between the mountains and the beach. Bledi and his friend Olsi were playing Albanian pop music the whole way down. It seemed a shame [View Full Entry]

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When I first came to Albania in 2004, I landed at a small shack-sized airport and drove into a city where alot people looked and acted the same and where the country was still struggling to take its place among European countries. Yesterday, I landed in the morning to the city's new airport--which although still sized for a small country (ie, only one luggage belt for arriving passengers) had all the modern trappings and architecture you expect in 2008. A modern, organized parking lot has taken the place of the mud field where the driver once picked me up two years [View Full Entry]

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Jakarta in a strange way grows on you. The city becomes very tropical and is a huge urban metropolis but then the leaves and trees surround you and you see that nature is not far away and the jungle is not completely distanced from you in the city. The speed of the traffic whirls past you. It's dirty, full of cars, hot, steamy, but life is buzzing around. So let me complain just a bit. My work put me in this corporate apartment and sure it's in the diplomatic quarter with mansions for blocks around. But there is no store within [View Full Entry]

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Singapore came as a relief after being in Phnom Penh, working to back-breaking hours. Everything in Singapore is easy and effecient, with immigration officials even offering you a candy while they process you in. After being hot, sticky, and hardly finding air conditioning (much less a functioning air conditioning) for the past two weeks, Singapore came as a dream, as a re-connection to civilization. A short metro ride, and Orchard Road with hoards of shoppers unrolled in front of me. Borders with its magazines and books, sushi places, all the global brands of clothes lay there for the t [View Full Entry]

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