CheetahhhhhhhBlog Mark III

It’s my birthday. 42. Good lord.

It’s 12:49PM Kabul time. That means 4 days and 6 hours before we board Gulf Air bound for Manama-Paris-Chicago. In this time I have to give and correct 4 exams and put in grades. Going to be a bit of a b*tch but I can do it.

After Bug is done with school today, we’re going to go to Chicken Street to buy Christmas presents for people. The family Stateside is getting Afghan handicrafts. Then we’re going to Boccacio, the nicest restaurant in town which also doubles as a Ukrainian whorehouse (biggest open secret in Kabul) for my birthday dinner.

My balcony looks out onto the Hindu Kush, which are the foothills of the Himalayas. It’s a very clear, bright day and the upper ranges rising up past Kabul already have snow on their peaks.

One week to go and we’re off. Gulf Air has been making some problems with our return itinerary but I’m not going to worry about that. I booked through Expedia and have always found Expedia to be good at sorting things out, which is why I use them. We’re very excited. Bug is talking about going to America a lot. Counting the days.

Next week is exam week and I am going to have to really scramble to get grades in. I can do it, but I think I will be spending long hours in the office. I am also going to make my assistant work. He’s probably got the best assistant job on campus, I just have him make photocopies and correct the occasional quiz and get me cigarettes. I’m sure he loves me. This week the boy is going to put some work in though.

Today is St Nick’s Day, and the kids were delighted to find candy in their shoes. They are busy gorging themselves on candy for breakfast. I believe this is a Polish tradition. We’re a rather international family.

It’s also the Muslim holiday of Ashera and so no work today. Ashera is a Shia festival and you never saw it in Dubai or Saudi. Apparently some prominent Shia cleric was killed on this day. The holiday is kind of fun because everybody puts up flags everywhere. There are flags all over town, mostly black, but different colors too. People have been driving around with big flags on their cars too. Makes the whole thing festive although it’s actually a day of mourning.

2 more teaching days, then next week exams, then GO. 10 days and counting.

I had to let it happen; I had to change. Couldn’t stay all my life down at heel, looking out of the window, staying out of the sun. So I chose freedom, running around trying everything new, but nothing impressed me at all; I never expected it to. Don’t cry for me, Madison. The truth is I never left you. All through my wild days, my mad existence, I kept my promise, don’t keep your distance. And as for fortune, as for fame, I never invited them in, though it seemed to the world they were all I desired. They are illusions; they are not the solutions they promise to be. The answer was here all the time. I love you and hope you love me. Don’t cry for me, Madison. The truth is I never left you…

My blogging activity is inversely proportional to the about of business I am dealing with in the real world. I’m very busy right now.

Real quick…

12 more teaching days, then exams, then GO. Chicago here we come.

Was accepted for an MBA at the University of Cumbria in England and AUAF is funding half the tuition. Start in Jan. Will have to spend a summer in Cumbria in northern England, which should be fun. Will be a bit of a drain on money, time, and my intellectual ability to take on tasks, but I will worry about this all later.

This is combined with me agreeing to do overtime next semester for more $$… so next semester is going to be a real bitch I think, excuse my French.

Tristan is starting to make real strides with talking.

Anyway it’s 447PM Kabul time and that means I have 3 minutes to walk across campus to my class, so cheers mates.

Karzai is holding a “loya jurga” which means a grand council and because of security risks (Johnny Taliban would love to launch a few rockets into the jurga) movement around the city will be restricted and there will be no class Wed and Thurs which means I have a mini vacation coming. This semester has been interrupted so many times by various events that we might as well write it off at this point. Seriously. But I get paid whether class is in session or not and my tickets Stateside are in 5 weeks so no complaints.

One of the items I had shipped here from LL Bean was a Merino wool hooded sweatshirt which is my favorite piece of clothing now by far, indeed I’m going to get another in a different color. Somebody commented at the office that a “hoodie” wasn’t professional and I pointed out that it was a Merino.

I am working on finishing off our case of Heineken which cost me $120 ($120 because it’s illegal). In the States I’m going to get myself a few bottles of Talisker, and one of the economics professors is excited to have a dram with me. Indeed if you see Talisker, dad, please grab me 3 bottles.

Planning a ski trip to the UP with my sister over new year’s, tremendously excited…

So it’s our 6th wedding anniversary. Van is getting some ruby earrings but she doesn’t know this yet. We’re going out, were planning on going to L’Atmo, but it’s freakin’ cold here in the foothills of the Himalayas and I don’t know that we really want to sit out in the garden, which is the whole point behind L’Atmo.

I have been enjoying my Eid vacation, most especially taking naps in the afternoon. Delicious.

Got to end this post quickly because Van is finishing her shower and is about to walk in, and doesn’t know about her present yet…

So it’s official. The senate met yesterday and I resigned as the Chairman of the Curriculum Committee. This is a tremendous weight off my shoulders and means a lot less work and a lot less political hassle. The Chair of the Curriculum Committee is a highly policial position. I managed it but I’m glad to get that monkey off my back. I am now the Chairman of the Faculty Development Committee, which is good for the resume as it broadens my administrative experience and also places me in charge of a moderately big pot of money. I now need to write due diligence procedures. One of my students is a grant supervisor for some NGO here in town and he sent me an evaluation checklist, which is helpful, though he couldn’t give me a lot of information because it’s secret for some reason.

I have started the countdown. 44 days until we leave for home. The States, that is. Will be good to go home. Vanessa is planning large cosmetics purchases among other things.

Bug had his first parent-teacher meeting and Bug is an excellent student in all respects, actually the teacher said she didn’t have much to say. I have been in the same position with excellent students. What can you say except “Good job”? He only comment is she’s trying to teach him to stop whining when he wants something. Hope she has success with that one. He’s at that stage where he whines and screams when he don’t get what he wants.

A bit of excitement today. Bug was getting dressed for school and we were all in the bedroom when suddenly an explosion went off. We’re at a new location, the boy’s dorms, because of Van’s job. First of all before I go into details let me inform my readers that we are in one of the most secure compounds in Kabul. We even have sniper towers. We’re near the university and the UN and NATO and the royal palace. Anyway the explosion went off and I exclaimed, “Holy shit!” because the windows and building were shaking. We could see the debris flying and the big black plume of smoke going up. I took a picture, which Van posted on Facebook. The Taliban hit a NATO convoy. For the rest of the day there were helicopters flying around constantly, sirens, etc. The boys here at the dorm were locked down. Whenever a terrorist event occurs we all go into lockdown, basically stay where you are and lock everything. The kids were annoyed about this because they’re pretty much used to attacks and so don’t get too excited about them, and they wanted to go to the university to eat at the canteen. So the kids were constantly complaining to Van that they were starving to death.

This all sounds very scary I’m sure and I don’t mean to downplay it, because it is scary. However the thing is, you get used to various threats. For example in Manila there was the constant threat of my children being kidnapped or me being mugged, and mugging in Manila tends to be very violent. There are certain areas of Chicago where a woman wouldn’t be advised to walk alone at night. In Johannesburg, the “murder capital of the world,” I regularly traveled through areas that the white locals were too afraid to even go near, indeed my sister and I once saw a gangster with a big machine gun standing guard at some gangster pad. So my point is you have various threats and you deal with them and adjust to them and life goes on. That’s pretty much Kabul. The explosion went off about a mile away and after the initial 2 minutes of “holy crap!!” it was pretty much back to normal, which I’m sure sounds strange but put it into context.

Haven’t been blogging with my usual frequency in either of my blogs. This is because I have found myself very preoccupied with work. I’ve got a really full plate.

We’re moved into the boy’s dorm and Van has begun her job. Actually it’s a compound of 4 houses, one of which is ours. There is a nice rose garden in our yard with a pergola. Our our windows we can see the foothills of the Himalayas. A great improvement in our living situation. Van is very enthusiastic about her job and has been a big surprise to the boys, because apparently the last dorm supervisor just ignored them for 2 years, indeed they didn’t even know she existed. She’s made a number of improvements already which has the boys loving her, such as getting the wireless fixed. She is however enforcing curfew which they may not be so pleased about.

I don’t think any of my work colleagues read this blog so I will discuss this, which is not generally known yet at the university. Anyway the provost asked me to take the chairmanship of the Faculty Development Committee, which will have me managing a pot of money. I said yes, because the management of money will be a new notch on my CV and will aid me in my plan to transition into university administration when we return to the USA. So this should be very helpful to my career. Also I can now recuse myself from the Curriculum Committee. The thing there is I already did all the interesting work last semester, and now it’s just going to be a fairly labor-intensive project of review, but I could find no actually acceptable excuse for recusing myself until now.

We got LL Bean, Orvis, and Amazon orders recently. All set for winter. Thanks to my dad for forwarding the stuff.

Bug had 2 birthday parties, one at school, one down in our rose garden. He made out like a bandit this year partly because he was lucky, it happened to be right when we were buying winter clothes, so we had shipments coming in. So he got fancy American toys.

Bought our tickets for Christmas, KBL-ORD for $5100. It was very sad to watch the money disappear.