I have no idea how he did it, but my stepbrother Brian managed to pinpoint the location of where I took a picture. You can see it all here:
http://stearnsfamily.net/wheresisaac/
I live just to the north and east of the picture, off frame.
Isaac
The Washington Capitals, my favorite hockey team is making some noise this year in the Eastern confrence. All the experts predicted a last (or close to last) place finish again this year. I was impressed with the way they finished last year and thought that they would make some progress this year. Well, I was right. They are playing very well and are now in 5th place in the confrence. If they keep this up they’ll be in the playoffs! Go Caps Go!
Isaac
OK, I’ve had it. It seems like every single time a Yemeni acts as if they are befriending me, all they are really doing is trying to get money out of me. It started with Sufian before I even came here and now it’s at least two or three times a week…”Where are you from? Ahh America! That’s very good, welcome to Yemen! If you need anything, just let me know… I need 1000 Riayls for…” I bought Sufian a used laptop since he said he couldn’t find one here for the same price as I could. I agreed to get it for him, but only after refusing to give him an $1100 Apple laptop.. Anyway, when I got here, he had $250 of the $400 that he swore that he would have. I thought, “What the hell, I’ll probably never see that $150, but it’ll show the good will of Americans” or something like that… I gave it to him, knowing that that $150 will never find me. He had been bugging me for the last two weeks to get together with him and I finaly told him that I could see him for 5 or 10 min. tonight. Well, he didn’t waste any time… “I need 10,000 Riayls…” I basicly told him that he needs to hit up the people he doesn’t owe money to for more money… Besides, he chews quat and smokes, I’m sure that if he went without those luxuries he could get that 10,000 in a couple of weeks… I understand why he came back, I basicly gave him money before, so why not try again? No more, I’m done. I’m really trying to not paint all Yemenis with the same brush, but I worry about my reaction the next time someone butters me up just for some cash… I actually have more respect for the ones that just ask, I even give them some sometimes (pocket change). But the ones that pretend to be my friend annoy the hell out of me…
Isaac
The DC metro transit board (or whatever they call themselves) is considering/has decided to build a light rail system connecting parts of the suburbs to the main lines of the metro. I hope they looked at the numbers carefully… It turns out that light rail rarely does what it is supposed to do, decrease congestion and reduce polution. Proponents also say that it gives added mobility to the poor. The guy over at Coyote blog has made a bet about the current light rail project in Arizona. He thinks that for the cost of building it, you could buy every single core rider a car. Looks like he’d win that bet. The St. Louis Fed released a report that the subsidies used by the st. Louis light rail system would allow them to buy for each “poor” rider a Toyata Prius every 5 years and give them $6000 annually for maintinance. There would still be money left over after that. Enough so that the non poor riders could be given $1045 a year. That’s just the subsidies paid every year by the tax payers, that doesn’t even touch the costs of building the damn thing… You can read all about it here:
http://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/re/2004/c/pages/light_rail.html
You know damn well who is putting the most pressure on councils to build these systems, it’s the manufacturers and builders of the rail systems. I wish there was more covrage of this sort of political back scratching…
Isaac
I’ve spent the last several days hanging out with my (now gone) house mates. We went bowling friday night and ate there too. It’s funny, you are told to always be careful about eating food from street vendors and local markets. I haven’t had any trouble at all. I ate some “fast food” at the bowling alley and got sick as a dog. I won’t go into details, but I wasn’t up to going to class on Sat. I layed around all day and didn’t eat anything. Towards the end of the night I was feeling better, but really hungry. I decided to wait because we were going over to Luciano’s place for some Italian food that night. Well, we didn’t end up eating until 8:30 or so and I was literally shaking with hunger… He had some munchies put out for us including prochitto (sp?)! Oh Lord was it good… The taste exploded on my tounge, I had no idea I was craving pork that badly. Unfortunetly, my stomach had shrunk to the size of a walnut, so I was only able to eat 2/3 of my pasta. Then the next dish came out and I had to bow out, I was stuffed… Man that was good, real pasta, real ham, real tomato sauce, I wish I could have eaten more…
Luciano works at the Italian embassy and has a beautiful house. It has a wonderful mashraf, a guest house(!) and the entire place is walled in. He also has broadband internet access and a wireless system set up too… I’m hoping I can come over in the future and do my online stuff while sitting in his garden, ahhhh…
Things have been a little screwed up because of the holidays. All of my housemates are gone, Judith is leaving for India, Luciano is going back to Italy, and I’m goin to Malta for Christmas. I’ll be back in the middle of january, so will Judith (although she’s leaving in the middle of feb.) and Luciano won’t be back until Feb. So I guess I won’t have any excuse for not studying. Speaking of which, I better get something done since I haven’t done anything in 3 days….
Isaac
Christoph left yesterday, Luca and Nollaig left today. I’m by myself in the house for the time being. I doubt that there will be any other western students coming in until after the new year. I miss those guys already, they showed me where everything was and introduced me to a bunch of people. I hope to visit them in Italy, Ireland, and Germany, but who knows. When I said so long to the folks back home it was understood that it was just for a while. I’m not really sure when I’ll see these guys again. SIGH, hope the new guys are as cool as these ones were…
Isaac
Went to the roof of a hotel in old Sana’a the other day and took some pictures. I think it’s the tallest building in the city. It’s also the only “western” style hotel in the old city. They have an elevator and everything! The view is amazing, there is a mashraf(sp?) at the top where you can hang out, drink coffee, and eat I think. It probably has more western prices as well. The Arabia Felix hotel (the one very close to me) costs about 22 bucks a night. It wouldn’t surprise me if this place was closer to $100 a night. It might be worth it….
Isaac
Went exploring the largest souk (market) in Yemen today. It’s still called the salt market even though that isn’t really sold there any more. I wandered through the gold, silver, spice, raisin, shoe, qat, jambiya (the decrative curver knives the men wear here), shawl, and clothes souks. I had a shill, er, I mean guide help me find stuff. Mohamed looked like he was 13 or 14 and spoke English very well. He also claims to speak Italian, Spanish, German, and Japanese(!). He showed me around and guided me towards his friends stalls. I was looking for the “fragrance” souk, he showed me where it was, but there was a large, locked door in front of it. I’ll have to go back some other time, they’ll whip up colonges or purfumes for you and you can buy all sorts of insence and raw materials like frankencinse there… The most interesting souls for me where the spice and raisin souks. The spice souk smelled wonderful and there were piles and piles of stuff all over the place. I didn’t recognize most of them, but what heavenly smells… The raisin souk had more raisins in it than I had ever seen in my entire life. Yemen is famous for its grapes and raisins. There were a dizzying number of choices and price ranges. I’ve never been a big fan of raisons, but the only ones I’ve ever had were those ones in the red boxes… Sunmaid?Sunkist? Something like that… Most of them were from white grapes and they were all very dry, not sticky like the ones back home. The ones I tasted had much more flavor and “bite” to them than I had ever tasted. It was like I was eating fruit instead of, you know, raisins… I bought half a kilo of some of the better ones, cost be 800 riyals. The top stuff was selling for 1000-1500 riyals for a half kilo. It’s intersting to see that many of the raisins still have a small part of their stem left on them… Man they’re good, I’m going to go buy some nuts tonight…
Isaac
By now, I am very used to the typical introduction on the street. If a Yemeni knows English, he flags me down and asks where I’m from. I tell them that I’m from America and they smile and tell me how great America is, then they ask me why I’m here. They always like the fact that I’m studying Arabic, especially if I tell them that in Arabic. They tell me that it is a difficult language and that if I ever need any help or practice, or anything else really, just to call them. Great! That’s very nice, but then comes the inevitable “Do you have 1000 Riayls you can loan me, my uncle’s appendix needs to coime out and my car is broken/out of gas/need to get to Taiz, etc…”
Well, things were a little different yesterday… A guy flags me down and asks ,with a distinct American accent, where I’m from.
“America”
“Really? I lived in San Francisco for a long time!”
“Wow, really?”
“Yeah, I was a busboy there until I hurt my back”
“Oh, that’s too bad…”
“Yeah, I was out of work for a while, then I got raped.”
“What?”
“Oh, don’t feel bad, I shot the guy 4 times and he died.”
blink blink
“Yeah, I did 4 years in the California Penal system before I got deported.”
“Ummmm”
“Then I went to Cairo to be treated for my schizaphrenia, there is no treatment for that here in Yemen…”
“Uh yeah, listen I gotta…”
“So I was wondering…”
Here’s where I was anticipating the veiled threat. You know, the whole I’m crazy and I’ve killed before so don’t you have 1000 riyals you can “lend” me? Luckily I’m in Yemen…
“I was wondering if you know how I can collect my disability payments, do you know anyone over at the embassy?” The guy is a good talker, I managed to hold back my discomfort to talk a little about his situation. I never really felt threatened, and he didn’t ask for any money Il Hamdil lila. If he was still in the US, I’d recommend that he become a speaker, he’s really quite good. He also grilled me about how I could believe something as crazy as Christianity. I take those arguments more seriously from agnostics and atheists, but not from someone that believes in something just as unbelievable like Islam… Anyway, we chatted for a bit and then parted ways. He told me that he was going to keep plugging away at the embassy to get his checks. Good luck, a worker’s comp claim from Yemen to a convicted felon… talk about long odds… Oh well, just another day on the streets…
Isaac
… and now they have to hang by it. I’m referring to the comment made about my milk post. The dairy industy managed to have the government set prices for their products above what they would normally be if they were in direct competition with each other. This has several effects. First, the milk producers make much more money than they otherwise would (this is how they generate enough money to bri… I mean lobby the government). The next thing that the artifically high prices do is it results in too much product being made. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, they would just have to lower their price until it sold. Because of the dairy cartel’s power, they also set it up so that the government (i.e. the tax payers) buy up all of the surplus. The other effect is that there are too many producers (see the above mentioned surplus). This allows marginal (or outright inefficient) farms to stay in the business. It’s bad enough that we have to pay them for not only the products we want to buy, but also all the leftovers. When we pay people to make things that no one buys, they certainly do not have the right to complain that they are not making enough money.
Break up the milk cartels, get them off our backs!!!
Isaac