Who are the sexiest world leaders?

http://hottestheadsofstate.wordpress.com/list/

Is it wrong to want to be on this list?

I’d like to see “sexiest international development professionals”

Even More Pictures

I decided to post some pictures from Summer’s trip. I have alot of beautiful pics from my travels with Lewis, but the file sizes are bigger and take too long to load. I know not everyone uses Facebook, but there are lots of our pictures there becasue they load much faster.

1. Laguna Colorada. The water is actually red, and there are flamingos!

2. Laguna Verde

3. Salar de Uyuni

4. This pic is from Lewis and my trip to Salar.

5. View from park in La Paz

Some More Pictures

1. Cooking. Lewis bought me organic wheat pancake mix. Now that’s what I call love.

2. Summer on her way to Salar de Uyuni. 3. Crossing guard zebra. These zebras serve at bust intersections to help people cross when the polic aren’t doing anything.4. Street scene

5. I deabted posting this picture, but thought it was sort of funny. Me, a llama, and 2 kids. So tourist.6. At the lake.

Some pictures

It takes FOREVER to upload pictures, which is why there aren’t more

1. Here I am at sunset driving back to La Paz over the Altiplano. I like this picture, even though it looks like I’m in a cigarette or alcohol ad. I didn’t even have to pose.

2. I have a really strange job. But I really enjoy it. I went out to the field the other day with a film crew to make a documentary. Seeing lighting and microphones at 5am in a stable in the middle of the Altiplano was funny to me. At that moment I thought, my life is so strange. It was so cold the tripod cracked.

3. Straining milk. I’ve always wanted, in theory, to taste fresh milk. However, when presented with the opportunity to drink milk freshly squeezed from the udder, I wasn’t sure what to do. I just dove in, and drank- an entire cup of the stuff. It was even warm.

4. Where does milk come from? This milk is then sold to the multi-national Peruvian milk company, Gloria.5. Drinking milk 6. Carrying the milk bucket7. Field work- surveys8. Filming in a peach orchard

9. This to me is a weird picture. The guy I’m stading with produces wine. We tasted some, and it’s like pure alcohol. He had these obviously used cups lying around, which he shook out. Then he siphoned wine from the barrells. We decided to buy a bottle, which turns out is an emptied plastic soda bottle.

10. Here I am with a women’s empowerment project. They make these beautiful hats. I’ve bought 3, and one for Summer. This is probably my favorite Save project in Bolivia. I would love to work on it.

11. Every Sunday there is a fair that displays information from diferent government ministeries, student groups, NGOs etc. I love it. There are also a bunch of handicrafts. I have been looking for an affordable jewelry stand for years. I bought one from these artists that I met at the fair. Here it is. It’s not as refined asI’d hoped, but it is so useful.

A Bad Day at the Office

October 10, 2009

Wow, I feel like a blog entry is long overdue. So much for my fantasy about having a highly circulated blog with an immense readership. Haha Oh well. I’m very thanksful for the few that can actually make it through the few entries.

My life lately has been quite dramatic. In fact it has been that way since Lewis left in August. The drama is work-related. My personal life, thankfully, is very calm. Well what I would consider calm anyway. That means most of my blogging material comes, for better or worse, from the office.

To start, I work with possibly the two most macho men to have ever graced the planet. Life’s irony has put me, a gender-sensitive feminist on this team. Someone, somewhere is laughing their ass off.

They try not to be overt but things slip out like, “What are you, a woman?” meaning “What was the problem in accomplishing XYZ task?” We work in value chains, economic development, and income generation. That means we try to figure out why families don’t earn more money, how they can earn more money, and whether additional income is spent on things like better healthcare, nutrition, and health for the family (as opposed to “buying” additional wives, more land, etc). In Bolivia, women play a large role in economic activities. At 5am, the woman milks the cow, and then walks a few kilometers to sell the milk. She also picks fruit, boxes it up, and then takes an overnight bus to sell it. Walking down the street, one notices that there are almost no male vendors.

As such, to me it is natural to wonder why women don’t participate more in training sessions, visit our office in La Paz, or why our team doesn’t seek their input in designing interventions. Besides, as a development professional, it is common knowledge that women’s full participation is just good practice.

I don’t say anything because the minute I do, I would lose all the respect I have earned in the last year. The team would simply label all my ideas as radial feminism, and I wouldn’t get to push my agenda. Anyway, I let ALL these things slide, even though I feel my blood pressure rise. Thank you Japan for teaching me not to wear my feelings on my sleeve.

But the other day, the gender politics became so clear. Save the Children invited me to participate in an international “Livelihoods” planning conference in Ethiopia. This is an amazing opportunity. Save is a huge organization working in around 60 countries, and participating in part of the strategic planning that will set the agenda for the next few years is like being invited to a senior Microsoft, Whole Foods or other industry leader planning session. As far as the international development industry is concerned, Save has a big footprint and a loud voice.

My team (2 macho guys, 3 male field technicians, and me) has a monthly planning session during which we coordinate activities. Of course, the work plan has my participation in this meeting scheduled.

I explained that out of all the country offices, the home office decided to fund Bolivia’s participation (most country offices have to fund their own participation). The cost is about $3,000 with airfare, hotel, etc. Immediately, one of my co-workers explains that this is very “de-motivating.” He doesn’t understand why I get to participate, and it just doesn’t seem fair.

He has a point. I am a fellow who has been working for one year, and he has been working a lot longer. However, I am also more qualified. I speak English, to begin with, have written several important pieces, am a concise presenter, and have more experience with an international audience. Not to mention, I can make international trips without someone having to hold my hand. It was insulting to think that my own team, that relies on me to handle quite a lot, didn’t trust that I could provide a kick ass presentation. This is especially insulting after I organized an event that attracted the World Bank, inter American Development Bank, and major private companies from scratch (the event was to showcase our work), hosted donors and have arranged presentations with field visits, wrote training materials, wrote winning proposals,
And am completely in charge of all the monitoring and evaluation.

I told one of my Bolivian girlfriends about this amazing experience, and her first reaction was, “Your team must be pissed.” I asked why she would say that. She said because my team is all men, and that men (here) can’t stand to watch a woman outpace them. She too is a young professional, which puts her up against men. I was so surprised about this. I find it hard to believe that the reaction of my team member might have been different if I were a man. I like to believe it has to do with my junior position, but how would she have known without me even saying?

I don’t need to talk about gender because it’s like talking about the Israeli-Palestine conflict: too old and embedded to come to easy solutions, but it does irritate me that I have worked (and still work) longer hours, spent more years (and more money) on education, speak more languages, and consider myself more professional (on time, more organized, more analytical, and use better judgment) than male co-workers only to be resented when incredible opportunities “land in my lap.”

Random Notes from Sept 9th and 10th

September 9th

Just a quick blog entry since this is the last thing I should be doing right now. But you know, when the work just isn’t flowing, it’s difficult to force.

I’m a lover of Tex-Mex food. Who from San Antonio isn’t? I mean can you complain about fresh baked tortilla chips served with homemade salsa and a top shelf margarita? I didn’t think so. Well my sister is visiting, and reminded me how much I like that kind of food.

So, at lunch today I made an almost typical San Antonio meal. Breakfast tacos are the norm and there is not much variation in terms of different styles between restaurants. The normal variety consists of- bean and cheese, bacon and egg, potato and egg, and chorizo. Of course you can add cheese to any of these or mix the core ingredients in any fashion. At lunch I made the potato and egg variety, and served that with guacamole, salsa, and tortilla chips.

To make, I simply boil potatoes (I used a variety of small ones so that I didn’t have much cutting). Frying the potatoes is also delicious, but adds too many calories, takes longer, and is more clean-up. Then I heat oil in a frying pan and sauté onions, garlic, and bell peppers. I add the potatoes and let them get a little crispy while simultaneously smashing them. To that I add beat eggs. I prefer the egg to bit a more powerful than the potatoes.

Unfortunately you can’t get good tortillas here. Now in Japan, I actually made tortillas (that’s another story). It was nice eating food from my roots. Over the last year, I’ve strayed pretty far away haha

And since I’ve only lived in Texas for 1 year of the past 6, it’s not like I eat this kind of food all the time. You know, I never even really appreciated the super fattening yet delicious food of San Antonio until recently.

September 10^th On Decorating

I don’t often speak about decorating, but I actually love reading about it, looking at new products, and thinking about what a future home might look like. I guess since I don’t have a home or enough disposable income…YET, I’ve never really actually practiced it. But here are some sites that I’ve discovered and like

American Gypsy Living

Inhabit

Umbra- online store

Apartment Therapy

Sometimes I feel like I have 2 personalities. There is the Mariko that likes clean, simple, and Japanese inspired looks. This means choosing a few colors, and patterns. Not many wall hangings, frames with solid colors, matching things and sets.

My living spaces have reflected this side of my personality during the past few years due to $$ (not spending much on house stuff) and the fact that everything (new and used) in the DC area seems to come from Ikea, which is genetically geared to replace funk with simple.

It’s as if the reality of $$ and ubiquity of Ikea has tamed the other Mariko….

She is loud and flamboyant. She likes animal prints, and has no qualms about combining them, peacock feathers, overstuffed couches in red, intricate wood frames, big fluffy white alpaca pillows in the shape of cylinders, deep maroon Thai silk, bright green saris from India, traditional Andean textiles, and delicate Japanese vases, reed baskets, flowers made from bamboo stems and coconut heads in a dried cactus vase, etc…

I’m afraid my living space would end up looking something like the house equivalent of wearing a beautiful kimono with a pink boa in other words completely mismatched and weird.

Lake Titicaca Take II

The boat ride to Isal del Sol was probably one of the top 25 worst experiences in my life. We, me and Summer, plus about 90 others, were crammed into a boat that moved maybe 5 miles per hour. When I say crammed I mean stuffed into chairs designed for children-sized bodies that had been haphazardly nailed into the floorboards of the boat. But why even call it a boat? It was more of a platform with 2 chintzy motors.  So we’re crammed on this boat, and Summer takes a seat in front of me. She is uncomfortable and starts twisting and wiggling around in her pre-school chair when all of a sudden the nails give and the chair launches from the boat. Of course we were packed in so tight that none of the other passengers saw the humor since Summer was basically waving her ass in their face as we tried to get the chair back in place. We finally discovered that the legs of the chair had been placed on a tiny piece of wood that wasn’t actually part of the boat.

It didn’t help that all the windows had been tacky glued shut so that there wasn’t a breathe of air to freshen the ride.  Luckily, in staying with her boat-breaking practice, Summer managed to un-glue the bottom portion of the window to allow in some fresh air. She carefully braced the window open with her scarf, and she and I put our faces to the crack and sucked up the available airflow.

You can’t imagine how slow the boat ride was. It was terrible and lasted for 1.5 hours! So basicially, after riding on a bus for approximately 4 hours from La Paz, we board a boat for another hour and a half.

We finally arrive at Isla del Sol. The views were beautiful and I paid to take a picture with some kids and a llama. Yes, I am that tourist. We  hiked up the Inca stairs and washed our hands in the Fountain of Youth. The hike up the stairs is not that long, but pretty steep, and at altitude. Half way to the top Summer said, “my lungs hurt.” We hiked around a little more, but only had an hour before we had to get back on the boat from hell.

We finally made it back and had coffee at a seemingly nice restaurant. Read on for more.

From the outside, Mahka Uta offers a wide range of cuisine in a seemingly comfortable atmosphere. Plus they were playing salsa music at their outside bar. So, Summer and I decided to eat there. The restaurant is located on the main drag, 6 de agosto, in Cobacabana, and features an enclosed sun room and larger dining room.

We chose a table near the back of the restaurant. The first thing that catches your eye is the art work. On first impression, it seems just hippie. The art is painted on large canvasses that are scattered about the restaurant- birds soaring over the Andes, indigenous women carrying babies, swirls of psychedelic colors, eyes, etc. But on closer observation, you realize that the birds don’t look like birds at all, but rather like sting rays or flying space saucers, the swirls are not that imaginative at all and seem like someone just applied pressure to their paint brush as they moved it in a circular motion. I suddenly felt like I was in a 16-year-old’s room. There were polka dotted paper lanterns, ceramic light coverings, and various potted plants. I’ve read that things can match by mis-match. Not always true. And certainly not for this place. It seemed like the owners barely planned the layout of the restaurant and just scattered overflow from their house as decorations. For example,with the exception of a few tables,  each table had the same candle holder. The different candle holders, were large unsightly bowls that took up 80% of the space on the small tables. So yes, when a candle holder broke, they replaced it with the first thing within arm’s reach.

Ok, beside the bad art, we thought maybe the food would be the saving grace. So we ordered, and the first thing I noticed as the waiter put the food on the table was the terribly dirty table cloths! The table cloths were threadbare (not from washing) and with 1960s looking flower power print, and various bits of food. In Bolivia, there is a plethora of nice printed textiles so I couldn’t imagine choosing those table cloths in favor of what the owner chose.

Summer and I figured the cloths were just stained, and besides we were too tired to find another restaurant after so much travel.  I leaned back to relax and noticed that the bench on which I was seated was completely slanted. In fact, as I leaned back I thought I might just slide off. We began to study the seatings, and noticed the back of the “couch” I was on was actually somesort of wood frame with a cushion attached that had been hung from the wall with rope and nails. By the amount of spackle on the wall, the seat back had obviously ripped through several times.

No matter. By that time, the wine had eased away our weariness, and we just thought the whole thing was funny.

As you can imagine the food wasn’t anything to write home about either. Summer had a trout kebab and I had “Farmer’s trout.”

PS The place features a video rooms that reaks of achocol and sweat.

All in the all the trip wasn’t that bad despite this entry.

A Formal Letter of Protest

Jen is one of my closest friends.  We met while studying Japanese in Hamamatsu (Japan), the windiest city in the world! I’m trying to think of a story to give you a snapshop of this incredible person, but I can’t think of just one. That and I’m doubled over with laughter thinking of us eating terrible food in Akihabara (Japan), singing at the top of our lungs on a giant Ferris wheel, eating ramen made by the Japanese Keanu Reeves, hearing about her experiences with blind dates, or just chatting freely late into the night.

I’m so glad to have her guest blog about the hardest job in the world.

___________________________________________________________

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing this letter to protest my current work environment. I am a “personal assistant” to my boss, whom hereafter in this letter will be referred to as “X.” I was recruited by friends and family who previously held similar positions. I was assured by them I would savor every moment in my new career and, perhaps most important to me, that my boss and I would get along wonderfully.

I have been working in this job for almost 2 years now, and everything about my work environment is completely different from what I was led to believe. I have tried to explain to colleagues and close friends what I am going through, but many of them simply can’t comprehend the full extent of my plight, or they simply don’t want to know. Below is a snapshot of a typical day and specific examples of the abuse I take from X on a daily basis.

X is a sadistic tyrant who works me non-stop without a break. Almost every morning he calls to wake me up. I am expected to immediately head to work. Once I’m on the job, I have to run crazy errands in record time. Yesterday he wanted me to go and get his lunch, but when I gave him his food, he threw it on the floor. X sometimes does this whenever I bring him meals, and he finds it hysterically funny.

I’m not laughing. I am constantly getting him drinks. He trashes my personal space. X gives me on-the-job material that I am forced to read over and over again. He has no patience and is incredibly stubborn. I have only one break every day, but he sometimes doesn’t allow me to have even that brief reprieve. And when X isn’t getting my full attention, he hits me or pulls my hair. I find it degrading to be treated in this manner.

Six months into this experience, I was given the surprise of my career in an official notice that an efficiency expert would be coming as a second manager, if you will, to critique my work. I’ll call her “Y.” This woman has no qualms about calling at all hours of the night to make sure I am “on task.” While she has never been physically abusive, I never feel relaxed around her. If I have the miracle of a free minute to sit down to have a cup of coffee, I can feel her eyes on me. And many times if I’m trying to fulfill a task for X, Y will start yelling at me to do something for her. It’s non-stop.

Since I started this job, I have had no vacation. I have been given no sick days. And I have yet to be paid. And X (and now Y as well) refuses to let me quit. I am utterly exhausted and emotionally drained.

If you’re reading this letter, this is my notice that I will one day be free of this. My fear is that after doing this job for so long, I will have no recollection of what my old life was like. I am afraid I won’t recognize myself. This career has been life changing, and my mind may become so warped that I actually miss this insane, tiring, endless, horrible, wonderful job.

Sincerely,
EVERY MOTHER IN THE WORLD

____________________________________________________________

The Secret Ingredient

Everyday I’m faced with the romantic difficulties and frustrations of a long distance relationship. Lewis and I have been apart for approximately 10 months not including his 2 visits, my trip home, and our trip to India together. I think the biggest challenge we have to overcome is how to stay connected since our lives are so different. I think of it as going back home after you’ve been away for a long time- things are the same but you’ve changed so it’s hard to connect when you go back to visit.

Unlike the title of this blog boasts, I really don’t know the secret ingredient or the glue that keeps us together over time and distance. But here are a few things that I think have kept us together.

1. Frequent Communication-

Lewis and I talk to each other ALL the time. We talk every night after work and several times over the weekend depending on our schedules. If one of us is getting home late, we usually make the effort to just call and say hi or talk on the way home. We also have a strong custom of writing weekly “long emails.” We’ve actually written 36 emails since I’ve been away! We write about whatever we want in these emails, and in a way they require some of the same fore thought and planning that would go into romancing someone who was right there with you. The distance has forced us to talk because we don’t have the option of connecting just by being together. In some ways, I’m grateful for the skills this has imparted on us. We are used to talking to each other and we can pick up when the other is tired, frustrated, bored, etc.

2. An end in sight-

Knowing that at some point we will be together makes the distance doable. I remember when we got back from India in late Feb early March. Lewis was very proactive in setting a date for a visit. Even though it was only March, knowing that he would be in Bolivia in November made it much easier on both of us. I even started a fitness challenge to pass the time more quickly.

3. Commitment-

I think this is fundamental in any relationship. You can imagine that it’s much easier to get distracted by any number of things and lose commitment when your partner is so far away. We can’t predict the future, but before I left we BOTH decided that our relationship was worth committing to even if that meant facing the hardship of being separated. Paradoxically perhaps, I have actually grown stronger in my commitment. Maybe this comes from looking back down the road we have already walked and seeing exactly how strong we really are.

4. Romance and re confirming your feelings-

For me this is a must. I don’t need over the top, story-book romance, but I need it. Visits, compliments, words of encouragement, unexpected emails and phone calls are how we cover this base. I think if we had never been apart we might never have developed the custom of telling each other how amazing each is in the other’s eyes. It’s hard to describe the feeling you get when your boyfriend re affirms his love for you EVERYDAY!

5. Being tough Yes, just being tough has been part of it for me. There are nights I have cried because I miss him, but at the same time I’ve been grateful that I have someone worth crying over.

6. Skype

Avant Gard Pizza, Power Lemonade and Green Curry

My weekend was full of flavors.

1.Breakfast….as always

On Saturday I had my usual breakfast. Prepare yourself to be blown away by the amount of good stuff that I pack in. I have whipped up this breakfast so many times that everything is timed like a well rehearsed symphony, and it only takes 10 minutes to get together.

I cook about 3/4 cup of oatmeal with a sliced banana in water and a splash of soy milk. I then add about 2 teaspoons of cinnamon, 1 teaspoon of sesame seeds (ground into a powder), 2-3 teaspoons of flax (also ground into a powder), and 1 teaspoon of maca.  I then blend the mixture so that the natural sugar of the banana difuses through the oatmeal and I don’t have to add any sugar.

I love sesame. The seeds have been used throughout history in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America as both a food source and for oil. I love hummus rich in tahini or veggies stir fried in sesame oil. I remember mixing sesame paste with tofu, soy sauce, and sugar in Japan to make a delicious dressing for green beans. In my oatmeal, sesame adds a bit of calcium (important since I don’t like diary products), and minerals such as copper and magnesium (important since high blood pressure runs in my family.

There’s alot of hype around flax seeds, but I read that they offer alpha linolenis acid, which a type of plant derived omega 3 fatty acid (similar to those found in fish). Living in a landlocked country, you can imagine how difficult it is to get fish!

Get ready for MACA. Maca is an Andean root similar to ginseng. I think it is marketed as the “Andean viagra,” but it is so much more. It lowers stress and gives an energy boost. And yes is does stimulate sex appetite. I really like maca and can feel a difference in my energy levels.

2. Avant Garde pizza
I’m not a big pizza fan, but this weekend I must say that I ate some pretty incredible pizza at a friend’s birthday party. The first pizza was a roquefort cheese pizza with spinach. Delicious! The cheese was very strong, but used sparingly enough to give a very nice rich and creamy flavor. The next pizza was a classic margerita with tomatoes and fresh basil. We were standing around trying not to fill up too much on the first pizzas when a  barbque shirmp pizza with pineapples came out on a large wood block. I would never think to combine barbque sauce with shrimp and pineapples, but it worked. I don’t even really like barbque sauce, and I’ve never been a big fa of Hawaiin pizza.   Last and best was a chicken curry pizza. The curry was likely the kind you can find in jars in the grocery store. I imagine it had turmeric, comino, ginger, and maybe cardamom. The curry was sweetened with canned peaches that were diced so finely you couldn’t even detect them. I think the vegetarian version might have used zucchini or Japanese pumpkin (kabocha).

3. Power Lemonade
I squeezed some limes and added completely unrefined sugar and flax. I imagine that this little mixture has to be great for cleaning the stomach….but I’m not sure.

4. Green Curry
Finally, for dinner on Sunday I made green curry. The problem is that I couldn’t find a can of coconut milk, and I don’t think green curry is even worth making without it. But that didn’t stop me. I knew I could get un-adulterated shredded coconut. I simply added boiling water to the coconut and then blended it. I strained the mixture and delicious, creamy coconut infused water came out. I repeated this several times until I had about 2 cups worth of coconut milk.

I used a green curry paste that my wonderful boyfriend brought me. But to make it more interesting I added chopped basil and soy sauce, and a dash of sugar. To make the curry substantive, I threw in soy meat, green beans, and sweet potatoes. I served this over brown rice! The only thing missing my was good company.