I am sitting in a caf� in Buenos Aires. I am waiting for a flight. I managed to order something like a Fanta and two empanadas of different types. The orange soft-drink is a particular victory for me because I managed to say in Castellano, "Do you have something like a Fanta?" The result was close enough to a Fanta, by all accounts.

Buenos Aires had put me in a bad mood, as usual. It wasn't really the fault of the city as much as it was the fault of the world-- the world was so globalized that everything looked the same, and it annoyed me to travel so far to find that nothing had changed.

So I had sat staring morosely out of the bus window, looking at the same goddamn weeds growing out of the same goddamn sidewalks, and the same goddamn trash choking the same goddamn waterways, stretching in brown mundanity towards the vast brown sea. Then I'd fallen asleep.

In the airport I'd had to run the gauntlet of the duty free shop, with its perfumes, cognacs, and Oakleys. It isn't difficult: I am immune to luxury items. Especially when they are the same goddamn luxury items in every airport, across the world, with no variation. The super-sized Toblerone pyramids are an exception. I am always tempted by Toblerone. But my will was strong. I bought two normal chocolate bars, and my delight at following the conversation with the cashier in Castellano momentarily distracted me from the math of conversion and before long it dawned on me that I'd spent $8 on a chocolate bar. A Milka, no less. Did they import the goddamn thing from Germany directly? The wrapper is printed in German, so that could be precisely what they did.

Inside the terminal someone has parked a brand new Fiat on a pedestal under a string of lights, as if a Fiat could ever be desirable. The television is tuned to "soccer news", because soccer players have been the only personages of note to come from Argentina since it was founded.

The Argentinians as a people can best be described as either stylish Americans or fat Spaniards. Every man in Argentina is handsome, even the ugly ones. The old ones in particular, of the sport-coat-wearing, loafer-sporting variety, gaze out at the world from beneath dark, expressive eye brows, and every one of them could be The Most Interesting Man in the World. The women run the gamut on the thin side of average-looking, but the production quality that goes into their hair is unparalleled in all of the New World. Many of them are fair, which seems disconcerting in South America. I finish my orange soda. My mood has improved ever-so-slightly. Argentina doesn't deserve my scorn any more than any other godforsaken country on the planet.

Time to board a plane.

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I found an old poem that I wrote. The technology is out of date.


Quiet Phone


The phone is quiet, unperturbed.
Flipped to attention in hope of extraordinary news;
It delights in its ordinariness
The phone is quiet.

Hid in pocket, left by bedside table,
Stared at, flipped open (to check the time);
Exhorted by force of will to ring, rechecked for ringer volume
The phone is unmoved.

My Love could be lost, hurt, confused, or dead
The phone is Quiet.
My Love could be dead, or worse, uncaring,
or worse, with another


The phone is unmoved.

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Yesterday my friend and I had to give a presentation to a bunch of bigwigs. They had told us to figure out whether a particular mission idea was feasible. We told them that it was indeed a very cool mission, and that we had figured out how we could do it. Then our cost guy got up and gave the estimated costs and all of the bigwigs proverbially choked on their coffees. Feasibility study having been completed, our bosses placed a big black checkmark next to the concept: STUDIED. Check.

And that was all she wrote. I was disappointed, but not surprised.

Afterwards my friend and I were sitting around and talking about how bummed we were.

"Well," he said, "we did ask them to fund something that cost 4 billion dollars. How many people get to go up in front of people and ask for things that cost 4 billion dollars? Even around here?"

Not many. Not too many at all.

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Him: So when you become the director, remember that I want to have Firouz's job.
Me: Ok.
Him: When I become the director, which job do you want?
Me: I want to be in charge of the ENTIRE SOLAR SYSTEM
Him: Ok, yeah, that's Firouz's job, so, same as me.


Him: Wow, that woman's singing voice is beautiful!
Me: She sounds like a Disney Princess
Him: Yes! I always wanted to marry a Disney Princess when I grew up. My favorite was Pocahontas.

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My landlord decided to replace some of the boards on the deck in the backyard of my beautiful new abode (built in 1920).

Upon removing the offending rotten boards, he discovered that the frame that was holding them up was also rotten. He can't replace the surface rotten boards without replacing the frame boards. Upon taking up one of the frames, he discovered that many of the foundation boards were also rotten. Indeed, the concrete pylons that make up the foundation itself are sitting at angles. What my landlord conceived as a weekend project for himself has now stretched into a week, and my deck is a mess of exposed nails and jutting boards that cannot be traversed. A large spider has taken the opportunity to build a complex web across the entrance to the yard.

At work it is more of the same. I try to fix one thing in a figure I have made. No... not so easy... the file is uneditable. It will have to be remade. Oh, but the access license for the software I made it with isn't working. Oh, the data files that went into the software program are on a computer that is no longer accessible to me.

In order to fix the figure I have to redownload the data, get IT to fix the software license, rebuild the figure from scratch, and THEN export it.


Oh, too much trouble! I'll just buy some tickets for my work travel for October.

"Oh, but you have to have us buy your tickets unless you have a release saying that you are going to do it."

"How do I get the release?"

"Submit everything as if we were going to do it for you, but with your reasons why you want to do it yourself, and then you can be approved to do it yourself. You will be given a strict price limit over which you cannot go. Oh, but one of your trips hasn't been ok'd by management yet, so both of them will have to be treated as "late planning". You can't really plan either of them until management oks them."

"But it was management in the first place who told me quite late that I had to go!"

"You'll have to get management to write a letter explaining why they need you to go and why it was so late... then we'll have a chance at being able to plan your travel so that you can get the clearance for you to book the travel yourself."

Later...

Management: "Yes... we're trying to get a lot of people approved after the fact, because everyone was told that they were to attend very late."

"I need to make my travel arrangements, so I need a letter saying why I am applying to go late."

"Why don't you write the letter yourself, and then we'll sign it."

"But I don't know why you decided to tell me so late!"

"Just write something, and make sure it doesn't use any key words that would cause concern, and we'll sign it."

So to buy my own plane tickets, I need to write a letter about myself from the perspective of management, saying why I am applying late, then I need to get management to sign it, so that I can submit all of the information needed for the company to plan my trip, so that they can calculate a strict cost cap that I cannot exceed, so that I can book my own tickets, by which time the prices will have doubled.


It is Friday afternoon at four o'clock and my WORK is a MASS OF EXPOSED NAILS AND JUTTING BOARDS THAT CANNOT BE TRAVERSED.

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Today I got this email:

[Zanzibar],

If you get a chance, can you please stop by my office?

[Big Boss]


The subject line was "Stop by?"


I was like uhhhhh what have I done... oh noooo what did I do?? Eghhhhhhh Ahhhhghhhh Aghghhhhh


Me:

Hi [Boss]!

I have solid (and overlapping) meetings from now until 4 pm, will you still be there at 4?

What would you like to talk about?


aghhhh aghghlellhehhhghghhh omgomgomgomgomgomg

Him:

You have won an award!�I want to give it to you.




He said that he wanted to give it to me before payday because I would see the "award" reflected in my paycheck and I would probably wonder what was going on.

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We've been spending the last couple of days arguing about where we should send the next Martian rover. There was a guy making a documentary there. It seemed funny to think that someone wanted to make a documentary about your "boring work meeting".

By the time the rover lands on Mars we'll be like "Wow! Look how young we all look!"



My sister jinyu has been here for the past week! :D Thanks for visiting! :D :D

I was kind of depressed today so I ordered myself a shirt:

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On a less roommate-related note, I've been asked to update a volcanology text book that I used to use. I talked to the guy today and he said that I might be able to collect half the author royalties from the updated edition (with the other half split between the original two authors). Royalties from a book? Who does that?!!?

Also I guess I'm going to be interviewed tomorrow on Science Fridays for National Public Radio. I guess this will be my eight minutes of fame.

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