After not being able to get tickets yesterday for W.32nd, I decided that we need to come 2 HOURS before to stand in line.  Yipee! I was the first in line!  Then my friend, his friend, and my sister joined us. The couple behind us had come even before me but went to get coffee. The line was really long again, and only the 6 of us were able to get in!  (note: I came first, then my friend.  Then the couple.  Then my sister, and finally his friend.  So when they started to let us in, it was the four of us first.  Everyone was stressed that the couple wouldn’t get in and that wouldn’t be fair, since my sister and my friend’s friend came AFTER the couple.. but all was okay.)

The stars showed up again, and we got to take a pic with John Cho afterwards.  The other protaganist in the movie, Jun Sung Kim, is HOT, but in the movie, he’s a total SLEEEEAAAAZZEE BALLL.

The movie was EXCELLENT.  I really liked the way it unfolded and the acting was really good. There was Q&A afterwards, but some of the questions were STOOPID.

So far, this movie has had the longest lines for door sales, which is a good sign!

Go ED!  (for E.C. who is reading this)

Had a packed day yesterday.

In the morning, spent time with one of my dearest and oldest friends and her brood… Lyla and William.  SOOO cute. Isn’t it the best when kiddos “remember” you and run to you and hug you!  Thanks Lyla-bear!  William is so cute, too.  Loved hanging out with them and their momma, too.

Then met my sister for lunch – we ate Japanese ramen at Rai Rai Ken… deeeelicious.

Afterwards, we roamed around a bit in the E. Village/Little Tokyo – arguably my favorite area of the City… then we settled down for tea at podunk, a cute cute tea place.  Namsky and I shared a pot of chocolate vanilla tea – yummy!

We then went home before heading to the 34th street Loews theater to try to watch the world premiere of my friend’s husband’s movie… but stupid us, we thought it would be alright to get there at 6:15 or so for a 7:30pm showing (part of the Tribeca Film Festival…www.32nd.com), but the line was already RIDONK long and well, we weren’t able to get in. But I did get to see my friend and her hubby.  I asked her hubby as he walked down the line to look for a friend of his: “so do you feel cool that ALL these people came out to see your movie?” “yes, I do!”  tee-hee.  Going to try again tonight.  Also got glimpses of cute John Cho and also Grace Park, who looked super tall.

Dejected that we couldn’t get tix, my sisters and I headed to Acme for some comfort food – mac-n-cheese; chicken fried steak (not “friend”); and mashed potatoes.

Am off to Redeemer in a few minutes. 

I heart NY. 

Every time I’ve been in NYC since I moved out, I’ve had a celebrity sighting.

The first time I came back, it was Snoop Dogg.  Then the last time I was here, I saw Carmen Kass. This time, I saw John Cho as he was walking out of the Upper West Side Uniqlo store. He’s cute and I’m hoping to catch his latest movie, W.32nd, tomorrow night (co-written by my friend Lisa’s husband; jyoonnyc’s bro(s)? also worked on the movie…)

Having good bonding time with sisters.  And eating yummy food.  Tonight, we ate at Mezzogiorno, first introduced to me by koreanhalfing. It was a DEEELICOIUS Italian meal… panfriend calamari… pasta with crab sauce… ravioli… and filet mignon.  The three of us shared all dishes and it was the perfect amount of food.

Hello to my Uzland peeps who are reading this ! I miss you guys already!!!

I’m finally back in the US and A.

Flew around 5 hours to Istanbul from Tashkent and spent a day there.  This time, I was in the European side of the city… what fun! I stayed the night in the most decrepit hostel ever (despite the advice of my friend).. but it was fine.. there were no bugs, at least.

I had a delicious lunch of fried oysters, salad, and a nice Efes Pilsner.

Fun Turkish word: portakal = orange.

Then 10 hours from Istanbul to NYC.  I really like Turkish Air.  They show decent movies (“Casino Royale”, “The Pursuit of Happyness”); the food is pretty good; and the service is excellent. 

First meal in NYC was Camarones al Ajillo (shrimp in garlic sauce) with yellow rice and beans; and avocado salad – with my sister at Cafe Con Leche.  Yummy. 

Will be in NYC til Saturday… !

Before leaving, I wanted to have a super fun, super casual daaaaaa-nnnn-cccceeee partee with both adults and kiddos.. local friends and foreigners… and I did get my wish!

Around 50 people came to dance the night away with me… it was a great time… no tears… not too many “oh, I’ll miss you”… and cheesey moments, just how I wanted it…

Pretty ladies…

Pretty cake…

Pretty young kiddos… (I’m twice as old as the oldest in this group…)

Dancing the robot…

Dancing like fools…

Well aware that I am lookin’ a bit chunky and will do some dieting when I’m back in the US and A.

 Went out tonight with my local girlfriends…

 Tomorrow is my last day!  Bittersweet, but am looking forward to Turkey…

That’s the day I’ll be leaving the country I’ve called home for almost 3 1/2 years.

I was originally only going to stay for 2 years… but extended to 2.5 years…. then…

Can’t describe how it feels to be just a few days away from leaving a place, somewhat forever… so many of my friends have already left and many more are leaving (both local and foreigner)… so it won’t be the same if I ever come and visit…

3 1/2 years is like nothing… barely 10 % of my life has been spent here, and yet, I’ve learned SO much… too much to process at the moment..

Tomorrow, I’ll have a fun party!  Sunday, I’ll go and visit my neighbor who now lives in a city about 2 hours away.  Monday – we’ll be busy with work, work, work… Tuesday… finishing up.. then early early Wednesday morning, I fly to Istanbul! I will stay there one night and then fly to NYC the next morning — arriving at JFK in the afternoon of the 26th…

I will miss the best time to be here — fruit season!  No delicious strawberries, raspberries, mulberries, cherries, apricots, peaches…

Of course, I’ll miss other things, but I’m not thinking about those things right now… I’m just focusing on one day at a time… until it’s time to go… hoping to meet up with everyone that I want to say goodbye to…

Karaoke

After a great time in fellowship (Friday is the sabbath here), Sakina received an invite to lunch with some of her Filipino friends.  She asked me “so, do you want to go?” (because we had planned to do a lot of shopping that day). I said “sure, why not?”.  Then she replied “Well, if we go there, we have to stay there for HOURS”… I thought “oh, pshaw… we’ll just leave when we need to”… and replied “well, I’ll just be the aggressive American and say we have to go”.  Sakina shrugged and agreed.

Well, we got there, and oh my — it semed like the entire Filipino community in Maz. (the Asian Dev. Bank’s main HQs are in the Philippines, I think) was there – about 15 of them … and the lunch was a FEAST – Filipino soup (I forgot the name – but it tasted like Korean teng-jjang-chigae)..turkey cooked over a spit… rice… salads… smoked, salty fish dipped in vinegar(from the Phillipines)… candied, dried bananas… candied, dried coconut.. peanut candy.. it was all delicious and the company- very friendly and fun.

Afterwards, the non-Filipina women (there were three of us) settled down to chat with the woman who had invited us.  Meanwhile, the men retired to the “living room” and cranked up… karaoke!!!  As they started singing, Reinia, the woman who invited us, explained how singing and especially DANCING were a part of even the UNIVERSITY education in the Philippines!!! I told her how at UMich, at the Asian-Pacific-American talent show, the Filipino-American Student Association (FASA) always had the most amazing dances… (other Asians joke that they think they’re not Asian..)

So one man is singing karaoke (and consuming a bit more alcohol then should be consumed at 2 o’clock in the afternoon)… and eventually, we get roped in as well.  We sang such classics as “Fly me to the moon”; “The greatest love of all”; “Fernando”; “Dancing Queen”… One of the non-Filipina women with us, K, is an AMAAAZING singer, so they were all going CRAZY when she started singing…

By the time we finished, it was 3:15pm.  We had arrived there around 12 noon..

Fashion & Beauty

Finally, we got home and ventured out again for a bit of shopping.  We visited many shops, looking for souveniers… and when we got to “Sakina’s” shop, the owner met us and, as usual, treated us to drinks while we looked through his merchandise.  We were looking at some rugs and other embroidered items and he, out of nowhere said to us:

owner: oh, the women are getting worse..
me: what do you mean?
owner: before, the women would sit and embroider and make rugs… and now, all they care about is fashion and beauty..fashion and beauty…  (makes a motion of putting lipstick on)
–Sakina and I laugh, obligatorily, not expressing what we’re really thinking…
owner: and in K.abul, now, if a man brings guests, the woman should make food.. but she says “no, I will not cook”
– owner shakes his head and tsks… tsks

Curious

With us is a third Uz. JDA worker… male… we’re walking down the street, and he says to me, as a few women in burkas pass us:
“I’m so curious about what they look like under there. I just want to see.”
Hmm… what do they say?  “forbidden fruit tastes so much sweeter..”

EDIT: W-o-r-c-h-e-s-t-e-r-s-h-i-r-e Sauce.  Me thinks this has WAY too many letters for any good.  Those crazy BRITS!

I’ve been to Af-land now a total of three times.  I’ve enjoyed each visit.  Here are some random observations about Af-land:

• Though many women still wear burkas, more and more women walk around with just a headscarf on. Of course, you still have to have long-sleeved tops and pants.  But you can wear sandals. I guess toes are not considered very provocative.


• Like I’ve said before, I can buy: Kellogg’s Cereal; Heinz Ketchup; Worchestire (sp?) Sauce; Maxwell House coffee; Philadelphia Cream Cheese… among other things here…


• It’s very dusty where I am.


• Many Af men are good looking, but Af women – not as… in my opinion, anyway.


• The number 5 is panj. I love that word. Panj. Panj. Panj.


• Good bye is: hudo ofis.  I like that, too.


• Reading Dari is craziness.  There are no letters for the vowels, so you have to know the language before you can even start to read or write.


• As a result (maybe) many people here are still not literate.  So we have documents where people sign with their fingerprint!


• Many Uz-landers live here.  So you could speak Uz and communicate with a lot of peeps.


• Walking down the street is a bit annoying.  EVERY person stares.  In Uz, I blend in, so I forgot what it’s like to be stared at.


• The shawar-kameez is SUPER comfy. 


• Af food is yummy – their pilau (like Uz “plov” – “fried”rice with meat) is lighter because it’s made with basmati rice.  they also make delish red beans.  bread is a bit denser; I prefer Uz non. 

That’s all.  For now.

After a 1.5 hour flight in the LOUDEST plane ever (AN-24), then about a 10 minute ride to the border… and then 1.5 hours crossing the border… (including customs; walking across the bridge)… and then 1.5 hour car ride, I arrived in Mazar, home of JDA Afg.

I had absolutely no problems along the way… I had all my paperwork in order, but they didn’t even ask me for any of it.  At customs on the UZ side, I was translating for an Afg. man who couldn’t speak Russian, but only a bit of English.  Absurd.

They went through ALL of my luggage in the UZ side – this is the side I’m leaving FROM… then when I get to the AF side, entry took about 5 minutes.

It’s really amazing (I say this about Af. all the time) the kind of stuff you can buy here that you can’t buy over in UZ… lots of things imported from UAE, Pakistan, Iran… Last night, I was able to make tuna casserole for me and my housemates!

Of course, walking around covered while everyone calls you “Chinese” or says “Hello, how are you!” gets a bit annoying after awhile (how do the foreigners deal with that on a daily basis!)…

I even bought two Massoud hats (see below) yesterday for $1 each.  On the way in, we passed under a gate which was supposed to say “good bye” but instead said “good boy”.. and also had Massoud’s pic on it.   He, indeed, to many people (especially in this area) WAS —  not so much a good boy but a good man, at least.  Notice the hat?  Cool, eh?

I am finally heading back to the States on April 26th after being here for more than 3 years! (I arrived here January 9, 2004).  Here’s my journal entry from that first day (uncensored and unedited!):

I arrived in Tashkent, Uzbekistan this morning around 6:00am after a 10 hour flight from NYC to Moscow, a 12 hour layover in Moscow, and a 4 hour flight from Moscow to Tashkent. At JFK, my aunt, uncle, and cousins were all saying goodbye to me and one of the security guards was yelling at us, saying “you can’t be here! Don’t you know that we’re at security alert orange, etc, etc”. Otherwise, all flights were fine. The Aeroflot flight was actually a treat! I got two seats to myself and the food was actually pretty tasty. Once we got off, we were herded like cattle to wait in line for passport control. After looking briefly at me and then at the picture in my passport, the scary Russian lady just said “Go to transit office at 9 o’clock” and handed me back my passport without any change in expression. I think this “no change in expression” is a requirement for working at the Moscow airport, because when I went to the transit office at 8 o’clock, just to see what was up, the lady there was also extremely rude and expressionless. During my 12 hour layover in Moscow, I drifted in and out of sleep, switching locations every two hours or so. The airport consisted of only 22 gates and I must have made my rounds at least 5-6 times during the 12 hours. The Uzbekistan Airways flight was also interesting – I met a girl named Yana doing microfinance work in Tajikistan and we flew on a very old Soviet plane where the seats folded up and down in crazy ways. Also, in the back, there was a separate storage room. And the plane was INCREDIBLY loud. I wore earplugs the whole way.

George, the night driver for JDA, picked me up upon my arrival in Tashkent, sans luggage. I was worried about my luggage, since I had not seen it since checking them in at JFK, but I figured that it would be okay. After a million years to fill out some silly forms to get my luggage back, we were off to Kathy and Bob’s house. Kathy greeted me with a big smile; she looked younger than I thought she would be. She cooked me some eggs which I ate with this really thick, hearty bread. I am super jet legged but told her I was determined to stay up as late as I could so that I could get over it as soon as possible. So I followed her to the bazaar, my first experience of everyday life in Uzbekistan. The bazaar was fun. Immediately after we set foot in the bazaar area, a young boy came alongside her, asking if he could carry our bags. He was probably 12 or 13 years old. “Why isn’t he in school?” I asked her, realizing probably that school was still out for the holidays. But she had seen him at the bazaar during non-holiday times, too. Kathy had a list of items to buy and she checked them off, one by one. Milk, crackers, mayonnaise, apples, raisins, yogurt, beans.. nothing unusual about the grocery list, except you couldn’t go to one large store to buy all of these items – you had to move from booth to booth, store to store, scouring the shelves and bowls for what you needed. Store selections weren’t necessarily the same day by day, according to Kathy. She had seen chocolate chips in a store 8 years ago and hasn’t seen them since.

We then went to a hotel to exchange money. For $100, I got a thick WAD of sum, made up of mostly 1,000’s and a few 100’s. The exchange rate is around 980 sums per dollar. Just to put that into perspective, most Uzbeks in Tashkent make $10-15 a month, which is around $120 to $150 a year. I almost had an entire year’s salary for an Uzbek person in my possession! EVERYTHING is paid in cash.. from cars to rents to utility bills…

I am now in my guest apartment. The building is ugly and decrepit, but the apartment itself isn’t bad at all. It is furnished and well-stocked. JDA really wanted to buy the apartment but since the building is going to be torn down “sometime” by the government, we couldn’t. So now I have to decide if I want to live here and risk having to move in a year or so, or move to some other place. The rent on this place is $100 a month, total. Again, to put that into perspective, that’s almost as much as an Uzbek person makes in a whole year! Most Uzbeks own their apartments which are sold for three to four thousand dollars. Houses are ten thousand dollars and up.