Exploring my 'hood

We ventured out last night to a little restaurant around the corner to get some naan. Naan is a traditional type of bread – if you like Indian food, then you’ve probably had it. In any event, we walked up to the place to find a group of men clustered around the front, with one sitting on this large stone box, and another leaning up against it, pulling balls of dough out of a basin and placing them on a stone slab. The box was actually a large and (I’m assuming) very well-insulated oven. The guy sitting nearest to the hole in the top would take a ball of dough, pat it out into a circle over the top of this square cushion, then put the cushion into the oven, and pull it right out, presumably depositing the dough in the oven to cook. When I stepped in a little closer, I saw that the circles of dough were actually sticking to the walls of the oven as they baked. He then took two very long metal implements and peeled the circles of naan off the walls of the oven, and took them out to be wrapped up for us. The whole process didn’t take more than a few minutes, and the place was literally a hole in the wall, but it was so interesting, and that was some of the best naan I’ve ever had. (Of course, I’m always a sucker for freshly baked breads and stuff like that.) If we go back, which we may well, I am definitely bringing my camera. Although, I feel a little strange doing that – these people are just living their daily life, and I don’t want to act as though I’m Marlon Perkins from an episode of “Wild Kingdom”.

No word yet on specifics for the Bangladesh trip, which is making it difficult for me and my type-A tendencies to not explode. I’m getting better at the “no problem!” way of life, but things like this still have a tendency to bug me. I should probably try to get over that. Of course, if it were that easy, I probably would have by now. Let’s think for a second about the pointlessness of being a control freak in Pakistan. You can’t control anything here, I mean, the city can’t even control its own electrical grid, as evidenced by the daily blackouts and power surges. Then there’s the fact that our cable service will switch from one lineup to another depending on the wind. So, you just have to learn to go with it and appreciate the differences. Enjoy the naan and mangos.

We’ve got a bunch of big meetings set up for tomorrow and Friday, so I’m definitely going out with a bang. I’ve really tried to be useful here and make a role for myself, even though I’m not officially on the project. It will be interesting to see how this all ends up, and what this kind of work will mean to my ability to get more of this kind of work. Que sera, sera. Of course, I get to return in a few weeks and see what has happened here in the interim. I really, really hope that some progress gets made. That will make me a much happier woman, and give me a much easier job to come back to. But it looks like we’ll be able to have people in place to keep things moving, so it’s likely that things can continue in my absence.

Now I’m off to Vietnam to work with someone who doesn’t think I can do my job! I’ll have more of a sense of humor about that once I’ve actually started to make myself useful. But as I told my boss, I don’t have any intention of meeting this guy’s low expectations of me…I’m hoping to aim a smidge higher than that. That kind of reminds me of “Office Space”. “…Well, if you want to be the kind of person who only does the minimum, that’s up to you…” I’m really excited, though – I just wrote to one of my colleagues who has spent a lot of time there, and he said that it’s perfectly fine for me to wander around the city by myself – hurrah! I’ve heard to watch out for purse-snatchers, so I’ll make sure that I’m careful and that I don’t carry anything important with me - there will be a safe in my apartment that I imagine my passport and ID will get very cozy with. As well as any other travel documents I may need. But when compared to the things that people, including the US State Department, have warned me to be careful about in Karachi, purse-snatching is nothing. HAH! Not that I’ll be all sanguine if my purse actually does get stolen – quite the contrary. But it beats the heck out of being kidnapped or blown up.

We went to a bazaar tonight after work, which was fun – I got a few pretty things for some good little boys and girls. I didn’t actually know what to expect, but it was much like the craft markets in South Africa. I am absolutely terrible at haggling, I always feel bad about arguing with someone over what ends up being a dollar or two, but that’s the way you shop here. In every place you shop, except the grocery store. Although, maybe I’m supposed to haggle there, too, I don’t know. I also saw my first anti-American demonstration today. We were sitting in the Emirates Air office waiting for our chief technical advisor to get his plane tickets sorted out, and what he said would take ten minutes took over an hour. Of just s-i-t-t-i-n-g. However, when I saw people congregating outside, waving signs and shouting, I thought that we would either need to get out of there really fast, or we should just stay inside and keep our heads down. It all disbanded before he was done fixing his ticket, and when I got back to the car, I asked Hamid what they were demonstrating about. He looked a little sheepish and said “Miss, it’s anti-America!”, which is what I had thought it might be. Earlier, on our way to the Emirates Air office, we were running late, and needed to get there before the office closed. So Hamid was told to get us there quickly. We have since decided that such power should only be used judiciously. As we whipped down the road, weaving in and out of traffic, Hamid cheerfully said “This real Pakistani driving!” Well, bravo, because we made it in time and everyone was in one piece, no problem. I’m going to vote for allowing a reasonable amount of travel time in the future.

“Accidental invention leads to chewy bagel”. That is an actual headline on Yahoo. Well, I’m sure glad that there’s nothing else to write about, like war, drought, or any of that depressing stuff. Bagels, the Michael Jackson trial, and Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. That’s my definition of hard-hitting news. Well done, Yahoo.

*sigh*