oh yes oh yes i love new york

last night with toni and 2 more germans (me + 3 german men on the town!!), i bought the full price movie ticket at film forum because my year-long membership just expired a few days ago, obviously not to be renewed because i have only 4 weeks left in the city.

and oh no! oh no oh no, in this week of free string quartets at lincoln center, motorino pizzas, ethiopian documentaries, bagelsbagelsbagels, chelsea openings, fort tryons, williamsburg banks, almondine macarons, fairways, levain cookies, wagner colleges, dumbo friends, num pangs, snowy central parks, and all the rest i think oh no oh no i love this city too too much to leave. i know this city too too well, it fits me like a glove.

but wait wait wait. it's quite obvious that i love this city so much this week because of a certain beloved bearded man accompanying me at each step. the weeks when he is not here, of course it's charming and i have great affection for the concrete mountains, but life is only that much rosier when the man you love is strolling with you hand in hand, ja?

and he is the very reason i am leaving, to (hopefully) make berlin as natural to me as new york is, and so i calm down a bit and realize that in 3 days, when i'm alone in the city again, i know i will no longer think oh no oh no i cannot leave. yes i leave a great deal behind and step into a great unknown, but if i can feel the way i have at so many points this week ALL THE TIME, then how on earth could i not say adieu to these beloved 5 boroughs?

so cher new york, i will start now in preparing my 4-week adieu. i'm certain we will meet again in the future, i will renew film forum memberships and shop exclusively at fairway and go to powerhouse book readings and it will be grand once more. but for now, i'm trading you in for a very different model, one in which they speak a very different language, but one which holds something a bit more appealing than bagels (yes, it is possible).

in other words: toni and i are feasting on the city, it is glorious and hard at the same time, he leaves on saturday, i am sad, sad that we have to have another goodbye, but overjoyed that it will only last 4 weeks. and then no more goodbyes. huzzahhuzzahhuzzah!

ok ok. enough with the circuitous introverted ranting. back to unicef-related matters :)

for your consideration, exhibits a - d:

my dear german arrives thursday for a last visit to my city before i leave it to take up residency in his :)

exhibit a:


and in anticipation, this morning i trekked out to a little bagel shop in brooklyn (an accidental discovery of ours in january) in order to stock up on their DELECTABLE french toast bagels for our highly-anticipated and soon-to-be-very-missed new york breakfasts. french toast + bagel = DELECTABLE.

i also picked up this GORGEOUS and CHARMING 100+ year old little photo of venice.

exhibit b:

GORGEOUS. CHARMING.

while strolling through here,

exhibit c:
STUNNING.

and once more it's olympic viewing party tonight - although really, did anyone else find the opening ceremonies last night kinda bizarre and lame?

exhibit d:




FIN.

guess what guess what guess what?!?!

my computer works! my computer works! my computer works!!!!!

yes yes yes!!! i came in my room no more than 10 minutes ago, saw my laptop just lying there, open, black and empty. i thought - hey, why not? why not press the little power button and see what happens.

ET VOILA.

are there words? hardly!

only to declare from the mountaintops that my computer works, and that new york is BEAUTIFUL in the snow - or rather, part of it, namely the central park part of it that i walked through tonight on the way home from work... so so quiet and eerily white as the sun went down, the skyscrapers began to light up - ah! BEAUTIFUL.

i didn't take this picture (my camera is heavy) - but it is quite accurate. what a BEAUTIFUL DAY.

timeline of my week

MONDAY

7am. woke up sickety sick sick. despite what i know will be a highly-packed work week, i also couldn't swallow, nor hardly lift my head up, so alas: i decided to work from home.

12pm. been pushing fluids and a senegal case study non-stop for the last 5 hours. feeling quite comfortable, lying on my bed, laptop perched on my lap, water in my left hand - until oh no oh no oh no the most awful thing ever, me in all my clumsiness and fuzzy-sick-head-thinking tip my glass, water spills on my keyboard, i LEAP UP and shake and mop off. mind you, it was really only about 3/4 an inch that spilled out - but mind you further, it spilled directly on the keyboard. computer dies.

2pm. at the apple store on 5th avenue in my pajamas. they've taken my beloved laptop apart, dried it out as best they could, then said to leave it open for a week to allow every morsel of moisture to evaporate, return, see if it works properly, or else alas. another computer must be bought. (no no no no no!)

rest of day. cry at this prospect. also cry that i lost 5 hours of precious work, when i'm under an ugly deadline.

TUESDAY

8am. back at the office, feeling increasingly sick throughout the day, but got lovely text messages to cheer me up from toni, sadie and moe :)

5.30pm. on the phone with my boss in geneva, when a colleague comes up, puts the following post-it-note on my computer screen "big snow storm tomorrow, UN may be closed, call 212-326-7101 in the morning to find out." !!!!!!!!!!!

WEDNESDAY

7am. slowly get out of my melatonin-induced slumber. can't swallow yet again, but behold! i part my curtains and there they are! big, big chunky flakes falling from a white white sky!!

7.05am. out in the living room, the view onto broadway is blindingly white, i can no longer see the river or across to jersey. i call the UN helpline, and why yes "Please be advised that due to increment weather, the UN complex in New York will be closed Wednesday, February 10, 2010." (isn't it amazing that the UN can simply shut down? oh it's all so absurd.)

10.34am. 3 mugs of tea, 3 chocolate-covered digestives and 2 glasses of orange juice later, working on my very kind roommate's computer editing this never-ending senegal case study with a WINTER WONDERLAND OUTSIDE.

10.35am. SO HAPPY we had a UN snow day today. not only because i still feel utterly ill, but i also now feel as if i've finally made up for all that sunshine in the OC meaning no snow days. we only ever got extra days off school when our teachers were on strike (which, admittedly was frequent.)

10.36am. yes, still very very very sad about my computer. oh please little macbook, don't die! don't die!

10.37am. back to work. will take pictures of the metropolitan blizzard and post some other day. in the meantime, much love you all!

i sit on my computer all day at work, so about 85% of my posts are about unicef

i do apologize.

but i had to spill just a wee bit this fine Nachmittag. (not as if i know it's fine as i've been inside since 8am and have no windows nearby. but i'm sure it is.)

i seem to rail against unicef and all its politics a great deal, especially of late. but having just returned from the 8th floor of the unicef offices, better known as the health section, and having attended yet another incredibly impressive thursday 11am technical update from the health team, i really have to step back on my criticisms and put them in context. you see, i work on the 11th floor, and if anything, the UN is heirarchical (ha). the executive director rests on the 13th, and it seems the higher you go the more entrenched you are in policy and process, less in outputs and results, and thus more susceptible to the egos and politics of large organizations.

but when i go down to the health meetings on the 8th floor, or the emergency section's on the 5th, water/sanitation on the 6th, i'm routinely impressed by the high level of expertise, innovation, and critical thinking at play. and it makes me uber-excited that there really are huge parts of unicef who are doing critical work, with thoughtful expertise. staff and projects who are concerned about realities on the ground, not afraid to self-question or re-evaluate or change... my problem is that i'm in a division which is so utterly entrenched in all the fashionable debates and politics of international development - i lie in the middle of donor, civil society, and government arguments about foreign aid and aid effectiveness and paris declarations and accra agendas and i'm truly, utterly disgusted at it all.

now one can't necessarily have one without the other - but is it too much to ask that i move down a few floors? the technical update/lecture today was on infant feeding in the context of HIV - ah! it was so revelatory and i felt like i was in a university setting - so much thoughtful debate and consideration of best practice. a few weeks ago there was a lecture on tropical enteropathy that nearly blew my mind.

so. conclusion of the week: i still admire unicef. i wouldn't mind working for them in the future. i would just like to try out other sections, namely health, namely maternal health, since this is where my true interest lies, and where i think actual impact can be made. also, it'd be nice to get out of new york. try a country office on for size. i'd love to see how things happen at that level.

eh voila. i've learned so much the last year of working for unicef, i've perhaps been too critical, but today i concede that there are systems which do seem to work, and in which i sort of wish i was more a part of.

if you've made it this far, many thanks for listening to this long and utterly-boring diatribe. but in case you were wondering if the whole UN was bunk, i can firmly say no, it is not. and with that, happy thursday to everyone!

same ol' same ol'

morning: second umbrella defeated by [literal] gale force winds in yet another brutally infamous manhattan rainstorm.

noon: successfully completed my first ever briefing note with talking points for secretary-general ban ki moon.

afternoon: triumphantly bought my one-way ticket to berlin! arriving 9:15am on april 1st, 2010. huzzah!

end-of-day-commute: had my daily reminder that "the Lord, He's blessing me... right now" by the very same homeless man who performs this very same little ditty of his own writing on the shuttle from grand central station to times square from the hours of 5-7, every weekday, for the last year (at least).

later on the end-of-day-commute, this time the 3 train: overjoyed to revel in the final, 800-page-awaited union of ladislaw and dorothea.

evening: reminded to be "kind and compassionate to yourself" by breathy, pseudo-enlightened yoga instructor. still. a nice thought to remember, no?

later evening: totally laughing at myself as i try to pronounce, "ich akzeptiere, du akzeptierst, er akzeptiert, wir akzeptieren, ihr akzeptiert, Sie/sie akzeptieren." fyi i pronounce german like an american who has spoken french for the last 5 years as her "second language." in other words, i'm utterly awful! hahahaha at least now i know how to say "ich trinke kein Bier" :)

soon-to-be: will sleep soundly and peacefully after conquering another new york monday. again, huzzah!

please, tell your friends

the first time i went to the lovely beyond lovely and delicious beyond delicious sigmund pretzel shop on the lower east side, they gave toni and me a free serving of hot, WONDERFUL russian cherry tea goodness. (perfect for the 5 degree weather outside.)

tonight, as friend stephanie and i were shooed out at their closing time, they bestowed each of us a heaping bountiful bag of a dozen pretzels each, of all varieties, with the only request to tell our friends about their little shop. [12 free delicious gourmet pretzels!?!! does life get better!!?! (methinks no.)]

i tell you, this place is DELIGHTFUL. and their pretzels... oh their pretzels! they'll hold me over quite nicely 'til april in the fatherland, i do declare. the shop opened just a few weeks ago, and i'm crossing all fingers that they survive. they're kind and generous and the goods cannot be beat in taste and delectability.

so. i know 95% of my readership is not in new york city. however, should you ever visit - say a resounding no to the cardboard "pretzels" littering the city's street carts - head to sigmund's instead! and stay till closing! you and all the homeless people on your journey home will be very thankful :)

(neal - you would LOVE them.)


(and p.s. a really great, concise article on how to help haiti here. please do read it - it said much of what i've been thinking, but more eloquently. let's not make any of this worse by our misinformed goodwill. this is also another good one.)

das Wochenende.

so happy that it's saturday early evening at 5:19pm right now.

because this week was just too too frustrating: the ineptitude of aid mechanisms and the development industry (of which i'm a contributing member at unicef) were laid bare in the last days of haiti. not just disaster relief politics, but the insufficiencies and corrupted laziness of poverty-relief programming which mean that haiti, after decades of assistance, is still disastrously poor and a 7.0 earthquake that in california killed a few dozen, in haiti kills tens of thousands and destroys the entire nation's infrastructural capacity. this week at unicef headquarters i felt i was seeing first-hand the weaknesses in the systems which are meant to alleviate poverty, but also those that are meant to administer disaster relief effectively. it's downright frightening how inefficient and ignorant many are who claim responsibility for such grand tasks.

ok this is all unbelievably down, and not as if any of this is THAT surprising. but i cannot help but feel befuddled and sad to see all these systems (even ones you have some hope in, like unicef, like disaster relief, like NGOs) collapse and fail so dramatically around me. i won't go into all the specifics... but let me just say instead that i am very happy that it is the weekend, that i have a loaf of ethiopian honey spice bread rising on the counter, that i have a mug of creamy tea and a pile of german books to work through after i finish typing this,* and that on a rousing walk to air frustrations in riverside park today, i saw a full-on quidditch match being played. enough to make me laugh very loud... :)

also, i'm happy i'm going to berlin in april. happy i'll be away from the politics of UN HQ, and that i will have loads of time to think, read, and discuss endlessly with a very brilliant mind what is to be done (or can be done in our very very small way), to break away from these failed systems and still feel faith in the human good. i don't know. i just need some good reflecting time, here. and i think 9 months in berlin should be a good start to questions which will be around for long long after.

much love to you all - your kind messages, both on the blog and elsewhere, in response to my plans warm me up so much! hurrah for true love indeed!

*did i just say i'm happy about a pile of german books to go through? that i'm actually enjoying learning german?! quelle horreur! it really must be true love.... ali, are you still my friend? :)

some explainin' to do.

so sorry that i did not realize a large number of friends and loved ones did not know i was planning on picking up and trucking off to berlin in 2010! i got many messages of confusion in response to my last post. ah, i felt like a horrible friend. but because the details and logistics of the whole thing have been somewhat a work in progress since november, i've only been steadily and hesitantly telling people... however. i suppose now is the best time to take the "official" (as official as blogs get) route of explaining:

you see, unicef is great. new york is [ ]... how can i even write how overwhelming and exciting i find new york?

but toni is greater, and missing him and having skype be our main mode of contact will simply no longer do for either of us. it's stressful and depressing above all else. so. it's nearing the end of 2009, and i realize the end of my current unicef contract is imminent... quite suddenly i made the decision to relocate to germany at my contract's expiration in april 2010 - move to germany so i can be near toni and actually have a proper relationship. i.e. one where you actually see each other not via webcam. i'll be there from april until december, when toni's own work contract is up... hopefully, that is, depending on if berlin's "alien's authority" - hehe - cooperates with my residency request. (which i have high hopes they will)

no no i don't speak german. nope i don't have a job there, and to be honest don't have the highest hopes for attaining one - a fulltime one at least. but. i have other things to be done and to do, and i have lived like an ascetic hermit for the last 7 months to save every penny - so i am confident i will live just fine. :)

i could have stayed in new york with a new contract at unicef for another 2 years, but it was so clear to me that i simply could not. sure berlin is a sacrifice of sorts, but look at how much more i sacrifice in staying here. it's a no-brainer to me! i simply couldn't stay in new york any longer - the mental energy and frustration of long-distance love is just not worth it anymore.

so much has gone into all of this, and many people have expressed concern to me. but really. do not think i have not thought of every difficulty and complication already. of course there are still real moments of fear and oh my goodness i don't speak german panics. but what else could i do? it'll all be a veritable adventure a la gertrude stein :)

i will be back in the US for a visit at the end of the summer to say hello to the new babies in our extended brood - huzzah for that! it's not as if i've signed myself away to an abyss :) above anything i'm simply so happy and excited for the chance to have a normal life with toni, where we're on the same time zone and can eat dinner together. ice cream too. now that most of ya'all have met him, it's not too hard to imagine, is it? :)

and so there you have a synopsis of the whole lovely story. but i have to add a quick note on more important matters - haiti is weighing me down with its tragedy (which btw explains the muted town of this post)... nearly everyone at unicef knows someone who is missing in the rubble, and any news coming out is chaotic and hearsay at best. such a tragedy that will be felt for decades to come, and which needs prayers and help from us all. it's awful to feel so inept, isn't it? anyone else struggling with that right now?

anyway. much love to everyone - hug the people you love who are right next to you :)

here's to a glorious 2010 in berlin!

<3,

jooj.

for any of you doubters out there...

...why yes toni and i are super sporty.

huzzah for a Christmas break of joy and family and love. and huzzah for 2010, eh? i'm certain it's going to be a wonderful year. new babies! a move to berlin! oh so much love to be had :)