Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Time to dust off the old blog.
Sonya and I are very probably moving to Paris in September. What happens between now and then deserves a little documenting. The reason: A few weeks ago I got into the MPA program at Sciences Po. More on this as it happens.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Lost Wages
I'm writing from Las Vegas. It's been a while since Sonya or I have written. Now, I have time to kill in the hotel before we leave and felt like putting some thoughts into words.
At the pool yesterday, Sonya listened to Bar lectures and did multi-state practice questions while I listened to Saint-Saens and read 1632 by Eric Flint along with the latest issue of The New Republic. There was something dangerously yuppie about the experience, tempered only by our unabashed nerdiness and privately shared horror at our surroundings. For example, a young fashionable-in-a-SoCal-kind-of-way family of three took the spot next to us on the deck. The couple's two year-old son wore a tee-shirt that said "Inner beauty is overrated." Some day, that kid will be in charge of something somewhere, which I'd be worrying about were his parents not already obviously in charge of something somewhere right now. To borrow from Eric Flint: first things first.
Yupping-out has, I have to admit, been worthwhile. I usually hate spending time in hyper- consumerist-detached-realities, but after four years of at least one of us being in law school we needed a hotel room somewhere alone. The point of the trip was to see Cirque-du-Soleil and then to otherwise do absolutely nothing for a day--just to coast on the relative cheap ($60 hotel room). I actually enjoyed lazying about in the sun, which is out of character. Sonya has been diligently doing yoga, though, so how could I resist?
As I'm writing, Sonya tells me that they're watering the golf course outside the window. The exuberant plumes of water dispersing into the air confirm this. It looks like only a third of the water, at best, is making it back down to the grass below. It's almost 100 degrees outside.
I gambled. I had never gambled before, turned off by the idea of "house advantage" and the reality that you'd make more money, statistically speaking, by investing in government bonds. Boring, sure, but at least it's fair. You'd also do more social good and feel better by giving money away to people in need and the organizations that serve them. Anyhow, I lost $50 playing blackjack over the course of an hour. My now-informed opinion is that the game itself is pretty fun, but the gambling side of it is actually a kill-joy for me. I had just assumed I would lose whatever money I put at risk and set my limit--when I ran out, I was done. This meant that I played for less time than I would have liked. With $1 minimum bets instead of $5 bets I would have played longer and enjoyed myself more. But obviously having self-control goes against the spirit of the place. You're supposed to just keep playing anyways. The whole arrangement just doesn't work for me.
A quick and dirty summary: Cirque-du-Soleil ("O") was fantastic and I'd love to see more; I drank mezcal straight and approved mightily; the Strip is silly; pillow-top mattresses hurt my back; the food here sucks and is over-priced; a tall, gorgeous Polish waitress in her 20s pronounced my name right on seeing my credit card, calling me "Mr. Ziaja" and remarking that Ziaja (the Polish cosmetics company) makes "amazing skin cream"--I played it cool, you can ask Sonya.
So, back to reality. I'll study French on the plane and Sonya will go back to studying for the Bar. Tomorrow, I'll be back in my office at 7:30 in the morning working on a motion to compel. I think we'll go camping for our next trip.
At the pool yesterday, Sonya listened to Bar lectures and did multi-state practice questions while I listened to Saint-Saens and read 1632 by Eric Flint along with the latest issue of The New Republic. There was something dangerously yuppie about the experience, tempered only by our unabashed nerdiness and privately shared horror at our surroundings. For example, a young fashionable-in-a-SoCal-kind-of-way family of three took the spot next to us on the deck. The couple's two year-old son wore a tee-shirt that said "Inner beauty is overrated." Some day, that kid will be in charge of something somewhere, which I'd be worrying about were his parents not already obviously in charge of something somewhere right now. To borrow from Eric Flint: first things first.
Yupping-out has, I have to admit, been worthwhile. I usually hate spending time in hyper- consumerist-detached-realities, but after four years of at least one of us being in law school we needed a hotel room somewhere alone. The point of the trip was to see Cirque-du-Soleil and then to otherwise do absolutely nothing for a day--just to coast on the relative cheap ($60 hotel room). I actually enjoyed lazying about in the sun, which is out of character. Sonya has been diligently doing yoga, though, so how could I resist?
As I'm writing, Sonya tells me that they're watering the golf course outside the window. The exuberant plumes of water dispersing into the air confirm this. It looks like only a third of the water, at best, is making it back down to the grass below. It's almost 100 degrees outside.
I gambled. I had never gambled before, turned off by the idea of "house advantage" and the reality that you'd make more money, statistically speaking, by investing in government bonds. Boring, sure, but at least it's fair. You'd also do more social good and feel better by giving money away to people in need and the organizations that serve them. Anyhow, I lost $50 playing blackjack over the course of an hour. My now-informed opinion is that the game itself is pretty fun, but the gambling side of it is actually a kill-joy for me. I had just assumed I would lose whatever money I put at risk and set my limit--when I ran out, I was done. This meant that I played for less time than I would have liked. With $1 minimum bets instead of $5 bets I would have played longer and enjoyed myself more. But obviously having self-control goes against the spirit of the place. You're supposed to just keep playing anyways. The whole arrangement just doesn't work for me.
A quick and dirty summary: Cirque-du-Soleil ("O") was fantastic and I'd love to see more; I drank mezcal straight and approved mightily; the Strip is silly; pillow-top mattresses hurt my back; the food here sucks and is over-priced; a tall, gorgeous Polish waitress in her 20s pronounced my name right on seeing my credit card, calling me "Mr. Ziaja" and remarking that Ziaja (the Polish cosmetics company) makes "amazing skin cream"--I played it cool, you can ask Sonya.
So, back to reality. I'll study French on the plane and Sonya will go back to studying for the Bar. Tomorrow, I'll be back in my office at 7:30 in the morning working on a motion to compel. I think we'll go camping for our next trip.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Riots, Reprise
Almost half a year later, Sonya and I find ourselves in another riot. This time, it's Oakland.
In case you don't know, a cop shot a 22 year old kid on New Year's day in an Oakland BART station. The kid was subdued and on the ground, possibly handcuffed. A BART train full of onlookers watched as the cop inexplicably shot the kid in the back while he laid face down.
Today was the victim's funeral, which lead into a peaceful protest that appropriately shut down the BART station where he died last week. A few hundred of the protesters broke off from the initial demonstration, however, to shut down two more BART stations in downtown Oakland. One thing lead to another, cops in riot gear arrived, things got out of hand. Cars flipped and burned.
I got home from work as the riot police prepared to move in on the crowd. I passed through the crowd and made my way down 14th Street, wanting to stay and observe, but feeling ill at ease. Two or three cop cars and a half dozen cops blocked and guarded any intersection not held by the mob. I counted five helicopters.
Sonya met up with me two blocks from home and the cops started firing tear gas almost the instant we got to the apartment building. We spent the next hours in a surreal media bubble and watched live footage of the crowd smashing windows and setting (very small by Mongolian standards) fires in our neighborhood, on our block. TV supplied the visuals while real life supplied the sounds. Being surrounded by buildings as we are, we can only see a sliver of the street from our apartment. We decided not to go out for obvious reasons. So we waited.
At around 11 p.m., we decided to venture out. Things began to sound more calm, though the TV images became less useful as time passed and the one big crowd broke into smaller factions.
The tally: Our building was and remains unscathed, as do almost all the buildings on our block. About every fifth car within a couple of blocks has lost windows or taken other damage. The building next door lost its big plate glass lobby window. A handful of car fires. Every business on 17th Street lost at least one plate glass window. Most everything on 14th Street suffered similarly. No trash cans or dumpsters remain upright. Riot police barricade every intersection in downtown. A SWAT unit sits ominously in a heavily armored vehicle in a dark parking lot at the end of the block. The helicopters continue to circle.
We talked with one of the riot cops near the shops on 17th Street who seemed to know a lot, but couldn't tell us when things would calm down for good. There's another protest scheduled at BART headquarters, 9 a.m. tomorrow morning. No one knows what to expect.
I have to compare this all to what we experienced in Mongolia. So far, the damage is more geographically widespread in Oakland. But there is no parallel regarding the severity of the damage. The Ulaanbataar riots were vastly more destructive. A few car fires and a bunch of broken windows are easy to fix in the big scheme of things. Nothing like the fires we saw.
Also for comparison sake, I'm eager to see what tomorrow morning brings. By morning, Ulaanbataar had quieted and sobered, eerily so. I'm hoping for the same here, but my hope is weak. The Mongolian riots were political and the country's first. These riots, however, are about longstanding tension between the people and police of Oakland, ingrained patterns of oppression, racism, classism. In other words, the exact same things that have always caused riots in U.S. cities. We'll have to see how things go in the morning.
In case you don't know, a cop shot a 22 year old kid on New Year's day in an Oakland BART station. The kid was subdued and on the ground, possibly handcuffed. A BART train full of onlookers watched as the cop inexplicably shot the kid in the back while he laid face down.
Today was the victim's funeral, which lead into a peaceful protest that appropriately shut down the BART station where he died last week. A few hundred of the protesters broke off from the initial demonstration, however, to shut down two more BART stations in downtown Oakland. One thing lead to another, cops in riot gear arrived, things got out of hand. Cars flipped and burned.
I got home from work as the riot police prepared to move in on the crowd. I passed through the crowd and made my way down 14th Street, wanting to stay and observe, but feeling ill at ease. Two or three cop cars and a half dozen cops blocked and guarded any intersection not held by the mob. I counted five helicopters.
Sonya met up with me two blocks from home and the cops started firing tear gas almost the instant we got to the apartment building. We spent the next hours in a surreal media bubble and watched live footage of the crowd smashing windows and setting (very small by Mongolian standards) fires in our neighborhood, on our block. TV supplied the visuals while real life supplied the sounds. Being surrounded by buildings as we are, we can only see a sliver of the street from our apartment. We decided not to go out for obvious reasons. So we waited.
At around 11 p.m., we decided to venture out. Things began to sound more calm, though the TV images became less useful as time passed and the one big crowd broke into smaller factions.
The tally: Our building was and remains unscathed, as do almost all the buildings on our block. About every fifth car within a couple of blocks has lost windows or taken other damage. The building next door lost its big plate glass lobby window. A handful of car fires. Every business on 17th Street lost at least one plate glass window. Most everything on 14th Street suffered similarly. No trash cans or dumpsters remain upright. Riot police barricade every intersection in downtown. A SWAT unit sits ominously in a heavily armored vehicle in a dark parking lot at the end of the block. The helicopters continue to circle.
We talked with one of the riot cops near the shops on 17th Street who seemed to know a lot, but couldn't tell us when things would calm down for good. There's another protest scheduled at BART headquarters, 9 a.m. tomorrow morning. No one knows what to expect.
I have to compare this all to what we experienced in Mongolia. So far, the damage is more geographically widespread in Oakland. But there is no parallel regarding the severity of the damage. The Ulaanbataar riots were vastly more destructive. A few car fires and a bunch of broken windows are easy to fix in the big scheme of things. Nothing like the fires we saw.
Also for comparison sake, I'm eager to see what tomorrow morning brings. By morning, Ulaanbataar had quieted and sobered, eerily so. I'm hoping for the same here, but my hope is weak. The Mongolian riots were political and the country's first. These riots, however, are about longstanding tension between the people and police of Oakland, ingrained patterns of oppression, racism, classism. In other words, the exact same things that have always caused riots in U.S. cities. We'll have to see how things go in the morning.
Friday, November 21, 2008
ESQUIRE!!!
Today, November 21, 2008, I learned that I passed the California Bar Exam on the first try after having studied alone in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. After spending my adult life dedicated to Apollo, tonight belongs to Dionysus.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
$700 Billion
Bail-out Wall Street? Or give a $35,000 scholarship to every single one of the United States' ~20 million undergrad and grad students? Take your pick.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Farewell; we've fared well; Chinggis, we'll never forget you.
Sonya and I leave the land of blue sky and Chinggis Khaan in a few short hours. We leave the apartment at 4:30 a.m. for our 6:45 flight to Seoul, then on to San Francisco. We have 30,000 Korean Won in our pockets to go with Chinese Yuan, Mongolian Tugrug, and U.S. Dollars. At the rate things are going, I'm not sure which will be worth more by the time we get back.
There's much that will have to wait until we get back to California to be blogged about. Suffice to say that we spent our last night in Ulaanbaatar with Brian Wiers (if that means anything to you, it will; if not, not; the world is a small place) and a few other good friends.
There's much that will have to wait until we get back to California to be blogged about. Suffice to say that we spent our last night in Ulaanbaatar with Brian Wiers (if that means anything to you, it will; if not, not; the world is a small place) and a few other good friends.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Free and Fair/Rumor and Access
It has been difficult to get accurate information about what's going on in UB.
The rumor here is that 700 people who were present at the protests have been arrested.
The western media has picked up this number. But, the central detention facility in Ulaanbaatar was over capacity when it had 698 detainees. So something isn't right.
Most of those arrested were picked up on drinking charges. Normally, persons who are arrested for this are detained for 72 hours in temporary detention centers before being let go. An officer from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported that the detention centers are over capacity, so people are being held in the courtyards instead of being given rooms and bunks inside.
There are too many rumors about who "started" the protests.
All sources agree that the president of the Democratic Party (no relation to the dems at home) spoke at a rally in the main square. From that point on stories diverge. One account says that he marched with protesters to the MPRP headquarters and then left. Another says that he provided the crowd with alcohol before he left--hashishin-style. Others are saying that the entire event was orchestrated by the Mongolian President (MPRP) to gain sympathy from the public before the presidential election. Some Russian media sources are saying that the arson was orchestrated by the Americans. And, of course, there's a group of Mongolians who blame the Chinese.
Regardless of whatever, or whoever, instigated the crowd to throw rocks, shoot paint-balls, and burn-down the MPRP headquarters, citizens seem feel either exuberance, or shame and fear of what's to come.
The rumor here is that 700 people who were present at the protests have been arrested.
The western media has picked up this number. But, the central detention facility in Ulaanbaatar was over capacity when it had 698 detainees. So something isn't right.
Most of those arrested were picked up on drinking charges. Normally, persons who are arrested for this are detained for 72 hours in temporary detention centers before being let go. An officer from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported that the detention centers are over capacity, so people are being held in the courtyards instead of being given rooms and bunks inside.
There are too many rumors about who "started" the protests.
All sources agree that the president of the Democratic Party (no relation to the dems at home) spoke at a rally in the main square. From that point on stories diverge. One account says that he marched with protesters to the MPRP headquarters and then left. Another says that he provided the crowd with alcohol before he left--hashishin-style. Others are saying that the entire event was orchestrated by the Mongolian President (MPRP) to gain sympathy from the public before the presidential election. Some Russian media sources are saying that the arson was orchestrated by the Americans. And, of course, there's a group of Mongolians who blame the Chinese.
Regardless of whatever, or whoever, instigated the crowd to throw rocks, shoot paint-balls, and burn-down the MPRP headquarters, citizens seem feel either exuberance, or shame and fear of what's to come.
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