Sande in NYC

So I’ve been back in Boise for two weeks and so I guess now’s as good a time as any to try to put up more pics, right?

So we’ll continue with the MoMA visit from the first time. I won’t, of course, be putting up all the pictures on here. Just the most interesting ones. Of course, ‘interesting’ is pretty subjective but…whatever. As always there are more pictures (of work by Dali, Seurat, Rothko, etc…) up at the Mac Gallery site.

“living paintbrushes,” huh?

Mme. Kupka among verticals.

Detail of “Collective Suicide”

Detail of Christina’s World. This painting was one of the main reasons I went to MoMA. It’s epic in person.

Pollock is the other reason I went to MoMA. This is “Number 1A.” It is very large.

Detail 1

Signature

detail 2

…and then there was this…

…easily the most disturbing piece I saw (the first time) at the MoMA. Creepy babies. I know, I know…’creepy babies’ is redundant.

details.

weird, right? yes. So instead of leaving you with gelatinous babies on top of one another, let’s look at one more piece of ‘art’ …this one with humor.

I’ve got pictures of that.

So when I went to MoMA (the first time) the Tim Burton exhibit was still going on. It was awesome but there were no pictures allowed in it so I just took a few pics of the random stuff outside the exhibit…and then a couple hundred of all the rest of the museum.

…a giant inflatable whatever-that-is.

“Hey, which way to the Tim Bur—-oh…never mind”

This is how you get in. All along the wall once inside are screens showing animated shorts that Tim Burton did.

After walking through the creepy hallway thing you get a chance to see the evolution of Tim Burton. The exhibit was full of drawings and whatnot from his whole life. I guess he must have kept everything or something because there were things he did when he was really young. Then, of course, they had stuff there from his movies like Nightmare Before Christmas, Sleepy Hollow, Mars Attacks, Sweeney Todd, Edward Scissorhands…you know them all. There was stuff there, like, a two foot tall Oogie Boogie sculpture, hundreds of sketches and paintings, the life-sized batman cowls, the suit from Edward Scissorhands, heads from Mars Attacks, foot tall sculptures of almost every character from Corpse Bride…the cape from the Headless Horseman from Sleepy Hollow, Alice in Wonderland sketches…26 different heads for Jack from Nightmare Before Christmas…etc, etc…it was pretty sweet.

So what else does the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) have…? A little bit of everything…

“Okay…who farted?” I think its the one in the back smirking…everyone else looks relatively uncomfortable. She seems almost pleased with herself.

Made by bees…no, really, there’s a video that shows them making it.

Oh, good…you can read this (I hope) so I don’t have to type it all in. This was really a phenomenally interesting piece. You can touch the floating balloons and there was music that went along with it and whatnot…really pretty interesting - all the social interaction. This is for the next few pics…

it was like the exhibit was an interactive display of interactions…pretty meta…heh

There’s a “raining” effect on right now. You can actually change the weather that the balloons drift through…anyway, I have a feeling that this won’t come across nearly as interesting as it was in person…

Here, we’ll end with this epic sentiment:

Right on, brother!…Action!

Anyway, that’s all for now. I’ll try to put up more MoMA adventures tomorrow - although I also hope to meet Jeremy Scahill tomorrow at a thing downtown so we’ll see. Oh, as for work - it’s pretty ridiculously busy. DPRK and Iran are both going full force and there’s still all the normal sanctions regimes to keep up with as well as the upcoming GAO visit to the Mission (which I had to organize - yeah, me plan something…wtf, right?). All for now, time to iron.

…what do you do all day?

This is a picture of my UN badge.

yep, still look like a doofus.

Here is another picture of my UN badge showing the kind of neat hologram thing in the plastic…

Apparently the ‘D’ stands for something like Diplomat or something. I only know this because a friend of mine who worked with the UN University (Hi, Alex!) told me he did not have a ‘D’ and that he couldn’t just go walk around where ever he wanted like I can…

Anyway…a couple people have asked what my day-to-day is like. I wrote back in an email to one of the people but thought I would use this space to reply to the other (heavily quoting my previous response) in case anyone else happened to care.

Initially, I wrote this: “The bulk of my day is taken up with reading reports and cables. Cables are (typically) classified documents about other countries. It’s like the US government’s version of the Economist. All sorts of interesting things in there. Anyway, I read reports/cables so that I hopefully know what’s going on (and the context of what’s going on) when I go to meetings at the UN. After the meetings (and some of the reports) more “readouts” or cables are made and the info continues to swirl. It all seems to be about information, having more of it, and being able to appropriately recall the necessary bits of it. That, and acronyms…lots of acronyms.”

Now that has changed to a certain extent because I end up doing a little bit more and a little bit less. A little bit more in that any of the three members of the sanctions team can call on me to take notes in a meeting or help write up a whatever (memo/readout) on a meeting. A little bit less in that I’m also tasked with scheduling meetings for the upcoming GAO panel visit. The GAO is investigating the issue of conflict minerals/DRC (actually pretty interesting if you’re into checking it out - I’d recommend here and here and here plus anything from the ‘ENOUGH’ website) in respect to US policies and actions. The GAO panel visit was supposed to be this week which would have meant that I’d be busily going from meeting to meeting and doing readouts but then they called last week and rescheduled for June 2-4. Which means I have to restart the whole process again. Hooray.

Anyway…all that being said the only thing that really seems to stay the same from day to day are the acronyms (by design I’m sure). Every day starts out with a staff meeting at 9:05 where everyone (except the interns) says what they’re doing/working on (ie, “I’ll be a the NPT today…”, “MINURCAT is in the Council today, I’ll get a memo up on that…”, “I’ll be covering 1267 in the Council today…”, etc…). Then we all go off and do what it is we said we were working on. I read some emails and then there is usually a meeting of some sort that I go to, take notes on, and then do an email/draft readout on. I pretty much hop from one thing to the next which, in a way, is right up my alley. But, maybe you don’t care about this stuff…you want to see another picture of doofus truly…

“S2” is relative to my security clearance…

This is the first business card I got while I was at the UN. It was from the coordinator of the Panel of Experts on Sudan. (Obviously, I smudged the numbers to post online - his card isn’t really like that…) So this side is alright…just like any other business card but on the other side…

Wha wha wha…? heh…yep, foreign languages are…foreign. Anyway, since then I’ve gotten a bunch of other cards but this one was the first one so it seems kind of neat.

So far I’ve been to the UN, the UN Security Council, some sort of UN Security Council informal meeting room (I don’t really know where it was, I just followed one of the other sanctions team people in and took notes on Cote d’Ivoire…heh), the North Lawn Temporary building, the UN secretariat buildings, the Lebanese mission, the Brazilian Mission, the French Mission, and the Danish Mission (where I sat in and took notes on a job interview).

…or maybe you do care about that stuff…here’s what I wrote in reference to a question about how often are the UN meetings.

“The UN has meetings every day. Not necessarily the General Assembly or anything…but the Security Council and then the different governing bodies have meetings everyday. For example the 1267 Committee seems to meet all the time [actually, it’s once or twice a week]. 1267 is the number given to the Al Qaida/Terrorism sanctions. I went to an informal meeting of that Committee today actually [and have continued to go]. It was moderately interesting because there’s all these terrorists (or maybe, “terrorists”) that get designated. They’re all on this big ‘Consolidated list’ that the UN keeps track of [its on the UN website along with narrative summaries for each listed individual per 1904]. Well, terrorists then get ‘listed’ or ‘delisted’ but it takes everyone on the Committee (representatives of all the nations on the SC) to agree to it. For example a guy with the last name Basayev (Chechen terrorist guy) is on the list and the US and UK put him forward for delisting…because he was killed in 2003. That’s how out of date the list is. I mean, its …kind of hard to get on the list (you have to be a terrorist) but its intensely hard to get off the list. Like that Basayev guy…? He’s not getting off the list…even though he’s dead. The Russian will object (they call it “break silence”) because, as he said in today’s meeting, “Delisting this individual could be seen as a show of support for independence of Chechnya.” Whatever…the guy’s dead, they need to get over it. So, that’s a long answer - basically, there’s meetings all the time. They range in importance but groups who report up through the UN are constantly busy.” Of course, none of this is secret in any way…it’s all publicly available info…

And these were taken a month ago on the street where I live…

…that’s my building.

This is kind of on my way to work. I was probably liking the trees or something and so I took this.

Anyway, if you’re keeping track (which I know you’re not) these are from a month ago. Does that mean that I’m almost caught up with photos…? Ha…hardly. Unfortunately, well, fortunately…kind of, I went to the MoMA at the end of February. 150 or so pictures later, I left and will have to either break it up into multiple posts or wait till the weekend. Thoughts?

Any questions…?

Ask away…

…here are a bunch more with many more on the website here: http://gallery.me.com/erik.sande#100586 and, since we’ve gone over the 500 photos mark, here: http://gallery.me.com/erik.sande#100594. This update gets us from the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island (which was surprisingly cool), and the bull at Bowling Green one day and then through pizza in a cone, some of Central Park, and finally FAO Schwarz, finishing up Teresa’s trip out here in February. There were 145 photos put up from these two days and I obviously won’t be putting them all up here. There are a couple of interesting ones at the gallery sites so be sure to check them out if you get the chance…

Us on the ferry out to the Statue of Liberty…

Us and the Statue.

Here’s the postcard shot. While still being impressive, its not quite as big as I would’ve thought it would be. Additionally, it was cold…so we walked around it and moved on to Ellis Island…

A long line of luggage…this whole experience would have sucked…big time.

Apparently, not being able to draw a diamond indicated mental deficiency and you got sent home. Maybe Arizona’s new Immigration law can include something like this…?

some of the actual bunks people slept on…pretty crazy.

They had this special exhibit up about the Basque. It had a bunch of pictures from Boise in it…

The building…

Us and the bull @ Bowling Green…no, its not at “Wall Street”. Trust me, I walked all over one night thinking I would stumble upon it or something.

…I had to give up and go home and look it up.

…yes, she’s really kneeling down there to get a better…grip.

The next day we started off with some breakfast at One Girl Cookies in Brooklyn. If you get the chance to go, I would highly recommend it. It’s great food and its also a really cool store…

Then we took the subway into town and walked around a bunch. Saw the Empire State Building and Macy’s (the world’s largest department store)…walked around some more and then found a place that sells pizza…in a cone.

It was surprisingly good but it did take about 30 minutes for us to get our ‘cones after we ordered them. I have walked past this place since and its been empty so I’m sure I wouldn’t have to wait nearly as long now. The day that we went was, apparently, their opening day and, like, CNN was there and stuff…

Then we walked through Central Park some…although it was winter so it looks a little bleak.

Then we made it to the FAO Schwarz

One of us was pretty excited…

BEARS!

yes, that’s a Lego Chewbacca.

I know…you’re jealous.

Then, of course, there’s the Big piano…

But, perhaps the highlight was the Muppet Whatnot store inside FAO Schwarz. The Whatnot store is where you can pick out all the things you want on a muppet and they make it right there for you. Its pretty awesome.

…and that takes us through the whole trip…wait, except for this place that we walked by in Chelsea…

Of course, this isn’t the weirdest place we saw in Chelsea…that would probably be the place that had a “Harness night.” What the…?

Anyway, that was Teresa’s first trip out to NYC. Of course, she has visited since so there will be pictures of that as well. Also, my dad came out and was nice enough to let me borrow one of his cameras…

…which promptly inspired an increased rate of photo-taking…

Again, there are a lot more photos up in the galleries so check them out if you get the time.

I know what you’re thinking…what took so long? Well, I got busy with work and death and putting up pictures kind of took a backseat. It’s interesting how this city has an energy that seems like it can recharge you and yet run you down at the same time.

The internship is still going well. I’m more than halfway done which, of course, is cool and not-so-cool. I got to see Secretary Clinton last Monday and Ambassador Barton (ECOSEC - it’s like peace/nation building stuff) on Thursday. Also, I got to try my first taste of Lebanese food (pretty tasty) this past week. It was at their reception for taking over the presidency of the Security Council. If you weren’t aware, the presidency of the SC rotates every month. The Lebanese are, understandably, somewhat concerned about the issue of sanctions on Iran coming up during their presidency…guess we’ll have to wait and see.

I met someone from Human Rights First to talk about due diligence efforts in Sudan. I met a member of the Panel of Experts for the DPRK. Umm…at work I mainly did DPRK and 1267 (Al Qaeda/Taliban) stuff with just a small sprinkling of Iran stuff. Actually a large portion of the first half of the week was taken up with finishing the scheduling of visit by a GAO panel currently investigating the issue of conflict minerals in the DRC (who isn’t these days, right?). I was finalizing it on Thursday when the panel’s coordinator called me to let me know they wouldn’t be coming next week. Nice. heh…guess I’ll be rescheduling all of this. But, whatever…you don’t care about this. You want to see pictures. I’m so far behind that these are from February when I was still living in Brooklyn. They’re from Teresa’s visit out here…

It was windy that day…

This is in the supermarket that is in Grand Central Station…

Yes, that does look like a 70’s pimp, you’re absolutely right. Thank you, Brooklyn.

Brooklyn Bridge

Someone’s pretty excited…

That’s all the pictures for up here. But, go here: http://gallery.me.com/erik.sande#100586 to see the rest of them that are up so far. You can even see the other 15 attempts it took us to get that stupid 30 Rock statue between us. It’s pretty comical…The day after this we went to the Statue of Liberty so that’ll be up next.

..yeah, it’s been a while.

Ever wonder what $1800 a month in Midtown Manhattan would get you?

Yep, a salmon-colored bathroom, that’s what.

Anyway, this is my place and it’s actually really, really small but really, really cool because it’s small so it doesn’t get dirty and it’s, like, a 7 minute walk to work. I will frequently walk home for lunch…if I’m not going to 99 cent pizza again. …love that place.

more pics later, sleep now.

Sorry no pictures. I’ll try to get on that this wknd though. I work from 830-ish to 6/630-ish though…then I walk home and have to make dinner and iron whatever I’m going to wear to work tomorrow so I usually don’t really feel like doing a bunch of computer stuff. Also, I didn’t have internet until yesterday (thank you MiFi) in my apt, nay studio…

Does anyone have any questions about the UN? …sanctions…?

No? I didn’t think so. I do feel very lucky to be in the unit I’m in. There’s a couple of other interns who I met the other day (bowling…wtf?) and they got stuck in Press. Not cool. Sanctions are where the action is, basically. Particularly right now. My boss is super busy. I’m pretty busy, too. …just on different stuff. heh…

Funny story…yesterday I’m sitting in a meeting of the Group of Experts on Cote d’Ivoire and each expert goes around the table saying what they specialize in and what the Group found in that area. Pretty interesting stuff…anyway, we get to the Aviation expert and he asks the Coordinator of the Group if he can speak in French (because he’s French) and the guy looks at my coworker and me and says, yeah. Those of you that know me will probably see where the problem comes in…I failed French. I hate other languages. I mean, I don’t hate other languages…I like the way French sounds, most French-speaking people are pretty nice but, I hate learning other languages. So I just stopped taking notes for his points, figuring, “Well, Howie must know French and the Coordinator knows this somehow…” We go through the whole meeting - things don’t look good for your typical Ivoirian and then head back to the Mission. Howie and I start talking about the Group’s recommendations and the readout (a ‘readout’ is what they call a ‘debrief’ or ‘download’ of a meeting’s points) and he’s about to get back to his normal Afghanistan work when he turns to me and says, “Oh, and I don’t speak French either…” He had just taken down a few notes on the few French words that he knew….anyway. After writing it down and rereading it…its not nearly as funny as it was to us the other day. But…it was pretty funny. You’ll just have to trust me on that, I guess. Spending 2 hours listening to the use of rape as a weapon and the failure of well-intentioned sanctions regimes will make little things funny beyond their typical reach, apparently.

In other news, I got my first cable cleared (about the Cote d’Ivoire Group of Experts’ midterm report if you’re curious). A cable is what they used to call “telegrams” and they apparently used to be on paper, in morse code. When you write one, it has to be cleared by your boss, and his boss, and his boss…and an ambassador. It’s a lengthy process because it gets sent out to Washington, DC and embassies in other countries and stuff. On a related note, I went through a training today (that I was supposed to have the first day I was there) on how to write and create cables. In the class, we create a test-cable and we send it out but with something called a “Releaser” on it. This means that someone (the trainer in this case) has to ‘release’ the cable in order for it to go out to who ever you might’ve addressed it to. This is helpful because when you address a cable full of “This is a test cable. This is an example” to WASHDC-SECSTATE you don’t want that to go out. So imagine my surprise when I received a forwarded message regarding my (so-called) test cable. Thank you trainer for making me look like a douche bag and releasing that cable when you weren’t supposed to.

Ummm…what else. I miss my wife but other than that it’s a cool city, an interesting job and a cozy studio apartment 4 blocks from work. Everyday starts with a staff meeting (these people are freaking busy) and then they all scurry off to try to make the world a slightly better place. Questions…? Comments…? Anything else you’d like to know about?

Just a quick post about my new job. No pictures…because they don’t let you take any. In fact they don’t let you take anything electronic into the office spaces - I even have to leave my cell phone at the door. It’s just my second day so I haven’t gotten any “real” assignments yet. Yesterday was a little boring for the first half of the day because I just sat in a Regional Security Officer’s office waiting for them to print out a badge for me. …I’m still waiting. I have a temp badge though…so I’ve got that going for me. The afternoon was interesting as I got to meet the team I’ll be working with and then my boss and I went to a meeting on Sudan sanctions. Each sanctions regime has it’s own commission whose job it is to follow up on the sanctions, see if they’re being implemented/followed, etc. This particular meeting was with what is called a Panel of Experts (POE). The POE was really informative about the situation in Sudan/Darfur as they had just returned from there.I can talk more about this but I don’t really have time right now…

Today I got the opportunity to go to the French Mission for lunch with my boss. It was actually really cool as the sandwich was good and the Mission is on the 44th floor of some building downtown so it had a really nice view (even in the rain). The lunch was about Iran and so that was both informative and interesting. Then after that it was Somalia time so I went to a meeting on sanctions in Somalia.

I hope to write a little more about all this stuff and what the group I’m in actually does and whatnot (plus get caught up on posting all the pictures from when Teresa was out here in February) but right now its time for bed…