Sande in NYC

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?