Best Job in the World

I must send a big "thank you" to my friend Ethan who informed me about an amazing opportunity offered by Tourism Queensland.  This is how they describe the job: 

The role of Island Caretaker is a six-month contract, based on luxurious Hamilton Island in the Great Barrier Reef.  It's a live-in position with flexible working hours and key responsibilities that include exploring the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef to discover what the area has to offer.  You'll be required to report back on your adventures to Tourism Queensland headquarters in Brisbane (and the rest of the world) via weekly blog posts, photo diary, video updates, and ongoing media interviews.  Our offer is a unique opportunity to help promote the wondrous Islands of the Great Barrier Reef.  

Since this job description shared an uncanny resemblance to the past eight months of my life - traveling and blogging - I thought I had nothing to lose in applying.  All applicants are required to make a one-minute video explaining why they would make the best Island Caretaker.  So I bit the bullet, got a monkey suit, an Australian flag, and went to town.  HERE'S THE LINK TO MY VIDEO -> www.islandreefjob.com/applicants/watch/FMCXwJPDBHE

It's also really fun to watch one of the thousands of one-minute application videos from across the world.  You can even search by country (the Russians are my personal favorite).  It's neat to see so many random people across the world who would never otherwise make a connection through this process.  You can find their videos at the contest website: www.islandreefjob.com 

iDecoupage

When I was couchsurfing (www.couchsurfing.com) in Florence, I stayed with Elisa and  her flat mate Dave, an Italian graphic designer and freelance psychologist.  The kitchen he had decorated rocked my world - especially the table.  

Close up of the table.  The world's best fitting jeans under my glass of OJ.

  

The table from afar.  

Kitchen contextualized.  Black panther on the fridge.  

"What's up with that multi-colored elevated circle in the middle of that room?" you might ask yourself.  Well, dear reader, Dave decoupaged his table.  Decoupage.  DEK YOU PAJ.  Scientists claim that the word has a Latin origin and stands for "Decorate Eclectic Kangaroos Yearly On Underbelly Pouchy After Jamming".  

Decoupaging is when you glue colored paper onto objects.  Sound exciting?  Not really.  Look exciting?  You bet!  Dave chose the theme of ridiculous 1950's advertisements for the table, resulting in unendingly interesting sit downs when you could look at the pattern under your cup, plate, spoon, fork, knife, napkin, salt or pepper shaker, ashtray, napkin holder resembling flamingo, pair of dice, slice of watermelon, and never get bored.  

His creation inspired me to do one of my own.  He explained the process, and soon enough I stumbled across a record shop in Philadelphia selling milk crates of old records for one dollar a piece.  After gathering thirty of the most colorful album covers, I went inside the store (yes, these albums were actually displayed outside of the store - shows how much they care!) and the clerk told me to name my own price.  

I left Philly with some funky looking album covers.  I cut them up to fit our living room table, glued them down, and poured varnish over top for protection.  Below is the final product! 

Thank you, Dave!

Life in Lebanon

I hope the photos in this post give a sense of life in Lebanon beyond the cloak of fear and instability many western media outlets use to depict the small Mediterranean country.

Lebanon is a land of harmonized oppositions (or opposing harmonies) - mountain faces towering over the sea, churches and mosques across the street from one another, a one-legged man on the street offering you coffee.  It is a difficult life riddled with neglect and steeped in family values - these photos show Lebanon suspended from its political context (it tries, at least), focusing on its natural beauty, and the way people fit themselves into that beauty.  

The ruins of Anjar village.  

'

Farayah - This is where we go to ski.

Beirut at sunset from my uncle's apartment.  A mesmerizing sun humming "good night" to the people.  

What used to be the Nahr River.  Countless bullets and rockets were exchanged across this waterway during the civil war that lasted from 1975-1990.  

The rocks of Rowche refusing to sink quietly into the sea.

Memories of a violent past.  

My grandmother's balcony at dawn.  Do you see that big green hill in the middle of everything?  That's a big pile of trash.  Sometimes you can smell it when the wind blows.  

Government Censorhip in Kuwait

These are photos I took of magazines from a mall in Kuwait.  If you look closely, you'll notice sloppy, black blotches on the pages of these magazine.  The location of those blotches are no coincidence - this is the work of Kuwaiti government officials who apparently flip through these magazines page by page and marker over anything deemed "inappropriate".  

These pictures demonstrate the official's specific sensitivity towards any type of exposure or flaunting of a female's nether-regions, even if it is necessary for them to complete their athletic endeavors.

More blotching of anything that might expose skin near the woman's private areas.  

Clearly the officials did not appreciate the V cut in this dress.  

But they did appreciate the V cut dress of the "Illustrado" lady.

So this is what it means to have religious law overtly enforced over secular trends in society.  On the one hand, I understand how this approach can counter the media's trend of objectifying women into mere sex symbols.  This is part of the reason why so many women wear the hijab (head scarves) - it is a symbol of devotion to God and an upholding of the sanctity of monogamy.  

In the West, we criticize the presence of religious law in secular society and government.  Perhaps we would not object to the notion that women should not be objectified, yet we believe that these decisions come down to the freedom to choose.  The freedom of a model to pose in a bikini for a photoshoot.  The freedom of a curious teenager to buy the magazine displaying that photoshoot.  The freedom of the woman selling that magazine to dress as she pleases.  With freedom we may sacrifice many layers of conservatism, but we preserve that feeling of individualism so dominant here in the West.

It's time for a game!

Dear friend,

This is a guessing game.  Below you will find a picture I took in Lebanon.  If you accurately guess what it is, I will write a poem about you and post it on my blog.  Email me your answers, or just leave a comment with your guess.  I will write about your imaginative brain and your attentive eyes.

Happy hunting!

Hi Blog

Dear Blog,

It's time to get you going again.

Raffi

If you're my naughty child

Folks, I have given up on posting pictures for the time being because the internet here is just too slow and unruly.

Today I went with my cousin Viken to Zmar, an Armenian Catholic monastery in the middle of one of Lebanon's countless mountain chains.  It's exquisitely beautiful.  

I sneaked into a building.  It was a Sunday night.  And I found a classroom of pre-pubescent boys with scraggly forebodings of facial hair sitting quietly and studying.  

They lived at the monastery, enduring the (rigorous?) education future priests must endure.  Their tameness struck me, the sense of discipline, of withdrawal from the outside world; insularity.  

Then it hit me.  I discovered the perfect ultimatum to put before my future child (should he/she exist) if he/she's behavior drives me bonkers.  "If you can't get your act together," I'll say, "then you're off to Zmar."

Swish.

Images from Beirut

This will be the first part in a series of interesting photos I gathered in Beirut.

This home belonged to my great grandfather, Mardiros Baloumian.  My grandmother and her seven siblings grew up here.  Today, it is in an unfortunate state of disrepair and is for rent or sale (let me know if you're interested).  It is located in Gemmayze, very close to one of the main night life districts.

This plague is located at the entrance of Haigazian University's library.  To me it represents the American government's efforts to insert its monetary influence into as many aspects of Middle East society as possible.  The library looks good - very different from another USAID funded academic institution I worked at: a school in the Armenian village of Ptghni in total shambles - shattered windows, no heaters, cracked steps, broken blackboards, unsanitary bathrooms, etc etc - and atop it all, a USAID plague adorned over one of the classrooms in which new desks and a new computer was found.

This is Akaar, where the American University of Beirut's Nature Conservation Center for Sustainable Forestry helped fund a group I joined to plant trees near the northern city of Tripoli.  I imagine we would enter lush cedar forests in a sweet mountain shade, but as you can see, the experience itself was quite different.  We mostly planted on the side of a road which most citizens consider viable territory for depositing trash.  Often we found discarded shoes, parts of sweaters, beer bottles, candy wrappers, banana peels, plastic bags, and anything else you might see in the picture filling the holes we planted trees in.  

This is the Bechtel Engineering Building on the campus of the American University of Beirut.  That's right.  Bechtel.  To fully appreciate the significance of this, I would highly recommend reading "Confessions of an Economic Hitman".  To summarize, Bechtel is one of several elite American engineering companies that turns immense profits every time the US government scores contracts to develop infrastructure and telecommunications networks in developing countries.  These developing countries take on tremendous debts to afford the work of these American engineering companies whose extremely influential CEO's blur the line between the public and private sector, like Dick Cheney.  I found the toleration of Bechtel's predatory lending philosophy on a university campus in the Middle East highly disturbing.  

This photo is taken in my grandmother's apartment building in the Geitoui district of Beirut in Achrafieh.  It shows one of the old doorbells that used to belong to a former resident of the building, last name Tankian.  You might recognize the last name, and it is not a coincidence.  Serj Tankian, lead singer of System of a Down, was born in this building, in the garden of the home that was later passed on to my uncle after the Tankians left Beirut.

Artsy photos of Beirut's Mohamed Al-Amin Mosque

Here are two artsy photos I took of Beirut's largest mosque, smack dab in the middle of the city.  Funded and financed by Rafiq Hariri in 2002, the former Prime Minister of Lebanon assassinated in 2005, the mosque was inaugurated in 2008 by his son and heir, Saad.  The former PM is buried beside it.  There is also a very interesting billboard near Hamra, the mixed Christian-Muslim section of the city where Hariri's Lebanese American University and the American University of Beirut are located, that counts the day since Hariri's '05 assassination in bold, red, digital numbers.  I think the count is somewhere near 1357 now.  I feel a bit uncertain of taking a photo of it.  I'm sure I'll muster the courage sooner or later.

I took these photos below on an obscenely-early morning walk with my aunt Aline and cousin Melik.  I like the tree.  It's very tree-like.  Specifically, I like the contrast between the minarets and the branches.  I can't decide if the branches flow into the minarets, or the minarets flow into the branches.  Either way, the mosque is absolutely gorgeous, and the domes are of the purest blues I have ever seen.  The minarets are like rockets poised for takeoff, and the domes seem to link the blue of the sky and the Mediterranean.  

It also took me an obscenely long time to load these pics because internet here is silly.  Anyways, enjoy.  More to come.

When planting trees in Lebanon

Yesterday I left the city for the first time since November 24th!!  I was feeling suffocated, dizzy, just utterly overurbanized.  

Thanks to ISBAR, an environmental group based out of AUB (American University of Beirut), I got to leave the city for the first time with environmentalist-types and plant trees in Akaar, a region in the north near the city of Tripoli.

I anticipated mountainous terrain, goat herds, dogs hooting at their flocks, and working in a forest.  No, we worked on the side of a road in a fairly developed, quasi-urbanized area.  

The Absurd:

1. Trees planted in holes that have more roadside trash in them than soil.  Examples of trash include shoes, sweater sleeves, and KitKat wrappers.

2. Child skinning a cow's head.

3. Child skinning sheep in front of butcher's shop.

4. Sheep tied to a pole, standing under fellow flock member's carcasses waiting for its turn under the knife.

5. Riding up and down mountain roads standing on the bumper of an early 80's pick up.  And surviving, somehow.

For some reason, our group of tree planters had a lot of overlap with capoeira kids.  What is that?  Are trees somehow involved in the global capoeira conspiracy?  Or are the capoeira maestres of the world scheming to evolve humans into trees?  Time will tell.

   

Back in Beirut

Dear Blog,

I'm sorry I haven't given you the attention you deserve as of late.  You have been a truly wonderful friend for the past several months, and you don't deserve the neglect you've received lately.  I have arrived in Beirut safe and sound after the shortest and most turbulent flight of my life - 25 minutes from Larnaca to Beirut.  They served us orange juice boxes that I squeezed the hell out of as our plane blipped up and down, left and right.  Also, I chewed the pin stripes out of the juice box straw.   

Now I am living with my grandmother in Beirut, trying to keep my energy high despite her occasionally morose attitude.  A balancing act between celebrating life, and lamenting the passage of time.  And I'm caught somewhere in between.

People here think I look like an Israeli.  That can be a problem.  A big problem.  They say it because I have a lot of hair, wear a straw hat from Portugal, puffy side burns, a goatee, look Middle Eastern, and cannot speak proper Arabic.  Being different can be fun - I always get stares of curiosity and interest from women, and squints of suspicion and exclusion from most men.  Even my hairy friend Jaques says I look suspicious in my hat.  I would say that I look rather innocent - wouldn't you say??

In case you were wondering: yes, I now exist in four, multi-colored dimensions.  

I've found that one appreciates people and places far more if they know they cannot easily access them.  We quickly take for granted the things that grow in significance as time passes.  If we increase the distance discrepancy between one's self and places & people of importance, the same effect can be achieved.  

Writer's Dilemma

Talk too much about your writing, and your harvest will wither.

Keep your mouth shut and your pen moving: your harvest will be bountiful.

Barcelona's Storefront Graffiti

Barcelona is a visually and artistically captivating city.  To me, it is an "alternative" city, a place where mainstream ideas of beauty and expression are brushed aside for less conventional methods of expression.  This can be found in the myriad street performances that take place every day.  Despite strict government regulations on how, when, and where these performances take place, they still find a way to stun. 

One form of "alternative art" I found particularly inspiring was the ubiquitous graffiti painted onto the garage doors that get slid down once the stores close.  But I wouldn't necessarily call it graffiti.  To me graffiti implies making one's name or one's group's name the centerpiece of the work.  The "alternative graffiti" I found on these garage doors throughout the city, however, depicted all sorts of odd scenes from other-universes.  Just walk through Barcelona at night and look at the garage doors.  You'll feel like you're walking in a museum of modern art.  So below I am including a collection of photographs I took of these pieces scattered throughout the city.

i have mono

This is a new level of pain.  Shallow breaths.  Daggers digging into my throat.  Every time I swallow I grunt like a schoolboy getting pummeled by the bully.  Then my body jerks to deal with the pain.  To try to distribute it more evenly.  But there is no even here.  There is no fare.  There is a micro man with a machete standing right behind my uvula.  He is the most ill-tempered tyrant you’ll know.  Whatever necessity I must pass his way – water, soup, yogurt, halls, saliva, life force – he lashes out against them all.  He swings his weapon against my tonsil, where there’s now a white cist just sitting there, just throbbing, just consuming me with pain.  The size of a crumb, the force of an anvil. 

I can’t even sleep.  When I lie down, the mucus builds up.  If I swallow, it hurts like hell, but it lubricates my throat and makes it hurt just a bit less for the next swallow.  But there is so much my inclination is just to spit it out.  And once I spit, the flood ensues.  First me, then the deluge.  It just keeps building and building, and I can’t swallow fast enough to keep up with my salivary glands.  And if I tried, I am sure I would be on the ground jerking and contorting everywhichway, yelping gnarled, obscured obscenities not said for the effect, but to try and capture the sheer misery of it.  Then my throat would melt down into my stomach and I would be finished.

If I do manage to lay down and shut my eyes, then the strangest thoughts dribble around my mind.  Lately it’s been all politics.  Last night, in my sorry state, the predominant thought on the forefront of my mind was: Who will Obama select for his cabinet?  It is a moderately interesting question, but not one I want to deal with in bed whilst I’m trying to sleep.  Considering all of the different possibilities genuinely generates this anxiety inside of me that keeps me from truly relaxing.  Then I put on some music and that helps momentarily, but then I start spitting again and all is lost.  When I do get some bits of sleep, it is by pure accident, always unanticipated.  Usually, they are about 30 minute chunks of bliss, of escape.  I’ve recently taken to reading a Psychology text book to induce exhaustion.  This doesn't work too well though b/c the book is very interesting.  

In the mornings the pain is the worst because my throat is at its least lubricated state.  Every swallow is death by throat-stab.  I have to swallow saliva so I can eat food.  I have to swallow food so I can take medicine.  I have to swallow medicine so the pain subsides temporarily.  Then repeat.  

Fixing A Hole in Nicosia

Hi Everybody.

I have mononucleosis and feel miserable, but am happy to report that I finished and uploaded another song to www.purevolume.com/raffiwartanian

I have recorded all parts of these songs using Garageband and my dinky backpacker's guitar.  

Cough,

Raffi