Mr. Scott goes to Washington - Act Two, Scene Five: The Circle of Life
Alright, team, it's well past the time for another update.
So, here's my game plan. This morning I'm going to post about last week (Saturday to Thursday), and then tomorrow evening I'll post another entry covering this weekend (Friday to Monday). Apologies again for making you wait; I've actually received several complaints, which kind of makes me happy. So, without further adieu, here we go...
On Saturday (Sept. 14) Claire and I rode the metro up to Dupont Circle, then hiked up Embassy Row to check out come of the fancy old houses that now constitute the bulk of the foreign missions to Washington. There were some really nice ones, including a couple of surprisingly impressive showings from Estonia and Cameroon. They're definitely the little countries that could...
...could purchase fancy embassies, I suppose.
After that we returned to Dupont Circle, where we checked out this amazing little bookstore called Kramerbooks, where Claire's roommate Kristina works. After talking about it for a week, I ended up buying Barack Obama's book, as well as Thomas Friedman's Longitudes and Attitudes (which Natasha's mother strongly recommended when last we spoke). From there we actually went to the park in Dupont Circle, where we sat on park benches reading away the afternoon. It was really relaxed, and thoroughly enjoyable. Sadly, though, I've still been unable to finagle my way into playing outdoor chess with someone. I'm going to have to go back and try again.
After that we met up with some friends and went to Adams Morgan for dinner, where I sampled Ethiopian food for the first time. It was... interesting... to say the least. They served it in this big bowl, and it consisted of, basically, a variety of different-coloured mushes. It comes with this weird rubbery flat bread called injera (I think?) which you dip into the mush to eat. A couple of the mushes were absolutely delicious, but my stomach felt kind of weird afterwards. From there, Claire and I went to meet up with Adam (Claire's friend from Queen's who I mentioned before) and Brendon (Adam's friend from Washington, who I also mentioned before) who were eating at a Thai restaurant out in Foggy Bottom. We chatted with them for a while, before heading off to a bar where Claire and I were shut down, sadly, as we're not 21.
On Sunday I did some grocery shopping in the morning before Claire and I went to meet Adam and Brendon to watch some Sunday afternoon football (in the greatest of American traditions). We ended up going to this sports bar-type restaurant in Pentagon City called Champps (none of us could figure out why they needed that second p). They had four games on at once, so I found it somewhat hard to follow at times. It seemed that whenever I was watching one game, something exciting would happen in another and the whole place would erupt, and I'd be left looking around wondering what was going on. Unfortunately, all of my favourite teams (being the Minnesota Vikings, the New England Patriots, and the Green Bay Mermen) lost, but it was an enjoyable afternoon. After returning home I spent a couple of hours struggling to iron some more of my dress shirts.
On Monday we had a couple of speakers and then class. The first guy was really good, but sadly I can't remember his name. He made a stong point about finding something you really love and doing it to be happy; not worrying about making a lot of money. He also made some rather interesting points about working or interning and figuring out what you want to do before going to grad school. Whatever he said specifically, it was enough to call my entire life into question, and I've been quietly wallowing in doubt about what I'm going to do with my future ever since. The second guy was the former US Ambassador to Japan, and a former Speaker of the House of Representatives. He was interesting, for sure, but I was still too busy reeling from the first guy to remember what he said. Luckily I took notes, so I can revisit the Ambassador's lecture at a later date. Then we hung around for the afternoon before going to class at night.
Tuesday was the first day that was fairly uninteresting. I did some research for my supervisor, and generally helped out where there was a need, but it was pretty slow. Not that I'm complaining, though, as it was nice to not have anything to do for a bit.
Wednesday morning I went to a Senate Homeland Security Committee meeting on the safety of American mass transit systems following the terrorist attacks in London in July. Among the speakers was the COO of the London Underground, and what he had to say about their efforts to increase security was quite interesting. That afternoon I went to a Senate Commerce, Energy, and Transportation Committee meeting on rising gas prices. Since I'd been to two or three other congressional committee meetings on the same topic there wasn't much new information presented, although a Democratic Senator made an interesting comment about trying to get OPEC banned from the WTO for their collusive anti-free trade behaviour. That took me to the end of the day.
On Thursday morning, we were finally set up on the embassy's computer systems, and spent about an hour in a basic training program down with the IT service people. Then we went and finally got our official embassy ID swipe cars with our faces on them. I then organized my notes on the gas price hearing, and was debriefed, briefly, by the embassy's energy counsellor. After lunch I started writing my report on the mass transit hearing for the transportation counsellor, and that took me to the end of the day.
All right. As we agreed, that'll be it for now. Sadly, I just realized that I have some homework to attend to. I keep forgetting that I'm in school right now, however nominally.
So, here's my game plan. This morning I'm going to post about last week (Saturday to Thursday), and then tomorrow evening I'll post another entry covering this weekend (Friday to Monday). Apologies again for making you wait; I've actually received several complaints, which kind of makes me happy. So, without further adieu, here we go...
On Saturday (Sept. 14) Claire and I rode the metro up to Dupont Circle, then hiked up Embassy Row to check out come of the fancy old houses that now constitute the bulk of the foreign missions to Washington. There were some really nice ones, including a couple of surprisingly impressive showings from Estonia and Cameroon. They're definitely the little countries that could...
...could purchase fancy embassies, I suppose.
After that we returned to Dupont Circle, where we checked out this amazing little bookstore called Kramerbooks, where Claire's roommate Kristina works. After talking about it for a week, I ended up buying Barack Obama's book, as well as Thomas Friedman's Longitudes and Attitudes (which Natasha's mother strongly recommended when last we spoke). From there we actually went to the park in Dupont Circle, where we sat on park benches reading away the afternoon. It was really relaxed, and thoroughly enjoyable. Sadly, though, I've still been unable to finagle my way into playing outdoor chess with someone. I'm going to have to go back and try again.
After that we met up with some friends and went to Adams Morgan for dinner, where I sampled Ethiopian food for the first time. It was... interesting... to say the least. They served it in this big bowl, and it consisted of, basically, a variety of different-coloured mushes. It comes with this weird rubbery flat bread called injera (I think?) which you dip into the mush to eat. A couple of the mushes were absolutely delicious, but my stomach felt kind of weird afterwards. From there, Claire and I went to meet up with Adam (Claire's friend from Queen's who I mentioned before) and Brendon (Adam's friend from Washington, who I also mentioned before) who were eating at a Thai restaurant out in Foggy Bottom. We chatted with them for a while, before heading off to a bar where Claire and I were shut down, sadly, as we're not 21.
On Sunday I did some grocery shopping in the morning before Claire and I went to meet Adam and Brendon to watch some Sunday afternoon football (in the greatest of American traditions). We ended up going to this sports bar-type restaurant in Pentagon City called Champps (none of us could figure out why they needed that second p). They had four games on at once, so I found it somewhat hard to follow at times. It seemed that whenever I was watching one game, something exciting would happen in another and the whole place would erupt, and I'd be left looking around wondering what was going on. Unfortunately, all of my favourite teams (being the Minnesota Vikings, the New England Patriots, and the Green Bay Mermen) lost, but it was an enjoyable afternoon. After returning home I spent a couple of hours struggling to iron some more of my dress shirts.
On Monday we had a couple of speakers and then class. The first guy was really good, but sadly I can't remember his name. He made a stong point about finding something you really love and doing it to be happy; not worrying about making a lot of money. He also made some rather interesting points about working or interning and figuring out what you want to do before going to grad school. Whatever he said specifically, it was enough to call my entire life into question, and I've been quietly wallowing in doubt about what I'm going to do with my future ever since. The second guy was the former US Ambassador to Japan, and a former Speaker of the House of Representatives. He was interesting, for sure, but I was still too busy reeling from the first guy to remember what he said. Luckily I took notes, so I can revisit the Ambassador's lecture at a later date. Then we hung around for the afternoon before going to class at night.
Tuesday was the first day that was fairly uninteresting. I did some research for my supervisor, and generally helped out where there was a need, but it was pretty slow. Not that I'm complaining, though, as it was nice to not have anything to do for a bit.
Wednesday morning I went to a Senate Homeland Security Committee meeting on the safety of American mass transit systems following the terrorist attacks in London in July. Among the speakers was the COO of the London Underground, and what he had to say about their efforts to increase security was quite interesting. That afternoon I went to a Senate Commerce, Energy, and Transportation Committee meeting on rising gas prices. Since I'd been to two or three other congressional committee meetings on the same topic there wasn't much new information presented, although a Democratic Senator made an interesting comment about trying to get OPEC banned from the WTO for their collusive anti-free trade behaviour. That took me to the end of the day.
On Thursday morning, we were finally set up on the embassy's computer systems, and spent about an hour in a basic training program down with the IT service people. Then we went and finally got our official embassy ID swipe cars with our faces on them. I then organized my notes on the gas price hearing, and was debriefed, briefly, by the embassy's energy counsellor. After lunch I started writing my report on the mass transit hearing for the transportation counsellor, and that took me to the end of the day.
All right. As we agreed, that'll be it for now. Sadly, I just realized that I have some homework to attend to. I keep forgetting that I'm in school right now, however nominally.
posted by Scoops at 10:10 a.m.
2 Comments:
nice blog.
get on with scene six.
that is all.
Scott, if you can enjoy those weird-coloured Ethiopian mushes, surely you would enjoy shrimps, scallops, crab and lobster!
Don't they have a Red Lobster near you?
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