CheetahhhhhhhBlog Mark III

A bit of excitement today. Bug was getting dressed for school and we were all in the bedroom when suddenly an explosion went off. We’re at a new location, the boy’s dorms, because of Van’s job. First of all before I go into details let me inform my readers that we are in one of the most secure compounds in Kabul. We even have sniper towers. We’re near the university and the UN and NATO and the royal palace. Anyway the explosion went off and I exclaimed, “Holy shit!” because the windows and building were shaking. We could see the debris flying and the big black plume of smoke going up. I took a picture, which Van posted on Facebook. The Taliban hit a NATO convoy. For the rest of the day there were helicopters flying around constantly, sirens, etc. The boys here at the dorm were locked down. Whenever a terrorist event occurs we all go into lockdown, basically stay where you are and lock everything. The kids were annoyed about this because they’re pretty much used to attacks and so don’t get too excited about them, and they wanted to go to the university to eat at the canteen. So the kids were constantly complaining to Van that they were starving to death.

This all sounds very scary I’m sure and I don’t mean to downplay it, because it is scary. However the thing is, you get used to various threats. For example in Manila there was the constant threat of my children being kidnapped or me being mugged, and mugging in Manila tends to be very violent. There are certain areas of Chicago where a woman wouldn’t be advised to walk alone at night. In Johannesburg, the “murder capital of the world,” I regularly traveled through areas that the white locals were too afraid to even go near, indeed my sister and I once saw a gangster with a big machine gun standing guard at some gangster pad. So my point is you have various threats and you deal with them and adjust to them and life goes on. That’s pretty much Kabul. The explosion went off about a mile away and after the initial 2 minutes of “holy crap!!” it was pretty much back to normal, which I’m sure sounds strange but put it into context.

Haven’t been blogging with my usual frequency in either of my blogs. This is because I have found myself very preoccupied with work. I’ve got a really full plate.

We’re moved into the boy’s dorm and Van has begun her job. Actually it’s a compound of 4 houses, one of which is ours. There is a nice rose garden in our yard with a pergola. Our our windows we can see the foothills of the Himalayas. A great improvement in our living situation. Van is very enthusiastic about her job and has been a big surprise to the boys, because apparently the last dorm supervisor just ignored them for 2 years, indeed they didn’t even know she existed. She’s made a number of improvements already which has the boys loving her, such as getting the wireless fixed. She is however enforcing curfew which they may not be so pleased about.

I don’t think any of my work colleagues read this blog so I will discuss this, which is not generally known yet at the university. Anyway the provost asked me to take the chairmanship of the Faculty Development Committee, which will have me managing a pot of money. I said yes, because the management of money will be a new notch on my CV and will aid me in my plan to transition into university administration when we return to the USA. So this should be very helpful to my career. Also I can now recuse myself from the Curriculum Committee. The thing there is I already did all the interesting work last semester, and now it’s just going to be a fairly labor-intensive project of review, but I could find no actually acceptable excuse for recusing myself until now.

We got LL Bean, Orvis, and Amazon orders recently. All set for winter. Thanks to my dad for forwarding the stuff.

Bug had 2 birthday parties, one at school, one down in our rose garden. He made out like a bandit this year partly because he was lucky, it happened to be right when we were buying winter clothes, so we had shipments coming in. So he got fancy American toys.

Bought our tickets for Christmas, KBL-ORD for $5100. It was very sad to watch the money disappear.

Vanessa got her US visa today, though we are very irritated because it’s only a 3 month visa. I said to the consular officer, “I’m an American citizen and she’s my wife. Come on.” He said “I have no further information available.” Tax dollars at work there.

We all have nasty colds. I have been sick for 7 or 8 days and everybody at the university is in various degrees of sickness. There are hospitals here but the difficulty of actually getting to one is rather unbelievable when you consider transporting sick small children, the need for security escort, the need for me to be at work, etc etc. It’s really just almost an impossible task. Anyway self-diagnosis, upper or lower repertory infection, or some form of sinusitis. Self treatment, amoxicillin 500mg 3 times a day. See how it goes. Actually after a couple of hours I have miraculously and very suddenly stopped coughing. I think my diagnosis is likely considering the high amount of particulate matter in the air, pollution and dust.

If this fails I might try flagyl which I think kills anything.

Vanessa is suffering but she is pleased about the no appetite & resulting weight loss.