Face The Sun: Let There Be Light.

To Stand on Jericho's Walls and Face the Sun.

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

During my training class on how to process visas, we were shown a video entitled FISH! Set in the Seattle seafood market, the video pointed out that any activity can be made fun, and once you make it fun, you'll sell an awful lot of fish. Now that I've done my tour as a visa officer -- an activity that by its very nature deals in raw human emotion and (since no country that I know of has a 0 percent refusal rate) disappointment -- I'm somewhat unclear on what the relationship between fish and visas was. But at the time I was STOKED to get to post and process some green cards in a manner that would be FUN.

It is unclear if I brought any increased levity to the Immigrant Visa wing of US Embassy Islamabad.

I had completely forgotten about that whole FISH! thing until I showed up in Seattle and started heading that way. And even though the fish mongers weren't quite the happy-go-lucky, over-the-top friendly salmon chuckers depicted in the video (I found them to be a little pushy, and they seemed annoyed at all the tourists), I still found myself overwhelmed with desire to buy some fish. I can't tell if that's because the Chinese fish market leaves something to be desired (Chinese seafood as the target of FDA food safety investigation headlined on the day of my visit to the market), or if it's because I desperately wanted to have them shriek out CATFISH! (and echo back, CATFISH) before hurling my fillets across the market. The video was right: hurling seafood is intrinsically fun.

It also makes me wish that we'd done things a little differently at the embassy, so that when, say, the child of a US citizen came to the window, I would've shrieked out IR-TWO! and had the FSNs echo back IR-TWO!. (Going to Manhattan! Going to Manhattan).

Posted by Dakota on 2:28 PM link |

Three days in Seattle and this much I know is true: it's FANTASTIC here. Looking at real estate fantastic. Except for that whole weather thing (it's the dead of summer and it's freezing), it approaches perfect. Some thoughts:

-- People in Seattle do not jaywalk. If the street is completely empty the light is red, they will not cross against it. In this, they resemble Norway. In this, they're the Anti-China.

-- I knew that Seattle would be an ultra-left paradise, but I didn't realize the implications that would have for people's hair. There seem to be more blonds here than elsewhere, and more of those people are sporting massive heads of curly hair than anywhere I've ever been. I want to refer to this phenomenon as the blondfro, but I'm not sure if that's PC.

-- It seems like there are more crazy people here than elsewhere, but I can't tell if that just a readjustment to America thing. I of course do remember large swaths of the criminally insane in DC, but my neighborhood in Beijing is pretty much 100 percent devoid of crazy people.

-- The sheer number of organic vegetables on sale is a little overwhelming. Everyone all over the city is giving out free samples, and I've eaten my body weight in bing cherries. But I also can't help but convert dollars per pound to kuai per half kilogram, and the prices -- which are literally 20 to 40 times the going rate in China -- are a little stunning.

-- Seattlites seem to have a thing for revolving statues.

-- Japanese restaurants outnumber McDonalds by a ratio of about 5 to 1. People in Seattle apparently love teriyaki.

-- Rain does not phase these people in the slightest. There's no flinching, no hunching of shoulders, no hurrying for cover. It was cloudy all morning, but it started raining at the exact moment the sun came out, which is pretty much in keeping with everything I know about the meteorology of the Pacific Northwest.

Posted by Dakota on 2:27 PM link |

Current Location:
The People's Republic of China.

Stop by any time: everyone's welcome.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem to Be Born

Comments and requests for dates should be directed to email.

And here I am.

And for all you random folks out there whom I don't know, for the love of god, email me. I'm abroad, know no one, and look forward to hearing from you. I'm especially looking at YOU, whomever YOU are who's Facing The Sun all the way from Kenya. And Sweden. And Canada. And whatnot.

Books Tackled, 2006:

1. Jarhead, Anthony Swofford
2. Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia, Dennis Covington
3. A Brief History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
4. A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City, Anonymous
5. Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey Through Autism, Dawn Prince-Hughes

This year's movies, in chronological order:

1. Kung Fu Hustle
2. A Wrinkle in Time
3. Pi: Faith in Chaos
4. My Big Fat Independent Movie
5. The Winter Guest
6. Voices in Wartime
7. What Dreams May Come
8. Farewell My Concubine
9. The Ring
10. Like Water for Chocolate
11. Sahara

Orange Lifesaver.
In Passing.
Foxy Librarians.
Naked Translations.
Open Brackets.
The DC Bloggers Site.
Linguistics Blogs.
The DC BlogMap.

Foreign Service Officers by day, Bloggers by day as well.

The Diplodocus
(Islamabad, Pakistan).

The Permanent Mission of Joshie
(Zagreb; Libyaward).

Prince Roy
(Chennai; Taiwanward).

Sue and not You
(Tbilisi, Georgia).

Life on the Mekong
(Vientiane, Laos).

FSO Globe Trotter
(Lahore, Pakistan).

Vice Consul: Diplomatically Transformed
(New Delhi, India).

Adventures in Good Countries
(Japanward).

Our Man in Tirana
(Tirana, Albania).

Anne's Blog
(Kazakhstan; Greeceward).

Blogota
(Bogota, Colombia).

Furnish Worldwide
(Curacaoward).

Tasman's World
(Dhaka, Bangladesh).

GlobeHoppers
(Lome, Togo).

World Adventurers
(Seoul, Korea).

Aaron Martz
(Switzerlandward).

A for Adventure
(Chennai, India).

The Excellent Adventures of Nickie P
(Paris, France).

Permanently Disco
(Dhaka, Bangladesh).

Consul At Arms
(Kingston, Jamaica).



Five Random DC bloggers. Asterix indicates recently updated.