The 2nd Egyptian Revolution (which I also watched from my sofa...just like the 1st one!)

I've received some texts and emails along the lines of "Egypt - WTF?!" this past week and I've been writing people back individually, when it occurred to me that wait, there might be a more efficient way to do this! Don't I have some sort of "web log" type thing somewhere on the Internets that can take care of mass communication? I do! So I fished out my old password and here I am, with my take on what is going on in Egypt and why it matters what the US decides to call it.

I think the best entry point into the conversation about what is happening in Egypt came from Millie, who asked how what is going on now is related to the 2011 Revolution. In the days leading up to 30 June, anti-Morsi protesters were tweeting "We thought democracy was enough. It was not." Obama said something along these lines as well ("Democracy is more than elections"). Although what is happening now is not politically connected to the last revolution, it is emotionally connected.

You couldn't find someone more politically opposite to Mubarak than the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). Mubarak was a career military guy, a secular ruler whose only ruling philosophy was "grab more." The MB by contrast is a religious party. They support a broader cultural return to Sharia law (which is already a part of Egyptian law in the areas of finance and family law) and were persecuted as a terrorist organization under Mubarak's regime. Many of their leaders, including former-President Morsi, were imprisoned under Mubarak.

However, despite their contrasting political and religious views, the STYLE of Mubarak's regime set the tone for the MB's year in power. His administration was characterized by snagging power and resources in every corner of Egyptian industry and turning it over to his supporters. These industry magnates held ruling posts in his party and skimmed billions for themselves (and more of their cronies) leaving Egypt's economy shriveled and completely dependent on foreign aid. These guys are still around. In the wake of recent developments, don't be surprised to start hearing familiar names pop up. Ahmed Ezz, kazillionaire steel magnate and known crony/skimmer was only just recently found not guilty of charges relating to said skimming, which went on for decades. This lack of accountability also marks the Mubarak era, as few if any of Mubarak's supporters, or the perpetrators of such horrendous violence during the first revolution, have ever been successfully prosecuted. Mubarak himself had his guilty verdict overturned earlier in the year and his retrial has been rescheduled for August 17th.

Bear in mind (it will be important again) that many of the judges still in office today came up through the ranks in the Mubarak days. The Judiciary is generally understood as independent from the executive but also slightly politically aligned with the old regime.

So the protesters who led the first revolution, and many of those middle-class, religious but not extremist Muslim Egyptians who voted for Morsi, have been disappointed to see Egypt's first democratically elected party repeat the same all-encompassing power grab tactics learned from the Mubarak regime. There was always some consternation that the MB would not treat women and religious minorities fairly, and that fear has been borne out. However, the MB's style is less about discrimination, and more about the same "more for me and mine" mentality that Egyptians have been sick of for thirty years. What Obama and the Twittersphere were claiming is that democracy is not just having elections, it is about ruling democratically, which the MB hasn't done.

Westerners are also asking if Morsi was so unpopular in Egypt, and if Egypt really wanted a fair, secular, democratic state, why did they elect the Muslim Brotherhood to power in the first place? It was a super slim majority, but roughly 50% of the country voted for Morsi, right? Well, sort of. There is a question of timeline and a question of process here, which explain why a majority of Egyptians voted for Morsi and yet still a majority don't like him.

First, the timing: Although Morsi and the MB were elected by the people, elections were held so soon (because there was a lot of pressure on the military to give up power and their reputation was starting to tumble rapidly) after Mubarak's fall that the secular and youth opposition groups - which had never existed as organized political parties before - did not have enough time to organize and get their message out (or come to consensus about what that message should be). Only the MB and the old regime had any sort of organizational structure and so Morsi and Ahmed Shafik, Mubarak's former spy chief, were the candidates in the run-off election. Procedurally, this run-off election was inevitable because out of a number (5 maybe?) of unsatisfactory candidates, it was unlikely any one would get a majority of the vote. But it also gave a visual representation of everything that was wrong with the elections: that they came down to a "choice" between the old regime and a religious party previously known as terrorists.

This choice between the greater of all evils left a huge segment of the population - coincidentally the segment that had driven the revolution - with no one to vote for. Many didn't even vote because they couldn't bring themselves to support either candidate, but of the ones that I know who did, they voted for Morsi, because he campaigned on promises of respecting all Egyptians' rights and not imposing a religious state on secular Egyptians and they thought at least here's a guy who has spent his whole career opposing Mubarak, so that's something.

Turns out he was either lying all along or he is a weak leader who believes he has to give in to his radical religious flank, not only of his party, but also to keep the support of the Salafis who are even crazier (these were the guys flinging themselves at the armed thugs riding top speed into Tahrir during the Battle of the Camels during the first revolution because they believed if they died in battle against a secular ruler - Mubarak - they would go straight to paradise). The last year has been one betrayal of women's and minority rights after another. The parliamentary elections were rigged, giving seats that were supposed to be reserved for youth and secular and other minority parties to MB and Salafi candidates. The constitutional committee was so stacked with religious party reps that many of the youth and secular people left the process so as not to imply approval of the final product. All of the tiny handful of women on the constitutional committee were religious zealots. The final product made reference to sharia and did not contain protections for women and minority rights.

Morsi overturned court verdicts (remember, people at least sort of think the Judiciary is independent, so going up against them was bad PR for the MB), and made a declaration that his executive orders were not reviewable by the courts. Morsi proceeded to disband parliament, the judiciary (and various individual courts), and NGOs at one time or another throughout the past year in blatant, inept power grabs, and has spent so much energy on doing these ridiculous things - and then trying to defend them to the international community from whom he is requesting aid - that he has not provided jobs or economic stability. There has been little accountability for the deaths of the protesters under Mubarak and SCAF (army) rule.

Morsi has failed to prevent, and even implied approval of, attacks on religious minorities (and some church burnings of Coptic churches) including, a few weeks ago, most shockingly, a group of Shiite Muslims who were beaten to death by a mob of Sunnis (the majority in Egypt). There has not really been inter-Muslim sectarian violence in Egypt before. Even moderate Muslim Egyptians (and even not so moderate Muslims) were like "whoa, it is one thing to murder Copts, but murdering other Muslims? That's way off base!" They began to see the MB's leadership as divisive even among Muslims.

Electricity is always unreliable in Egypt during the summers when everyone is using AC but lately the grid has been further challenged by chronic gas shortages (the electricity and water pressure of many buildings is run on generators). It takes hours waiting in line to get gas and these lines make traffic even worse. There are even some entrepreneurial kids walking around with shisha pipes among the cars in line so you can rent a shisha to smoke while you wait. So now on top of not having jobs and seeing the Egyptian pound fall in value and countries refuse aid because your government has shown it isn't interested in governing, you have to wait in line for hours (whether you are trying to gas up or not), your apartment may not have power, or AC, or running water (if you are above the 3rd floor, which most people are) for hours every evening.

In anticipation of the 1 year anniversary of Morsi's election, a loose organization of youth and secular coalition groups called Tamarod (rebel in Arabic), started collecting signatures demanding Morsi step down and hold new elections. A sort of impeachment by vote of the people petition. They were pushing 30 June as the day when anybody unsatisfied with MB rule should come out to demonstrate peacefully. If Morsi did not step down, Tamarod said the peaceful demonstrations would become full civil disobedience (camping in Tahrir and outside government buildings to block traffic and government officials, and strikes in factories, schools, and government offices). They claim to have collected 22 million signatures on their petition. After seeing the huge numbers of people protesting this past weekend, some military estimates say at least 3 million people joined anti-Morsi protests in Tahrir square alone, the military gave Morsi a 48 hour ultimatum that either the MB respond to the demands of the people or the army would lay out its own plan for the future and take steps to implement it. Morsi apparently pointed to his neck and said "this before that," meaning he would die before giving up power.

So after the deadline passed, the generals just went on TV and announced Morsi was no longer president. Backed on the dais by the head of Al Azhar mosque and the Egyptian Coptic (Christian) pope, the armed forces announced the roadmap (which was also drafted in conjunction with secular and youth representatives such as Mohamed El-Baradei and the April 6th youth movement which was instrumental in the first revolution). The roadmap includes:

-Suspending the constitution provisionally;
-The chief justice of the constitutional court will declare the early presidential elections;
-Interim period until president elected. Chief Justice will have presidential powers;
-A technocrat, capable national government will be formed;
-The committee will offer all its expertise to review the new constitution;
-The Supreme Constitutional Law will address the draft law and prepare for parliamentary elections;
-Securing and guaranteeing freedom of expression, freedom of media
-All necessary measures will be taken to empower youth so they can take part in decision making processes

The military immediately transferred power to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court, who was appointed by Morsi to that position on MONDAY, 2 days before he became president! Morsi appointed him Chief Justice from among 3 senior judges, all put in office under Mubarak. Al Adly has since transferred power to Mohamed El-Baradei who will be interim president. He is really popular with Western leaders because he is secular, and a technocrat. He also won a Nobel Peace Prize as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency so he is pretty attractive to the international community. He is not particularly popular within Egypt because Egyptians don't relate to him. They see him as too allied with the West and with Israel to really be one of them (Egyptians). He is obviously a smart man, but it remains to be seen whether he is clever. No leader could rectify all that is wrong with Egypt before the patience of the Egyptian people runs out. Luckily, El Baradei doesn't have to rectify all that is wrong with Egypt, he just has to keep everyone from killing each other until new elections can be held (and a new Parliament elected, and the constitution amended and approved).

New elections will pose a similar problem as the first round of elections did. It is almost guaranteed that secular and youth groups are still not organized enough to put forward presidential candidates that could win. They just don't have the infrastructure and the MB and Salafis do. So the MB could very well win again and it would be much harder to argue that the people don't REALLY want them there if they won 2 elections.

Finally, the question of whether or not this is a military coup. This seems to be all that Western journalists can talk about (and they all agree it is a coup) and Egyptian and European media keep saying "why does it matter if it was a coup if it is what the people want?" I think both groups are wrong. I personally do not think this was a military coup (I'll explain in a minute why this is a political rather than semantic determination) and there is one obvious reason why whether it is or isn't a coup seriously matters for the future stability of Egypt.

First, not a coup: I can definitely see that from the MB's perspective, this felt like a coup. Military generals barge into your palace and tell you to give up your democratically elected presidency or they will toss you out on your ear, it is going to feel like a coup. But it isn't. Because you seized so much power, perverted the constitution, and declared your decrees to be above the law, there was no legal means to impeach you. Your people rose up against you and although many populations are not fortunate enough to have their own army, the Egyptian people do. So they sent their generals to you and said agree to early elections or else! And you did not agree, so something like 30 million people across your country demanded "or else." "Or else" in this case cannot really be seen as a military takeover because the military did not take over anything. They handed power immediately to a judge, ostensibly independent of the executive and political parties, and in fact also appointed to Chief Justice by the president himself only days before. How can it be a military coup if the military never held power? The military did not remove the president. The army acted as the enforcement arm of the general public and the people impeached the president for failing to govern.

Why does it matter what we call it? It doesn't matter what we call it as long as we don't call it a coup. US law forbids aid to a government where a military coup has taken place until democratic elections are held. The Egyptian military is 100% dependent on US aid to operate and the Egyptian military is the only stable institution left in Egypt (besides the judiciary, and they don't have tanks). So attention media types: stop calling this a coup. Call it a takeover, a transition, an impeachment (my preference). Call it a scuffle, a power grab, an illegitimate arrest if you really want to show your disapproval. But stop calling it a coup. Attention Egyptians: stop saying it doesn't matter if the West calls this a coup because YOU know the truth. It really does matter what the West calls it, so instead start teaching the West a new vocabulary more helpful to your cause (and your economy).

Whether it is or isn't a coup, I think the US will find a way to not call it a coup. The US's role and position in all this is based only on money and Israel. We will support whoever can provide a stable government that accepts our money and our foreign policy demands with respect to securing Israel. We do not care if that is the military, the MB, or even someone more extreme. For this, the US, both Obama and the American ambassador Anne Patterson, got a lot of hateful signs in the protests. The protesters see the US as supporting the MB, which isn't exactly true, we would support any strong leader willing to buckle to our own policies, and we will continue to dump money into Egypt, regardless of whether there is democracy or human rights, as long as we think Israel is still protected there. But if we come to define this as a coup, our own laws will prevent us from giving money to Egypt until democratic elections can be held. We have already disbursed all our 2013 aid funds to Egypt so the army is set no matter what until 2014, but by then there had better either be elections or some new diction in the West about what went on this week.

So there's my take on what has happened so far. Looking forward to what happens next...

From UN-employment to unemployment

I am a TERRIBLE blogger! I have not posted to this thing in over a year! Part of the reason is pure laziness, but most of the reason is the total lack of anything interesting happening in the last year. Living in Geneva was a lot like living in a snow globe: it is pristine, perfect, picturesque, and EXACTLY the same every day. Once I moved out of my crazy landlady’s apartment into my own tiny studio a few blocks from my office, my routine never changed. Each day, I would get up, walk the dog, shower, eat breakfast, go to work, come home, walk the dog, shower, watch TV, Skype with my mom, read, then go to bed. Repeat. So now you can pretty much consider yourselves caught up on everything that happened between September 2011 and July 2012, with one exception: At my contract renewal in March, my section chief tried to get me into a staff position. There is a general rule that any consultant or intern has to wait six MONTHS before applying for a staff position. However, in the past, there had been kind of a roundabout way of doing it, a loophole, and my boss tried this. This was nice of him, since it meant that he thought I was doing a good job and wanted to keep me around. And it would have meant a lot to me, since I had already had to train my “supervisor” twice (same woman, she just wound up with a 5 week break between contracts and seemed to forget everything during that time) and she made more than twice as much money as me. Money was really tight in Geneva. I did not have a sofa, stove, TV, or even a shower curtain in my apartment. All apartments are completely unfurnished and even at IKEA, stuff is expensive. So a staff salary with real benefits would have made all the difference to me. It would have meant a career. But unfortunately, someone in Admin in charge of approving my new contract informed my boss that the loophole had been closed last year and consultants could no longer wiggle around the six month break rule. And that was the end of that. I decided at that point to renew my contract until July 15th, as my apartment rental contract ended at the end of July. This would give me a couple weeks to wrap up my life in Geneva and then move back to the US to hopefully find work closer to home. I thought that having a year and a half in Egypt, working at a human rights org and then at the law firm, and then all my UN experience would help, and the job search would not take so long, or be so depressing, as it was in 2008-2009. Alas… It is true that things aren’t as bad as when I left the US in 2009. There are at least jobs I can reasonably apply for now. Most of the time, there are a couple possibilities announced every week. It used to be the only jobs available were for Executive Directors or Fundraising Managers and required 10-15 years’ experience. Also, I am allowed to buy insurance now (thanks, Obamacare!), whereas I used to be uninsurable, thanks to tendonitis in my ankles (pre-existing condition disqualification), so being in the US while I search isn’t as risky as it used to be. I have even had a couple close calls with really good phone interviews, but in the end they went with somebody else. I am not sure if my international experience is hurting me with domestic hiring managers who think I won’t be a good fit, or that I will abandon the position once an international post opens up. But the fact remains that I am moving into my fourth month of unemployment and the jobs I am finding to apply for pay in the $40-50K range (I am already imagining the blog post I will write in the future entitled “Under-employment,” assuming I ever land anywhere. On the bright and shiny side of the coin, Oregon is amazing at this time of year. We had our first snow today, just a sprinkling of flakes in amongst mostly raindrops. The mornings smell like wet juniper and sagebrush and the evenings smell like smoke from all the fireplaces. I have been doing most of the cooking, as I have really missed having access to the Food Network, actual pots and pans, a stove, and affordable ingredients. I just finished an article on the Lilly Ledbetter case for a local civic organization’s newsletter and I think I’ll keep doing similar things to keep my skills up to date. I go to the gym a lot, I am up to about 4 miles a day on the treadmill, mostly running, and then I walk the dog or take him to the great new dog park in town in the early afternoons so he isn’t bouncing off the walls. I have been meeting a friend to swim in the pool we grew up in and I still somehow manage to watch a ton of TV and read mysteries every evening. Except for repeated blows to my self-esteem thanks to the job search, the day to day grind of my kind of unemployment (with supportive, understanding parents, a big warm roof over my head, and an outfit made entirely of sweatpants and sweatshirts) is actually kind of awesome. If you are reading this, thanks for waiting over a year for this post. Now that I have nothing else to do, it probably won’t take so long for the next one. P.S. The pic above is about an hour before my parents steered our canoe at top speed into a tree, flipping all of us into the very high, fast-flowing, and totally obstacle-free river. All of us and all of our stuff were completely fine, except for the blue Oakleys I'm wearing, which were never seen again.

This horrible person I met...

This incident took place awhile ago but I think it is an anectdote that really captures a certain element of Swiss society. These are no doubt the same people supporting the political parties papering Geneva with certain horrible political posters reminisicent of 1930's Germany.

It isn't a rule that all of the older Swiss generation are nasty to foreigners and have elevated uninvited lecturing to an art form, but it has certainly been true of every Geneva local over 60 I have met in my time here. This intrusive shrew was no exception...

At some point during my many treks from and to various consulates and government buildings to renew my Egyptian work visa, I was sitting on a bench at the bus stop waiting for my bus. I was listening to my headphones (which are big and white and obvious) and this little old lady next to me started talking to me in French.

First, I think it is kind of rude, to talk to someone wearing headphones, unless you need help, have an emergency, or want to ask a question. Second, you should say "excuse me" first, so the recipient of your unwanted attentions can stop their music or, in my case, an audiobook, and actually hear you.

In this case, I could tell by her tone that whatever she said was just conversational. She just wanted to chat, perhaps to complain about the bus being late, which it was.

I stopped the audiobook I was listening to and said (in English, with an apologetic smile) "I'm sorry, I don't speak French."

Her face changed immediately, shriveling down to a hard point of frowning lips and dagger-like nose. She snipped, "You know, when I went to England, I learned English." in this accusatory tone.

I was so mad I had a flash of a cartoon me with my hair bursting into angry flames. Why on earth would any normal person think it is at all appropriate to just randomly lecture a stranger?!

I stayed calm and said "I speak Italian, Spanish and Arabic." I wanted to add "not that it is any of your freaking business," but I didn't want to escalate the situation to the point where I'd have to punch her sharp little face (or did I??).

She was obviously startled by my answer, and a little embarassed because she flushed a bit but she'd gone too far to back down without giving it another try. She leaned forward, as if she were not already too far into my personal space.

"You are in a French speaking country," she went on angrily, "Yet you are expecting ME to speak YOUR language!"

I paused to let her ridiculous last sentence hang in the air for a moment before answering, "I don't expect anything from you, ma'am, YOU started talking to ME!"

And she opened and closed her mouth a couple more times but didn't have anything else to say and I excused myself because thankfully my bus arrived right then.

I cannot even imagine how this same woman must treat foreigners who do not look like me!

Swiss bureaucracy eats Egyptian bureaucracy for lunch

I had three steps I needed to complete to prepare the documents necessary for my Egyptian work visa before I could send them to my firm to complete the application process. I had a pile of documents (letters of reference, transcripts, a letter from the Wisconsin bar with my date of admission, etc.) supporting my firm's case that I am uniquely qualified for the job and that an Egyptian couldn't do the same job, the same argument that has to be made in most countries in order to hire a foreigner instead of a national. I had to get a stamp from the US Consulate on an affidavit where I say the info in my pile of documents is true, then I had to get a stamp from the Swiss government "legalizing" my documents (their word, no idea what it means), then another stamp from the Egyptian consulate legalizing (still no idea) the documents.

I had already gone to the US Consulate 2 weeks ago and the consular agent stamped and signed my affidavit stating the documents were true. I brought that packet of documents into the Swiss Chancellerie d'Etat this week and had to conduct the whole transaction in Italian because no one in the whole office spoke any English (the only people who think you can get by with just English in this city are the people who speak French). The woman told me there was a problem.

Normally, they could legalize my documents except that they are supposed to receive a letter from the consulate introducing new consular agents and attesting they have the authority to sign documents on behave of the US, and they did not have such a letter on file for the woman who had signed my stuff. They would not call the consulate to explain the problem and request a letter, and it could not be sent by fax, they needed the original.

Finally, they agreed that if I went back to the consulate (on the other side of the huge hill that is Geneva's Old Town, and up and down which there is no public transportation) in person and returned in person with an original letter authorizing the consular agent, they could legalize my documents.

So I walked, through the hottest weather Geneva has had all year, down the hill back to the US consulate by the lake, where I had to stand in line for 45 minutes behind a couple doing adoption paperwork (talk about bureaucracy!) until the SAME consular agent who had signed my form 2 weeks ago came to the window to help me. I pointed out to her that according to the Swiss government, the affidavit I'd paid 40 francs for was as worthless as if I had signed it myself and she took the phone number of the office back to her desk and chatted with them for some time.

She came back to the window and, I SWEAR TO GOD, she picked up a blank affidavit form...the very same they had just refused to accept her signature on...and wrote, in her own handwriting, "I So and So (names have been changed to protect the annoying) am a US Consular Agent. I am authorized to sign and legalize documents on behalf of the United States Consulate in Geneva." Then she signed and stamped the affidavit...with the EXACT SIGNATURE they had just refused to accept, to authorize her own signature.

I was like "Seriously?" And she shrugged and said that is what the woman at the Chancellerie d'Etat had said to do.

So I trudged back up the hill (stopping for a Starbucks to keep my motivation up and my chances at heat exhaustion down), took another ticket (like at the DMV) and waited in line for another sweaty thirty minutes before ending up at the same window I'd landed at 2 hours before with the same stupid signature on two affidavits now, instead of just one. They happily legalized the form and tucked So and So's signature away in a file for further reference.

Then I took the pile of papers to the Egyptian consulate where they informed me that the same legalization process (applying a stamp and signature) that had taken under a minute at the US and Swiss offices would take until the next day in their office. So I had to go back AGAIN this morning.

But I am now on my way to become a "legalized" Egyptian worker once again.

La vie en Suisse

As promised, I've rounded up some photos of my life in Switzerland so far. Because everything in Geneva is unbelievably expensive, I spend my weeknights and weekends in the park by Lake Geneva with Whiskey. Because I haven't really done anything touristic, almost all my pictures cute puppy pics. To avoid barraging you with YouTubeworthy levels of Whiskey cuteness, I really had to dig to find some shots representative of my daily life. Without further ado:

The Alps from the airplane as I flew in to Geneva from Cairo:





I swear to God, these guys were playing these things in the airport:





View of Lake Geneva from the apartment I subletted when I first arrived:




Whiskey and I kicking back in the park known as Perle du Lac near Lake Geneva. It is a 24/7 picnic area divided into 4 sections of perfectly manicured grass sloping down to the lakeshore. At the top of the hill there is sometimes live music and tango and the farthest section of grass is home to a free outdoor film series several nights a week.




This was a protest that stopped traffic one of my first weekends in Geneva. On the heels of the Egyptian revolution, this seemed to me to be quintessentially Swiss. The demonstrators marched almost single file and observed traffic signals. You can also see a little of the architecture around the central train station.




This is a famous room (Room XX) in the United Nations where I spent a week in May at an intergovernmental working group that met to discuss the possibility of drafting an international convention to regulate private military and security companies. Unsurprisingly, nothing was decided, but it was cool to be in the room, which features a controversial piece of installation art on the ceiling (this is an extremely detailed article, but just scroll down to the "controversy" section: http://www.designboom.com/contemporary/miquel_barcelo.html). The room is also surrounded by interpreters' booths, and looks almost exactly like the room in the Nicole Kidman/Sean Penn movie "The Interpreter" in which an interpreter that speaks an obscure African dialect accidentally overhears a murder plot on an internal line inside the UN in that dialect and has to go on the run to prevent an assassination. Good movie if you haven't seen it.




This is my office. It is on what we jokingly call the "Malkovich floor" as it is a half-floor between the Ground Floor and the First Floor. You have to take a special staircase to get there. Fortunately, unlike the half-floor in the movie Being John Malkovich, the ceilings in Palais Wilson, where I work, are normally twice as high as normal ceilings so my half-floor is the height of a normal floor and we do not have to walk around bent over like John Cusack's character. Unfortunately, there is no secret tunnel into an actor's brain...at least none that I have found so far... My desk is the one in the middle of the shot that faces out the window.




From my desk, I can see Lake Geneva a stone's throw away. This is relaxing, but also irritating in the summer when relaxed people zoom by on bicycles and water skis while I slave away at my desk.




Switzerland is very dog friendly. If you look closely, there is a cute drawing of a dog on this "WC" sign indicating a designated dog potty area. You can take dogs into most buildings including department stores, H&M, and almost all restaurants and bars. Grocery stores, where dogs are not usually allowed, provides designated hooks, like Wild West hitching posts, where you can tie your dog's leash so they can wait for you while you do your shopping.




Extraneous Whiskey cuteness. Couldn't help it.



That's it for now. Once I get some decent furniture in my apartment, I will post some pics of my little studio. Also, I'll try to get a shot of the outside of Palais Wilson, the building where I work, and which houses the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. As I don't do much of anything in my free time, there is not much to blog about, but I'll keep my eyes open for other Swiss oddities to report.

Until next time!

Swiss Miss(ry) Loves Company

Okay, yes, by all rights this should be the name of my new blog but a) I'm sure it is copyrighted and b)I am bad enough at updating this blog so I am not going to create a whole new one.

What's with the cocoa reference you ask? I have been living in Geneva, Switzerland, as of April 1st. How did I get here from Egypt? It all happened extremely quickly in late February when the United Nations Working Group on the use of mercenaries emailed me out of the blue to ask if I'd be interested in a six-month consultancy. I was interested and my supervisor at my law firm told me "You'd be stupid not to take it." So I did take it. Then followed a phone interview and written test, after which I had to endure a four-week period in which I'd been selected for the job but needed UN Admin approval to finalize the offer. Confirmation finally came just ten days before I was expected to start work that I finally had been approved for the job.

So I grabbed up very few of my belongings, arranged for hasty dog-care, sublet my apartment, and got the hell out of Cairo. Five hazy hours later, I jogged to my new office in Geneva to meet my new colleagues for a half an hour before the workday ended at six, yes, SIX (I still can't get over how much earlier that is than law firm hours. When we are held over until six fifteen, we can start rolling our eyes in exasperation...so fun!).

I spent my first week in a hotel in a super-shady neighborhood surrounded by strip bars and, thankfully, lebanese restaurants (hello, inexpensive falafel of questionable hygeinic integrity!). From April 6th to May 2nd, I sublet a cute little one bedroom apartment from a delightful colleague who left me all her stuff and all her food to enjoy while she vacations in Syria. Yep, Syria. In April 2011, this woman went to Syria for VACATION. Hardcore.

I am still reeling from the availability of pork and alcohol products. Every meal I made in my first month contained an item from each category.

I went back to Egypt in late April to pick up Whiskey and then had to come back to Geneva via New York (think about that trip for a minute) to get him the right veterinary paperwork to come back to Switzerland with me. It was extremely difficult to find a short term furnished rental option that would allow dogs. All the property management companies turned me down and I didn't want to get an unfurnished place for such a short period.

So I went through Glocals, a Geneva craigslist-like classified ad site and found a Swiss lawyer who was subletting a room and advertized for a "dogs-lover person." She had 3 dogs of her own, including a Doberman, (and there were three other people renting rooms as well so a very full house) but she was confident that after a couple weeks, they'd work out a hierarchy among themselves and accept Whiskey into their pack. Well, that never happened and the Doberman kept jumping on Whiskey and putting him in her mouth like a little Whiskey sandwich, not biting down, but just to scare the hell out of him and show him who was boss.

The living situation there was difficult to start with but I thought we'd be able to survive for my remaining five months in Geneva at least. Alas, the situation went downhill rapidly after one of the other renters, an American professor and her 12 year old son moved out and the landlady's son, a smoker (of cigarettes and other things...) moved in. Then the Doberman got sick and had to go on cortizone which made her pee on the floor every day. So the house smelled like smoke and urine all the time. Hygeine tanked and the stress of living with (and cleaning up after) so many inconsiderate people and dogs made the situation untenable.

The landlady was also a bit of an oppressive bully. She would stand around the kitchen while I was cooking and tell me what sponge to use for which pot, which oil to cook with (and I KNOW how to cook, thank you very much), how to arrange each plate and fork in the dishwasher, how many clothes to put in the washer at a time, etc. So the "free access" to the kitchen and laundry wasn't really free. One of the other guys who lived in the apartment actually had all his own pots, a hot plate, and dishes that he kept in his room and just rinsed off in the bathroom sink next to his room so he never had to deal with the constant nagging.

The story of how I moved out is long and complicated and awful, but basically, I gave my notice but my landlady, who, remember, is a lawyer in Geneva, didn't accept it. She wanted to try to get August AND September's rent out of me, despite the fact that she wasn't even legally allowed to sublet anyway and despite the fact that I was moving in part because of pot smoking in the apartment. I think she is used to using her knowledge of Swiss law to bully non-lawyers. I wasn't going to put up with it. I felt that the living situation was not at all what I had agreed to, especially since her son had moved in, and I gave her plenty of time to find a replacement renter but I think she intentionally tried not to find someone new as a way of trying to force me to pay at least for August. Well, I knew what she was up to (she had tried to similarly cheat the American professor when she moved out in June) and since she didn't have a deposit of mine, I just moved out when I told her I would. With the help of my dog park friends, I had found a new place near work and with the help of my work friends, I moved all my stuff that day.

In what turned out to be a few dramatic hours, my landlady threatened to sue me and actually drove to my office, waited for me to come to work, then tried to follow right behind me into the building to sneak in past UN security. I stopped and told the officers she didn't have a badge and she waited in the security office for TWO HOURS, telling them "I am just going to wait here in case she comes out so I can follow her and see where she lives." I think she realized she didn't really have any legal case against me and was just trying to intimidate me. She also wanted to speak to my supervisor (who knew all about the situation and, in fact, gave me her college pots and pans for my new apartment). I talked to the lawyer friend of one of my colleagues and he also said she doesn't have a case and helped me draft an email to get her to quit stalking me (but since saying that outright is illegal in Switzerland, he helped me tell her off in less inflamatory language). She wrote me back a couple nasty emails but I haven't heard from her in a few weeks now. This could mean that she has found another renter and has given up or it could mean she has somehow managed to file a claim and I will get served a summons one of these days. My heart jerks in my chest whenever I see an older skeletal blond lady outside the security gate in the morning but I am so happy in my new place with just Whiskey and my own space and peace and quiet that it was worth all the terror and stress and awkwardness (with the security officers who don't speak English so I eventually had to have a friend explain what was going on) to move out of that situation, even if it is only for a couple months.

Now I am in a little unfurnished studio near my office, only a couple blocks from Lake Geneva and just minutes from a series of parks where I can walk Whiskey and listen to my audiobooks. A couple days a week, I take the dog on the bus back to the dog park to see his friends and get in some dog on dog playtime. With the help of many generous friends, I sleep on an air mattress on borrowed linens with a borrowed comforter. I got a little fridge and hot plate and I can cook on my boss' pots and pans and eat on the dishes a girl at the dog park who is moving in with her boyfriend doesn't need anymore. There were a few months of pretty crappy weather in late June and July but August has been nicer on the whole and the sky is taking on that late summer/early fall deep deep blue, which the lake is happy to reflect. Although I have heard the rest of the year is rainy and cold, this is a beautiful time to be in Geneva and I am really happy in my new place.

Yet another reason I should change the title of the blog...Despite my continued marginal employment with no benefits and no time off, I am just not very miserable these days.

Now that you're all caught up, I leave you with some of my observations about the Swiss and Swiss things:

At 6:30, all the stores close and, except for a handful of loaners drinking beer outside bars (and I mean a handful, like eight in the whole city), everyone disappears. Even the sailboats disappear from the lake although the sun is still out. So the question I haven't been able to answer yet is where on earth do all the Swiss go at night? Home? Really? Everyone? Why?

It is NOT true that you don't need to speak French to live in Geneva. NOT everyone speaks English, in fact, most of the people I need to talk to (grocery stores, bank tellars, post office clerks, property management companies, vet office secretaries, etc.) speak only French, or maybe understand a little Italian or Spanish, which I often have to use. The only people who claim you don't have to speak French to live here are those who SPEAK FRENCH.

The toilet paper is amazing. Soft, strong, and like 400 yards to a roll (possible exageration). Weirdly, it is not divided into squares, but rather small rectangles that observe the "golden" ratio, most pleasing to the eye. Similar shape to postcards but a little wider.

All drying mechanisms in the bathrooms are those weird rolls of cloth towels where you have to pull on the part of the roll showing to get enough to dry your hands and then the roll rolls forward electronically to the next clean space of towel for the next person. However, since ALL bathrooms have these, they are kept in working order and you don't get yards and yards of dirty cloth towel unspooled all over everywhere like you see sometimes in US movie theater bathrooms.

You can pay all your bills at the post office. I find this amazing. You can open a bank account at the post office with no fees and then you can set up bill pay from your bank account automatically like in the US. But even if you don't set up a bank account (no, alas, I do not have a "Swiss bank account" as with paying my law school loans back in the US, it makes more sense to have my checks deposited there) but no one has to use checks to pay other bills like insurance or rent. You get the bill in the mail and you go into the post office with your cash and pay at the counter. They enter the money into the system and tear off part of the bill and stamp it as your receipt. It goes into the post office bank account of the person or company you're paying.

It is hippie Christmas every day in Geneva. This is what we used to call August 14th in Madison when everyone was moving out of their apartments and leaving their amazing furniture on the street. In Geneva, people are always moving in and moving out and, because most people here are insanely rich, they even REDECORATE if you can believe that. No one has big cars or trucks so it is not practical to donate old furniture unless you can get the organization to come collect it. So people leave fairly new couches and desks and chairs outside all the time. I am slowly furnishing my apartment with stuff I find outside (only stuff that can be washed!) and stuff I find on the Glocals website.

Swiss people kiss each other's cheeks THREE times to say hello. As an American (we are a decidedly non-kissy people), I find this excessive. There is NO ONE who I would be so happy to see I would want to kiss them three times.

Seemingly the opposite of being overly kissy, Swiss people are also extremely indirect if they have a problem with someone or something. A friend joked once that if your neighbor doesn't like your dog, they won't say a word to you about it and you won't have a clue there's an issue until the police or the property rental company shows up with a complaint. This is also adverse to my American nature. I prefer to be up front with people and talk through a problem if one exists but that is perceived as really aggressive here. I need to work on curbing my assertiveness and finding more subtle ways to communicate without losing the ability to speak up for when I eventually (insha'allah) go back to the US.

That's all for now! Since the revolution, everyday events have paled in signficance and hardly seem worth reporting but I will try to do better updating the blog even if Mom is the only one reading this. :) Next time I will also post some Geneva pics.

Back to Normal?

Apologies for not having written an update in weeks (okay, like a month). We were expecting work to slow down in the early part of this year but revolution = economic chaos = tons of contractual disputes so I’ve actually been put on two new cases in the past month (as compared to one in the past year).

Besides being suddenly crazy busy at work, life in Egypt has not changed significantly for me since the revolution and despite having to walk a few blocks around continuing protests to get a taxi some nights, I still go to work (took this picture out my taxi window on my morning commute), my Arabic lessons, on my daily dog walks, out to restaurants with my friends, and the occasional movie. On one hand, the midnight curfew is annoying because it puts the best movie theater just out of range as I wouldn’t be able to get home by the time the army shuts the bridges to Zamalek. But on the other hand, I’m not the only loser heading home to bed before eleven, now I can blame my lameness on the armed forces!

Some of the utopia of Tahrir has spilled out into the general population. People still sweep their own sections of the streets and put their garbage at central locations on the block for pickup instead of everyone putting their own bag outside their own door to get ransacked by stray cats. The Egyptian flag is everywhere. Not quite like in the US after 9/11 but almost. It has taken over advertisements, from cell companies to banks, and taxis, which all have a little card with photos of the martyrs hanging from their rearview windows.

However, some of the same old ugliness is lurking around as well. I’ve noticed a slight uptick in sexual harassment incidents, just guys saying stuff under their breath as I walk by or making inappropriate jokes. It is fantastic that the people of Egypt are no longer afraid of the police. It isn’t right that a population should be terrorized by the officers meant to protect them. But I’m waiting for peoples’ innate values of respect for the rule of law and for one another to kick in and fill the void left by that fear. Most people are still friendly and respectful as ever, but the creeps are getting bolder.

Speaking of creeps, I went to a march on International Women’s Day last week that was supposed to demonstrate for women’s rights. One of the proposed constitutional amendments states that the president cannot be married to a non-Egyptian woman, presupposing that the president will be male. A lot of women, from all backgrounds didn’t want such discrimination codified but the protest wasn’t very well advertised or well-organized so it was only upper class women, students, and foreigners who showed up, and only around 100 or so. On the other hand, way more men than that actually showed up to PROTEST AGAINST WOMEN’S RIGHTS. Dozens would push into the women’s side of the crowd to start religious arguments with the women who spoke Arabic and demand that the “foreigners,” which they extended to cover Egyptians with accents, dual citizens, and Egyptians with non-Egyptian parents, go “home” (no one hassled me of course, because I am adorable). Around six or so, the men rushed the women, causing several injuries as women fell down, and pushing the group of women out of the square.

In other discrimination-related news, Fox Series, one of the Emirati satellite stations I watch has started airing the first season of Glee. Although they used the word “fag” in recent episode, and the phrase “queer as a three-dollar bill,” they actually edit out the word “Jewish,” which occasionally comes up on the show because two of the main characters are Jewish. I couldn’t believe it the first time I heard it (or rather didn’t hear it since it isn’t covered by a bleep but instead blanked out entirely) but sure enough, the word “Jewish,” is actually more offensive to the Emirates than some pretty freaking offensive gay slurs.

Thanks to everyone who have sent me good wishes through my parents. I am safe and well and mostly just working and watching a lot of TV (catching up on old episodes of CSI, True Blood, and Nikita – has anybody ever been worse-cast than Shane West as Michael?!).