January 2011
15 posts
What To Wear In Kabul →
My mate over at the Transitionland blog has done a spot-on guide for what to wear for women (and men) in Kabul.
In the Autumn, Winter and Spring, I pretty much wear what I wear in London: skinny jeans, boots, tunic dresses and trenchcoat. But in the hot, sweaty Summer, she’s absolutely right: a shalwar kameez is your best friend.
The unwitting poetry of spam
Now and then, an old, defunct blog of mine receives a comment from spambots. Crafted to fool the blog’s systems into thinking they’re kosher, the automatic selection of words sometimes has a poetic, if surreal beauty to them.
I’m certainly not the first to notice this. The site www.spampoetry.org has been blogging these Zen-like gems for years.
Yesterday’s comment looks...
...including one child
When attacks happen in Kabul, this is always the line that gets to me. For many, the fact that yesterday’s attack on a supermarket in Wazir Akbar Khan killed a number of foreigners is its most chilling aspect. It’s not for us to judge this harshly - people connect with what they know and the ex-pat community is a small, close-knit world.
For others, the targeting of civilians, whether...
Foiled!
A compromise reached of Wednesday for Parliament. Still, it meant I didn’t have to get up so early this morning.
Interesting Times
It’s Legislative vs Presidential in Kabul. The MPs of the newly elected Parliament are demanding that the inauguration goes ahead as planned tomorrow on the 23rd, while President Karzai wants a month delay for his appointed special tribunal of the Supreme Court to investigate voting fraud.
Some MPs are threatening to go ahead and inaugurate Parliament without him, whether at the Parliament...
Back in Kabul
And on the journey from the airport to home, I was flipped off by one ANP on producing an ISAF pass (despite my initial indignant anger, I thought ‘fair enough’) and by another in front of a new political billboard of a young bloke giving a peace sign, standing next to a big red crossed circle proclaiming, ‘no TB’! Taliban, I presume, although perhaps a stance against...