The Nerd's Eye View

Oh San Francisco, you never cease to shock and disgust and slightly titillate. As I was having a run the other day I decided to make it more interesting and ran up the hill to Franklin Park down on Potrero and 16th. As I rounded the chain link fence separating the playground and swings from the rest of the park I spotted an overloaded shopping cart. Near it was an homeless person bundled up and sleeping on the grass. As I mused over the homeless problem, I noticed another figure huddled in the grass a little further along. As I got closer, I realized it was two people, and as I drew level I realized that it was a girl with her shirt half off astride a guy, with a coat covering their mid-sections as they did their best to form the beast with two backs. In the bright daylight, not 50ft from a playground with kids on the swings and the seesaws.

Boy howdy, no matter how many times it happens, it never ceases to shock me. I certainly never know how to react in situations like that. I mean, what do you say? "Excuse me, Sir, Ma'am, but you can't do that." Yeah, it sounds stupid to me too. So I did all I could do which is to trot home and try to put it behind me (unsuccessfully). More tales of life in the city, I guess.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 1:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I turned 35 last Sunday and while I'm not one to think too much about aging or my own mortality, I certainly am surprised to be looking around with 35-year-old eyes. I had no idea they were this old until I looked at myself in the mirror after lunch. Then I saw the picture of myself and the family from 1997 that sits on my desk. I think I still look the same (without as much hair of course) but I wonder if that me from 1997 would know that I was him in 2010? I mean he had a really thin neck and his cheeks didn't look like this.

Having said that, I think I'm a lot happier now than when I was back then. I got a great girl who adores me, I have a job that doesn't entirely suck, and let's be honest, I'm sorta living here. That's pretty good, right?

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When I was 11 years old, I stood on my bed and looked at the books on the highest shelf of the bookcase that my parents had kept in my room. There were a lot of books there that my Dad had put there to relieve the overflow on the big bookcase in the living room, but most of them were "boring". Still, I had just finished my latest Hardy Boys book and wanted to keep reading (where has that feeling gone?) and picked a book that was about the same size. It had a maroon cover with simple yellow letters on it that spelled out the title and the author's name. I opened the book to page one and read this:

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”

I gasped, laughed and reread it. Then I debated whether or not to read the passage out loud for my Dad in case he decided I was too young to be reading that sort of thing. Finally I did and he laughed with me, and smiled, probably remembering when he had first read the Catcher in the Rye. I read that book then, then again two years later, then again 2 years after that, then again when I got to college. It was simply written and brilliant and I loved it. Who was J.D. Salinger that he had so easily written a book that described everything and so perfectly?

It appears that he died yesterday, quietly. I hadn't ever read his other works, partly out of laziness and partly because there's no way anything could measure up to Catcher. Now I feel a bit foolish, as we say goodbye to him from beyond the fence. I guess I'd better start reading.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 4:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's been raining cats and dogs around here since last week, which is a welcome change from the gloomy but ultimately dry weather we had been having. The rain has been so heavy that for the first time in a long time, I've been on a road with very low visibility and a good chance of hydroplaning. Everywhere you go there's lots of standing water and I'm surprised at how poor the drainage is all up and down the Peninsula. It seems like the only drainage is going through the freeway signs which can't stand up to the water coming from the sky, and are garbled and useless. Traffic of course is insane in these conditions with people undecided over whether to slow down to a crawl or take advantage of all the space left by cautious people to speed to their destinations. More often than not I find myself practically parked on the 101 watching rain drops bounce off the hood of the car, or get slapped around by the windshield wipers.

Strangely (or perhaps not so strangely) this brought up all kinds of memories, starting first with childhood memories from NY. Riding home from school in the Mission station wagon, watching the rain on the asphalt and fogging up the glass with my breath. It was always so stuffy in there, in a the back of a car filled with fidgety kids who just wanted to be home. We were always the last on the route, and had ample time to zone out to the mixed white noise of rain and traffic. This is a pretty weird memory for me since I haven't thought about it in a good long time. Mainly, it's the amalgamation of thoughts and memories from a thousand rainy days in the seven years we lived in NYC when I was little.

That was idyllic compared to the strongest memory of rain that I had. In August 1988 we were living in Khartoum, and the rainy season (the khareef) was almost on us. School had just started a week prior and was ramping up as quickly as it usually did. That evening we'd had something to eat and the moved the mattresses out to the courtyard where we would all sleep to escape the stifling heat in the house. Sleep came quickly but it seemed like no time before I was awoken by my father shaking my shoulder. "It's raining, get the mattresses inside," but we were woken up again afterward. The roof was leaking throughout the house, and water was rushing in from under the doors. We rushed to plug the gaps up with towels or rags or whatever was at hand, and to put pots under the leaks in the roof which seemed to be everywhere. Before long we were bailing the house out like the Titanic, and continued till 4 or 5am, as the sounds of white noise on the roof faded to silence.

We woke up the next morning to a muddy and partly serene world, with not a cloud in the sky. Wish the same would happen here soon.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last week, on Tuesday and Thursday, I had two separate experiences so similar it seemed like deja vu. On both days there were earthquakes nearby strong enough to make my chair shake and the ductwork overhead sway and creak. Despite the years of thinking about it and mental preparation since I moved to California, I was rooted to my chair both times. Fortunately, each time the quake was relatively quick and of low intensity, and so I could saunter out to the parking lot and make sure that the world wasn't ending before heading back in to continue tapping away at my computer. This nonchalance has been hard won, and is also a result of being in a place where the law mandates good enough building codes to ensure that a small tremor doesn't mean death by rubble. This was not always so.

Cairo: 1992
When I was living in Egypt 18 years ago (jeez, that's a long time), I recall going to a show at the Cairo Opera House with some friends. It was my first time in the opera house which is an impressive building inside and out, and I had great mezzanine seats for the performance of Carmen. In the middle of the 1st act, as Carmen was tempting scoundrels and officers alike, I felt my seat move, and it didn't stop. I looked up at the massive chandelier on the ceiling and it was moving too, the small crystals clinking together and making a pleasant sound ominous. At first the orchestra played on, until they noticed that the conductor had left the podium and, indeed, the orchestra pit. They slowly stopped playing in fits and starts, and began to exit. Even then, the singers on the stage kept singing until it was obvious there would be no more music. By then of course the earthquake (since that's what it was) had subsided. Moments later the conductor came back out, we all clapped, and tried to ignore the fact that there had been a seismic event in a place where it was pretty much unheard of. My friends and I enjoyed the rest of the show and tried to pretend all was well. That night large portions of the poorer neighborhoods in Cairo collapsed and in the City of the Dead fires raged.

Khartoum: 1993
The summer after I was interning at Stack Labs at the University of Khartoum's medical school. I was doing data entry and other sorts of computer work, which was a nice change of pace and getting paid a pittance for it. Still it kept me out of the house which was nice, especially considering how much cooler the Stack building was than our house with the power out as it usually was on summer days. The Stack building was at the time one of the highest buildings in the city, and when it began to shake during lunch, we could hear the grinding of masonry. The room was filled with female researchers and physicians - I stood, unsure whether to stay still and keep everyone calm or to turn tail and run (ungentlemanly? cowardly? yes). Mercifully the shaking stopped quickly and we could all discuss the thrill of what had just happened. That night, as we slept in the courtyard it happened again, but I didn't hear about it till the next morning. Then the news was full of people whose houses had collapsed on them, and children who had had their heads crushed by cinder blocks falling off poorly constructed roofs. People were terrified and I was ashamed of my falsely cavalier behavior the day before.

Haiti: 2010
I imagine that it must have been similar in Port-au-Prince a couple of days ago. Unless you live in California (and even then) you cannot conceive of the earth moving unbidden. It is the most solid, reliable thing in your life and when it moves it is terrifying. Then your house falls down, or you stand by looking at a pile of rubble that was your house and you know that your mother or father or brother or sister is in there. I won't go on about the feeling of helplessness which compounds the usual feeling of helplessness that comes of living a place where you are the mercy of an arbitrary authority, where the largest part of your economy is the remittances of expatriates. Every image makes me think of that morning in Khartoum 17 years ago. So I did what I hope all of you have done already which is to donate some money. If you haven't already, please do. If you can donate something more valuable (medical skills) you might want to do that too ...

Red Cross
PIH

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 9:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A few weeks ago, I got a call from my friend Sean ("The Midwife to the Pregnant Pause") with some surprising news. He and his wife were going to baptize their baby girl and wanted me to be the godfather. Well, suffice to say it was totally unexpected but never let it be said that I am one to let my friends down, and I said yes. The ceremony was surprisingly emotional, and the memory of my own Catholic school days resurfaced rather quickly. I wish I had it in me to go into details, but as I type I realize I am a little embarrassed by the emotions I had at the time and would rather keep them to myself. So there.

Now kiss the Don's ring.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 2:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It's been a good long time since I wrote anything here and there are a good many reasons for that, but none that I want to enumerate here. Suffice to say, I'm still alive, and still thinking but haven't gotten around to writing lately. Ok.

Anyway.

As you know, it's getting to be that time of year again; and if you live in a "western" nation (Japan included, and apparently China too nowadays), you are no doubt being subjected to copious amounts of forced jollity, treacly music, and reminders of how grossly commercial our lives are becoming. Call me a Scrooge, but the whole thing typically leaves me cold, and wondering what the hell I am doing here. Having said that, I do sometimes wish I could join in the reindeer games that seem to be springing up around, which makes me wonder why I feel the way I do. So, I have been thinking about it.

I think that there are several reasons for my conflicted feelings (beyond distaste for commercialism and the naked rush for acquisition during the few weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas). There's the feeling, of course, that this isn't my holiday, reinforced unwittingly by my folks. The reasons were obvious but it certainly had me scrambling for rationalizations to reinforce my distance from all the fun and merriment. The other reason, I think, is that it never lives up to my expectations (jerry-built from other peoples' memories and of course from television and movies). Even now, I look around at the lack of a raucous and potentially unprofessional holiday party at work and I'm sad. Why shouldn't we all be treated to some terrible music and enforced intimacy with our coworkers? Why hasn't corporate America given me an experience that allows me to dress formally and schmooze? It's just a big let down, and contributes to my whole "bah, humbug" demeanor.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 4:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Moving from America to the Sudan was not difficult in many senses. After all, my parents were Sudanese and I grew up knowing that I was too. I hadn't had any illusions about the country I was going back to, although I couldn't comprehend the completeness with which the move would change my environment. It goes far beyond power and water outages and the bewildering onslaught of language, to placement on the social ladder and a new awareness of the outside world.

In NY I was a tough (but relatively sheltered) kid who would confidently stride into a bar to get change for the bus, but in Sudan I had no idea where anything was and couldn't take a bus on my own for many years. So I went from having little freedom but a good idea of what do with it, to having a lot of freedom and nowhere to go. Moreover, there were the questions of class.

In NYC we were part of a broad middle class, the same as the kids we went to school with, the people we shopped with (tax-free) in NJ and the guys down at the corner store. In the Sudan, where there is both no class consciousness and a range of subtle distinctions, we were in new territory. It is a world that is fiendishly complicated, and moreso when you straddle two worlds within it.

Our schoolmates were the sons of diplomats, of foreign businessmen, the wealthy scions of the Sudanese upper crust. They lived a life of social clubs, large air conditioned cars, and trips abroad in the summer. Straddling the economic divide, my siblings and I got to travel, but also visited members of our family who lived with more modest means. I didn't think anything of it, until I mentioned what I did on the weekend. With my family I went to visit my cousins in Alkalakla, which is a sprawling neighborhood to the south of Khartoum. Its residents typically are of modest means, with small homes. They are hospitable and open, and in some cases, they are related to me. Unfortunately for my social standing at my posh school, they are also ... well, not rich, I guess. So I was roundly razzed and felt embarrassed, twice: first for being not rich, and then for being ashamed of being not rich.

This was to be the first of my many run ins with my upscale peers. It was also the first indication of the (at least) two worlds I would be living in. The Sudan is not a rich country, and at the end of the 80's the days of a more or less level economic landscape were almost over. In addition to the general poverty (which mind you, many people, including myself didn't quite notice) there was an influx of refugees fleeing war in Ethiopia, in Chad and in the Sudan itself. These unfortunate people were scattered around Khartoum, the lucky in the poor quarters, the rest in shanty towns. It's not hard to see them unless you're not looking, and I looked.

It's simultaneously interesting and heartbreaking, and that feeling is made more vivid by the contrast between the worlds I inhabited. I witnessed many examples of those contrasts, such as the bottomless boy sprawled out in the sun on the ground outside the school gate. I looked to my parents for some indication of how I should handle it, and it seemed to be a combination of down to earth pragmatism and distaste for the ostentation of the well-off. This is something I've carried with me into my current life, and leaves me on the odd side in the class wars despite the advantages I've had. In terms of my relationship with the Sudan, particularly, it's left me with a discomfort around modern comforts. I much prefer to be in the homes of my "normal" relations, sitting on metal frame beds in the living rooms and drinking tea out of simple glasses, and eating traditional Sudanese food instead of the globalized cuisines that have sprouted in the capital. I prefer to walk around in my traditional clothes rather than slick blue jeans and brand new sneakers. I prefer to be Sudanese and not a visitor to Sudan.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 3:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Well it's taken me a day or two to get to grips with the whole Michael Jackson death thing. Unlike a lot of people who have been weeping in the streets and clubs and in their cars as his songs play over and over. Last night at a fundraiser at Citrine in the City, when MJ's songs played girls got choked up and ran out of the room. I was not among them, but the moment wasn't lost on me. When you think about it, Michael Jackson was the soundtrack to a large portion of everyone's life - EVERYone. There's not many places you could go in the world where people didn't know him, where his songs didn't get the party started. I'm grateful to have been around for the whole thing (even though it got weird at the end), and in small measure, I'd like to thank him for the happiness, the songs and for helping me get everyone up to dance at Lisa Rubin's New Years Eve party in 2004. You made me a hero that night, so thanks MJ.

I could go on and on, reminiscing about the first time I heard the Thriller album, but I'm doing a crappy job of eulogizing the guy so I'll kick it over to this short piece by Ray Smuckles.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 8:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

Growing up among the Sudanese there are things that I took for granted. Specifically in the NY, when I was a child, we would live our almost American lives at school and then come home to a foreign culture and language which was mostly our own. By mostly, of course, I mean that it was something we were born with but not proficient at, like birds pushed out of a nest. There was a lot of flapping, and lots of free-fall.

Examples abound: my parents would have Sudanese friends over; friendly brown people who smiled and sat on our sky blue velveteen sectional (I loved that couch) and speak broadly about the latest foibles of Benny Adam. "This Benny Adam doesn't know what he's doing! The Benny Adam is so selfish, or shortsighted ..." etc. It got so sometimes that I wondered why they were still friends with him! For God's sakes if a guy is that unreliable or fickle then it's time to just scratch him out of your address book. Now this might not seem funny to your non-Sudanese (although to be honest, some Arabs might get it), it's a hilarious mistake on my part. "Benny Adam" is not a person at all, it's the Arabic expression, "bani Adam", or child of Adam, or in short, human being. It's an archaic expression that has made it's way into the 21st century, seemingly unchanged and caused me much confusion as a child.

Things didn't get much better once we moved back. With NY accents, my brother and I stood out despite our attempts to blend in. Our Arabic wasn't very good (and, I would argue, it still isn't that great) either and it made for more errors, and finally refuge in reading and sports (and anything else that wouldn't require a lot of talking to people). Back in the Sudan, we were quickly pulled out of our nascent interest in basketball, football (American) and hockey and thrown pell-mell into the crucible of football (soccer). Our classmates seemed to have been born with soccer balls tethered to their feet, and like a good nerd, I did the one thing I could do and studied the game. Unfortunately this was pre-Internet and football (soccer) can only be learned by watching and doing. Doing brought confirmation of one's ineptitude so watching was the beginning. Luckily, every Friday a match from the German Bundesliga would be televised after lunch and we would huddle around the tv with cousins and friends to watch (and take notes). Still my brother and I were confused, in every game there seemed to be a guy named Harris Merma. The guy seemed to change teams with alarming frequency, always playing goalie for one side or another. His performance was spotty though, some days a veritable wall in front of the goal, others a sieve. It must have been almost a year before we figured out that "Harris Merma" was actually "haris marma" which is Arabic for "goal tender".

It takes getting used to, the idiom, and frequent adjustment. You have to adjust between the language you use among your peers, and the language you use with adults; between the language of the street and the language of polite society. Now of course I speak fairly fluently (although I lose some of my fluency from lack of use), though of course I speak like older men speak, since I spent a lot of time among my father's friends, but that's a different story.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 1:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

In 1987 my Dad was finally transferred back to the Sudan, from his posting in NY city. For 8 years he had worked at the UN representing the Sudan, and we lived and grew up in NY. It made perfect sense to have a subway, to not have a front yard, to only be allowed out of the apartment in the company of your parents and to eat hot dogs out of a cart that had dubious standards of health to say the least. This was the world I knew best, with its filth, its crime, it's muggy summers and slushy winters. So when the transfer came it was hard to wrap my mind around. We went to an airport that we had seen countless families away from, at the edge of the city that was home.

From there we flew across an ocean and a continent, and a sea and a desert to homeland we had been to only twice (and in the case of my little sister, never). It was hours before dawn on a July day when the plane landed, but we were wide awake. Our minds were reeling with apprehension at this new place; would they have GI Joe here, or McDonald's, and what cartoons would be on television? Even before we stepped out of the plane's doorway I felt the furnace heat of the desert outside elbow aside the air conditioned cool as it embraced us. At the threshold I looked down the stairs - no jetway - and then around, the sodium lights of the airport making everything a sickly orange. My parents rushed down the stairs and at the bottom a man (my mother's brother, who worked for the national airline) hugged my parents, then my brother and me. his beard bristled against my cheek and I felt overwhelmed by the moment. My mother started crying in what had to be joy, my father beamed and I stood there somewhat awkwardly and confused.

I wish I could say that the rest of the arrival was a blur, but it wasn't. The arrivals hall was dimly lit and had the air of an open air market. There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the lines at passport control, with their desultory officers glancing up from bare, ink-stained desks. The people crowded around and pushed forward when a counter was vacated by the previous traveler. A scrawny cat walked across the baggage claim area where our bags took forever to arrive. The hall was lit by fluorescent lights that made everyone darker, but more washed out and more tired, exhausted as they waited for their turn through customs. There our belongings were removed one by one from our bags and a disinterested customs agent undid the packing that my mother had done over the past month. We managed to escape with some dignity and were out at my uncle's beat up red station wagon as the heat broke finally.

His house at the time was actually quite close to the airport as the crow flies, but getting there was an ordeal. The airport road was paved but one had to turn off at what seemed like a random point in the darkness and drive through a broad open field, following trails carved out by other cars - or perhaps this same car over many weeks and months. The house itself stood almost solitary, with the nearest neighbor visible about 30 meters away. It was surrounded by a wall taller than my father, it's formerly gray exterior mottled by fine, light brown dust. I could hear the high whine of what I discovered was a water pump. This sound would become very familiar over the coming months but I didn't know that then. My uncle's wife came out and hugged us, one after the other, and led us into the living room. Again my mother cried making me feel awkward. I looked around at the sparse uncarpeted space, lit again by fluorescent lights, a cooled with an overhead fan - the first I had ever seen. Behind me the adults chatted rapid fire in Arabic, which I was somewhat familiar with but not fluent in. I was tired, and disoriented and wondering how long we were going to be here. My brother and I were bundled away into a room with three beds and a large but flimsy looking armoire lined against the walls. As we lay there all the lights in the house went out and the whining of the pump stopped, outside in the living room the adults laughed, and I fell asleep fitfully. I was home, but I didn't know it yet.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 5:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)