Paris, FEMA, snoring, documentary

Originally published 9/17/05

This is a long rambling blog about a bunch of topics and updates on my escapades in Paris.

I'll start with my first opportunity to write about Katrina. I'm so glad first of all that the two people I know from New Orleans got out safely with their families despite losing their homes. There's significant issues that we have with race, class and our government's ability to respond to emergency. In terms of race and class the people who are most likely to be affected the most severly have no way to get out of danger in a reasonable amount of time. What should happen in middle sized city is swarms of public transportation, school buses, taxis should be shipping people out as soon as possible. There should be emergency workers waiting out the city for the storm to pass and return to begin restoration. So what's going to happen in any other place if there's a major hurricane, tornado, or earthquake. FEMA was entirely inept through the beginning of the debacle. And they were not crippled, because that assumes there was actually some outside pressure that was stifling them.

I was shooting a story for Karson Yiu in Washington, DC for the Virgin Islands tv station he was working for in May this year. We visited FEMA's headquarters and the communications director--the balding grey-haired man you'll see on tv--came into the office for the interview. Besides him and the tech guys who were playing with their vcrs and showing us the lighting, there was NOBODY IN THE OFFICE! I think there was about 40 desks without a soul in the chairs. Our country's main coordination office to act when shit hits the fan is vacant. Where the fuck are all those people? I guess I didn't even think too much of it at the time, but they should be on-call 24 hours and in instant contact with every emergency services branch in America. Alright I won't complain anymore.

So I'm Paris right now and Bush still looks like an idiot.

Here's the link to my documentary: you can watch the 28:30 video courtesy of Medill: dispatch.medill.northwestern.edu/ramgen/archives/misc/bossone_hiv_aids.rm?start=3.4

I'm averaging like 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night. I'm on a binger that I thought started last week but is probably going back to a few weeks before I left Chicago. It's the combination of coffee, half a pack of cigarretes a day, drinking at night, lack of sleep, and eating meat, bread and cheese every day that is making my stomache have it's own pulse. My hands are shaking, which is scary. And going to the bathroom frequently sucks. Especially since every Paris bathroom smells awful. This city is so fucking dirty. It's worse than any other I've seen. It has plenty of nice parts, but the streets are lined with trash and every Metro stairway smells like mad piss. I didn't even realize how dirty it was till I yelled at my friend for throwing a cigarette wrapper on the ground and she told me I was crazy. Then I actually opened my eyes, which was at 2:30 in the morning after partying for several days straight. Cans, papers, carpets, clothing, food wrappers, and any object that will take 2 seconds to fall out your hands are everywhere. The bathroom toilets often do not have a toilet seat and smell on antiseptic and urine, the bathrooms themselves are often so foul smelling that you can only hope to breath through your mouth. Urinals are frequently walls that could be midget showers.

I'm staying with Marcel and Scott who go to Medill with me. We also live with an electronic music maker from England and a French chic. Scott snores like a boar and sometimes he and Marcel are a cacophony of snorts and choking. I bought earplugs, my futon bed is sloped in the middle so I never fall asleep before they do. Some nights I'm getting like 4 hours of solid sleep and then the three of us stumble out of bed, rotate in the bathroom, and bounce to school late, stopping on the way for some coffee to go. Much to my dismay there are in fact starbucks in Paris, but there's really no point to them other than having some American place to waste your money on. Not that it isn't really easy to blow your money on shit you don't need in this city. It's more expensive than New York. Happy Hour beers are 5 euros, which tranlates to more than six bucks. Other times beers can be like 8 euros. I'm practically burning money here.

I went to a dance club that cost 10 euros for a smirnoff ice (they didn't have any other beers, I swear). The club was playing 80's remix techno that the "Frogs" loved. The guys here are so corny. They've got flopped hair cuts and small button-down shirts tucked into their tight jeans while they're standing on tables and chairs mouthing the words to "Like a Virgin" and every other wimpy 80's song. But the women are so beautiful. I used a bad pick up line on one of them but I didn't get anywhere since the music was so loud and I couldn't understand her accent. I didn't get rejected, but I didn't even dance with her, so it's only a partial confidence booster.

Alright kids I gotta bounce.

Paris->Copenhagen->Cairo

I’m typing this as I’m sitting an internet cafe in Cairo at 9pm listening to the Eagles football game on the internet.

So Paris is totally overrated and dirty. But I had great fun with Marcel, Scott, Karen and the rest. Excellent two weeks of spending too much money.

I got to the airport early to leave. Now folks, anyone who has ever spent time with me–let me correct that–anyone who has ever met me–knows how painfully late I am to every thing I have ever done in my life. I was born a few weeks premature and that was the first and last time I was ever early to anything. While I did decide to get early to the airport, it was mostly b/c I woke up hung over on a few hours sleep. I’m waiting in line to check in and people keep moving in front of me. By the time I get to be the next person this women shuffles in front of me and I lay it into her. I say something like, "Do you always jump in line or is only when there’s 50 people behind you." She speaks a little english and didn’t really understand the expression "jump in line" but with further elaboration she moved behind me ungraciously. As I’m about to get my ticket the police come and close off the section for some sort of bomb scare. Anyway they tell us that if we have a connecting flight we should just go through security. I make it there and go through only to have them send me back to check in. By this time the area is clear and I’m in the back of a ridiculous line. I go up to the front to find out if I’ll be able to make it on the plane and the lady is really rude. The woman who is next in line tells me I’m holding up the plane and I just start cursing and screaming b/c I’m in no mood for it. I get to the back of the line and in about 20 minutes they usher me ahead to check-in because my flight should have already taken off. They tell me that because I didn’t come straight from the united states I have to pay for the excess weight of my luggage. I won’t tell you how much it was, but the only reason I flew on Maersk Air (Denmark) is because it was so cheap. Anything resembling the money I saved was completely lost. I had no argument to not pay. The nice man at the counter told me if I couldn’t pay I could remain at the airport with my luggage.

I don’t really remember the flight to Copenhagen. But I’ll describe what I noticed at the airport.

The Jetson cartoon-like airport/mall was a cross between bad nightmare of lousy euro-techno club and rounded ikea architecture. Some electronics store was playing a pop song on the speaker with a singer named Sven doing a dutch version of "hotel, motel, holiday inn." Four non blondes followed it.

I sat down for lunch next to a table of three large stocky guys with bald heads and thick goatees (sp?) listening intently to a wide-eyed man speaking passionately. He could have been talking about starting a hitler youth rally for all I know, but probably were describing the state of the dutch mercantile industry or some other innocuous subject no one outside their bubble of scandanavia cares about. I don’t want to generalize about an entire country/region based on fascetious observations in an airport, but I will anyway. The large Danish guys probably were completely wussies. I was also sitting next to a couple manicured skinny blondes sitting with four guys in pastel button downs and neatly spiked hair. To my left were some heavy metal rockers, who again, were so weak. One of the largest of them had long rocker hair, but was wearing sandals with black socks. One of them, a tatooed guy, came over and politely asked if he could take the extra chair at my table. At the table across from me an older gentleman sat dressed in a corduroy (sp?) vest and a polka-dot bow-tie. Far across the room, a stereotypical northwest european man with a perfectly short white hair and wire frammed glasses worked on his slim laptop. So I will say that all I saw in my brief layover in Copenhagen was slight shades of white people.

On to Cairo.

The airport was super easy to get through what one could barely call security. To get a visa I had to go to a window called a bank and pay US$15 to get a couple of postal stamps placed in my passport. Several booths ushered the people through lines as men quickly stamped passports. Customs was in front of the outdoor exits and they basically tapped on my bags and told me to continue. Swarms of people stood on the outside of the glass exits looking intently inside. I slipped my way through the crowd as men yelled "taxi, you need taxi?" every five steps until I met my contact from the Associated Press. Mostafa took me to the hotel and we had a nice chat in the car. He was supposed to help me find an apartment, but he had to cover the border at Gaza, I think, and left me at my hotel with advice not tell let anyone take advantage of me, and if they did he would be "very very mad at them."

I went apartment hunting today. On the way I met a kind engineer in town who bought an english newspaper for me as we talked about US politics. I found some apartment rental place, but before I got in, an Egyptian man lead me to his apartment, which was barely a room in a dark basement, and then to what seemed like a legitimate apartment rental place. A Sudanese man who spoke English brought me to see a few apartments. The first one was huge, three bedrooms, but the building was undergoing construction and some things like the gas and shower was not working. We went to another place that was tucked into garden and seemed nice, but the landlord was sleeping and we couldn’t wake her. We went to another place across from the Italian cultural center, but the doorman, or boweb as they say here, was nowhere to be found. We went to a fourth place. Across from the Zamalek Hotel, which sits on an island in the Nile and used to be a palace, it is supposed to be the best neighborhood in Egypt. Zamalek is a nice neighborhood with several diplomatic headquarters/villas, but this building was pretty bad. The elevator was broken. We took the stairs up the 7th floor, stepping over debris that sometimes consisted of used spare rib bones. On a platform next to the steps was an empty bombshell that I think was decoration. We entered the apartment with a large older woman sitting on the couch watching tv. She had made a home out of the vacant apartment, as her stuff was in the kitchen and living room. The place was nice, but I still want to see the other place. The Sudanese man and I chatted about Sudan, and the situation in Darfur, and refugees in general. He’ll make a good source for an immigration story, as there are many refugees from Sudan in Egypt and some in Chicago. Unfortunately, he’s trying to rape me with commission fees, which I won’t pay, so I’m hoping he’ll still be willing to work with me after we do business.

I found a good food stand that was making something that looked like cheesesteaks and smelled amazing, but I couldn’t order it correctly, so I got a hybrid of steak sandwich and a gyro. It was amazing. I also went to a bar last night that was apparently "western style," as in Europe and America, but was not even close except that they served alcohol. Groups of europeans sung karaoke until the heavy-set dj sung the love song with the refrain "Lady" to an embarassed girl named Sarah. The bill was 15.55 egyptian pounds, with service included, and since I had to yell to the bartender for a beer after ten minutes and I had just gone to two places that should have accepted visa but didn’t, I left the 15pounds in my pocket. He chased me down for the 55piasters (egyptian cents) which is the equivalent of about 12 american cents. I went back and paid with my card and left two pound notes to show I wasn’t cheap.

Cairo is a dynamic lively city. I hope I don’t get hit by a car; few of them have their lights on at night. In sha’allah, which means something like "God willing." Things really get going at night. I’m listening to the Eagles. It’s a good game, but I’d love to sit at a cafe outside and puff on some shisha (flavored tobacco) out of a water pipe and watching the Egyptian world pass by me. People love to scream and celebrate at night. It’s going to be fun once I get some companions to run around the city with me. My Arabic is ok, I only know a little, but people keep telling me my pronunciation is very good. I just wish I knew more. That’s about it folks. I hope you enjoyed another long post. Can I a man get comment on his blog?