A quick trip to Istanbul

 Istanbul was Constantinople

 Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople

 Been a long time gone, Constantinople

 Now it's Turkish delight on a moonlit night

 Every gal in Constantinople

 Lives in Istanbul, not Constantinople

 So if you've a date in Constantinople

 She'll be waiting in Istanbul

 Even old New York was once New Amsterdam

 Why they changed it I can't say

 People just liked it better that way

 So take me back to Constantinople

 No, you can't go back to Constantinople

 Been a long time gone, Constantinople

 Why did Constantinople get the works?

 That's nobody's business but the Turks

Don’t believe it for a second.  Istanbul has, miraculously, managed to hang on to both identities – the ancient and mysterious Constantinople and the modern, European Istanbul.  It’s a fascinating, but crowded and frenetic, city, worth a short trip.

And that’s what we did.  Last week was spring break here so my running buddy, Dave, and I decided to visit the extraordinary city of Istanbul where dervishes whirl, muezzins duel from countless minarets, and continents are crossed several times in a day.  (It was that or stay in Tbilisi and drink.  Since we’ve mastered that skill, we decided to apply our hard won knowledge to other cities to see if we could drink like the locals there.  Spoiler alert – we couldn’t.  Not even close.)

Founded in 660 BCE as Byzantium, modern Istanbul is a city of 14 million people, the second largest city in the Middle East (behind Cairo) and the third-largest city in the world by population within city limits (Shanghai, then Lagos).  It is a Moslem city, the fourth most populous Muslim city in the world (Karachi, Dhaka, Cairo, then Istanbul), but it’s easy to forget you’re in a Muslim city when you’re there.  While I’d say a third of the women wear head scarves, the remainder is dressed very European.  There are bars, clubs, cafes, lingerie stores, liquor stores, and European restaurants on every block.  While the muezzins announce prayer calls five times a day, unlike the Middle East, stores don’t shut their doors and life doesn’t stop until after prayer time.  Some stores shutter their front doors and one café asked us if we wouldn’t mind waiting until after prayer time to be served, but for the most part, religion is transparent in Istanbul, completely unlike other Muslim cities I’ve visited.

The weather during our stay was typical spring weather – rainy, chilly, and a bit windy.  We had one nice day out of the four we were there, but no stupid rain shower is going to keep us from doing the tourist thing.  Not a chance.  So after a typical Turkish breakfast at the slow food restaurant next door to our hotel (note the awning), off we went.

There are five absolutely “must see’s” in Istanbul.  They are the Aya Sofya mosque, the Blue Mosque, the Topkapi Palace, the Grand Bazaar and spice market, and the Bosporus Strait.  There are, of course, lots of other “minor” sights – the Basilica Cistern, the Beyazit Mosque, Ortakoy neighborhood, the Galata Tower, and Suleymaniye Mosque – but if you have limited time or energy, the “must see’s” will quench your thirst for something Istanbul-ish.  We, of course, being of unlimited energy, common sense, and an unquenchable thirst for all things Istanbul-ish, saw all of these as well as the top five.  We started with the Bosporus Strait neighborhood.  The Bosporus Strait (Bosphorus if you’re European; Bosporus is the Turkish pronunciation) bisects Istanbul and separates the continents of Asia and Europe.  It’s about 19 miles long and is one of the heaviest traveled waterways in the world.  By walking over the Galata Bridge, a distance of maybe 400 meters, you go from Asia to Europe and vice versa.  The bridge is a haven for fishermen, water and juice carts, and shoeshine men.  Thus began our first adventure. 

Dave decided to take advantage of the “American only!!” offer of a shoeshine for 5 Turkish lira ($1 = 2.2 TL, so 5 TL is roughly $2.25).  The guy did a nice job, tucked his shoeshine kit under his arm, smiled at Dave, and held out his hand for the 5 lira.  He must have worked in a binoculars store for a while, because he sure saw Dave coming.  Dave pulls out his cash and peels off bills looking for a 5 TL bill.  When he peels off a 50 TL bill, the shoeshine guy, obviously related to Usain Bolt, snatched the 50 lira bill from Dave’s hand and took off into the crowd, shoeshine kit under his arm.  We stood there; paralyzed with astonishment for about 3 seconds before we took off after him, just long enough to let him meld into the crowd (I did mention Istanbul has 14 million people, right?  Well, on this day, it seems every one of that 14 million were between us and the shoeshine guy.).  We thought of coming back the next day to look for the guy, but decided to write off the 50 TL as tuition costs at the School of Street Smarts.  Probably the best $23 Dave ever spent.

We wandered around the neighborhood for a while and then after a refreshing cup of salgam (sour turnip juice with a pickle), we headed to the Grand Bazaar and spice market.  

The Grand Bazaar is just that:  grand and bizarre.  The Grand Bazaar (GB for our purposes) began in 1455 and is the heart of Istanbul.  It is huge, with 61 covered streets and over 3,000 shops which attract between 250,000 and 400,000 visitors daily.  It’s surprisingly easy to navigate, though; much easier than Tbilisi’s Dinamo Market which is a rabbit’s warren of alleys and aisleways.  Like products are bunched together – clothes on this street, gold over there, silk down that way, etc.  The only bad thing about the GB is the aggressiveness of the shop owners.  I learned that the hard way when I noticed a leather jacket.  I stopped to look at it and was immediately accosted by the owner.  Even though I said I was just looking, he managed to convince me to come inside and try the jacket on.  It was a beautiful jacket, made of Canadian bison, but the price was a bit extreme for me – 1500 TL or about $700.  I tried to leave the store, but found my way blocked by the owner’s helper.  This gave the owner the chance to drop his price to 1000 TL.  Still out of my price range, I smiled politely and tried to step around the helper in a very narrow shop.  He backed up but I still couldn’t get around him.  The price dropped to 500TL ($225), then to 300 ($135).  I would have paid 300 lira for the jacket, but now I was so aggravated (a polite way of saying I was really pissed), I told the helper to either move or be prepared to get knocked on his ass.  He stepped aside and I left the store, the owner shadowing me another 200 meters down the street holding up the jacket and begging me to make him an offer.  This sort of aggressive salesmanship is, unfortunately, the rule rather than the exception in the GB, especially if you’re an obvious American.

I did, however, run into an interesting store where I bought some things for Debbie. 

            Right next to the GB is the spice market where you can find everything you’d need in the kitchen in unlimited quantities.  The smell is unbelievable!  In a good way, that is.  The salesmen aren’t as pushy here, but that might be because you don’t haggle in the spice market.  The price posted is the price paid.    Surprisingly, textiles are a part of the spice market as well, and you can even take a tour of the soon-to-be world famous zipper museum (how can it not be?).  You can tell it’s a good store when there are stuffed goats outside.

Day 2 was mosque day.  The Aya Sofya mosque and the Blue Mosque were both less than a five minute walk from our hotel.  They’re both very beautiful, but constantly crowded, and let’s face it, after a while all mosques start to look alike.  They are, however, two of those things you have to see so we spent most of the day dutifully oohing and ahhing at blue tiles, thick carpets, amazing chandeliers, and hundreds of Japanese tourists taking pictures. 

Day 3 was probably the most fun day we had, mostly because we got away from the tourist section of Istanbul and walked into the university section, a neighborhood called Ortakoy across the bridge on the European side.  Two highlights here:  the seagull phones, and a street where every stall sells stuffed baked potatoes.  That’s all they sell – stuff baked potatoes and Cokes.  My kind of place. 

We finished the day back at our hotel where we found, to our great joy, a reggae bar.  Yup, a reggae bar in Istanbul.  We spent a great afternoon and early evening there, sipping Turkish beer and talking to the locals.  At the table next to us was a group of Turkish school girls celebrating the 16^th birthday of one of their own.  They invited us to our party and we spent a couple of wonderful hours with what Dave would later label, “Rick’s harem.”  They had obviously dealt with drunken tourists before because posted over the toilet was very specific instructions. 

So, that was our week.  We spent four great days in Istanbul, despite the lousy weather.  I strongly recommend it as a tourist stop and offer my service as tour guide.  Especially if you’re interested in seeing the Reggae Bar.  The people are friendly, they like Americans, prices are reasonable, and there’s plenty to see.  But no swimming in the fountains, though. 

Thanks for reading.   

Translation fun

One of the more frustrating things about working here is the language barrier.  Khartouli, the Georgian language, is, as I’ve mentioned before, impossible to master unless you’re born into it.  So we rely heavily on translators to make ourselves understood.  Unfortunately, while the translators are usually very good in English, they’re not so good at “militarese.”  I’ve collected some samples of how the path of understanding from military jargon to English to Khartouli oft-times go astray. 

Now I’m not making fun of my translators.  They do a lot of very good work, and translating from English to Khartouli is difficult at best.  But it’s worse when the translators don’t understand the military terms they’re trying to translate.  Some of my favorites:

The “commander’s intent” is a short summary of what the commander wants to achieve in the upcoming mission.  We knew there was a problem when the translator asked if the commanders ever get to work in an office.  She was translating “commander’s intent” as “commanders in tents.” 

We taught a map reading class where we talked about the map being a visual representation of the terrain from “a bird’s eye view.”  Later, the translator asked me what we see when we “look into a bird’s eye.” 

Like any organization, we have to be concerned with budget restrictions.  So when we’re working with the Georgians to design training exercises, we try to avoid “high overhead exercises.”  And, apparently, it’s a good thing we do this because the Georgians don’t really have a functional air force.  Wait….what??  Yup, “high overhead exercise” was translated as “exercises conducted in planes.” 

The confusion is not always with the spoken word, either.  Once, we asked the translators to help us with a short summary that explained how aviation units can be found in brigades, divisions, and corps (a division is 3+ brigades while a corps is usually 2+ divisions).  You can imagine our amusement at the written translation:  “Attack helicopter battalions are found in brigades, divisions, and in regiments in a dead body.”  “Corps” was, of course, translated as “corpse.”

These aviation battalions, like all organizations, have “innate functions.”  We quickly realized why being a pilot is such a popular job here:  these organizations focus on their “intimate functions.”  Well, don’t we all?

Sometimes the problem is how we explain English idioms, especially military jargon.  How would you explain “canned attacks?”  While we, obviously, meant “scripted attacks that follow a strict sequence with little deviation,” the translators thought we were talking about attacks by tanks and armored fighting vehicles, “canned” being assumed to mean “metallic.” But not all exercises are “canned.”  Sometimes, we want the exercises to flow freely along different branches.  These exercises, unfortunately, are limited to simian units within the Georgian Armed Forces because “branches” was consistently translated as “tree limbs,” as in, “at each decision point along the route, the unit will decide on a different tree limb.”

I generally don’t get too upset at the mistranslations because all of my documents are stored on my memory stick.  Or, as it’s called here, my “tree branch’s brain.” 

This one is not uncommon in the US military, either:  fiscal is always confused with physical and vice versa.  So, the cadets go the gym for their fiscal training while the budget office sweats through an afternoon of pushups and sit ups as they prepare for the end of the physical year. 

Of course, all of the training occurs “along military lines.”  I do work, after all, in a military academy.  I have the freedom, though, according to the translators, to work outside of the academy on some things as “along military lines” has been translated as “adjacent to the army’s borders.” 

Medical training is hard enough in the US, what with the myriad of medical terms to memorize.  Imagine how hard it is for our poor translators who have to take a phrase that begins in “medical-ese” down the path through “militarese” to plain English to Khartouli.  It’s pretty easy to understand why “CPR” comes out as “external lung reanimation” and “evaluate a casualty” ends up as “estimate why a person is sick.”  At least those kinda make sense.

Military commands often confuse the translators, as well.  For example, facing movements such as left face, right face, and about face don’t have literal translations.  Khartouli has its own commands for these movements.  Our translators are not fluent in either our or Georgia’s military jargon, however, so they do the best they can.  So our lesson plans for facing movements came out as “do formation things in place without moving.”  Huh??

Technical jargon confuses almost everyone, regardless of native language.  If you’re a Spanish speaker or a French speaker, take on this phrase:  “the effect of humidity on a bullet in flight.”  How’d you do?  Probably not much better than our translators did:  “the movement of lead in the air through damp and stuffy spaces.” 

And my two absolute favorites:

“Fields of fire” is defined as, “the area that can be reached by ammunition fired from a gun or a group of guns.”  As in, the field of fire for a light machine gun reaches out to 800 meters.  You shouldn’t have any trouble identifying that field of fire.  Just look for the smoke.  That’s right – “fields of fire” was transliterated into “burning grasses.” 

And the one that still makes me laugh whenever I think about it:  “rear operations,” that is, operations that occur behind the front lines.  They’re difficult and dangerous.  Know I know why:  “rear operations” apparently means “surgery on one’s backside.”  It makes you really respect those special operations soldiers conducting such missions.  Better them than me.

Thanks for reading. 

Driving in Georgia, part 2: I say sidewalk, you say traffic lane.

In Kartouli, the Georgian language, there is only one word for “finger” and “toe.”  Georgians, therefore, say “toes are fingers for the foot.”  But there is a word for “sidewalk” and another, different word for “parking lot” and yet a completely different word for “traffic lane.”  This makes me wonder, as I walk the streets of this fair city, “Why, then, are these people parking, or even worse, driving, where I’m walking?”

            Georgia has seen an explosion of vehicles.  Just in Tbilisi alone, the number of vehicles on the streets, both registered and unregistered vehicles, has doubled in the past five years according to Georgia Today newspaper.  The number of available parking spaces, however, has decreased by almost a third.  Simply put, the city planners failed to anticipate the problems of automobile transportation.  Everyone was expected to take the plentiful public transportation, so it was deemed unnecessary to take into account the needs of average pedestrians.  Thus, Georgian drivers have taken to parking wherever there’s a space large enough to fit their car, and this usually means parking on what some pedestrians might naively mistake for a sidewalk.  Here, it’s taken as a minor nuisance and generally ignored.  In America, their behavior would cause multitudes of not necessarily sympathetic pedestrians to go bug-eyed apoplectic. 

            Let me give you an example.  I live on Abashidze Street which runs parallel and two blocks up from Chavchavadze Avenue, one of the main streets in the city.  I enjoy walking along Chavchavadze; it has stores, restaurants, clubs and bars, schools and shops, and a large number of apartment buildings.  Picture Market Street in Philadelphia, if you want.  Chavchavadze Avenue is, on the maps, a six-lane avenue; however, the many cars parked, long term, in the outside lanes, clog the avenue to, usually only four, but often just two, barely passable lanes. 

 

             So what’s a driver to do?  The answer, unfortunately, has been to drive up on the sidewalks, blowing their horns at pedestrians to clear the way.  (To the best of my limited knowledge, there are no words in Kartouli to describe people like that.  There are many choice ones in English, however all are unprintable in a family blog such as this one.)

            But as big a problem as it is to simply walk the streets, crossing them is much, much worse.  In the US, drivers generally understand that they should not accelerate into humans attempting to cross the street on foot.  Here, not so much.  I’ve seen grannies leaping out of the way of SUVs which are, more often than not, driving at highway cruising speeds down the sidewalk.  On the main streets of Tbilisi, there are no red lights to allow pedestrians to cross.  Not that it would matter if there were.  Drivers do not give way in Tbilisi.  Not in the pedestrian crosswalks, not in the city squares, and especially not on the sidewalks.  Add to that the fact that by Georgian law, pedestrians do not enjoy the right of way ANYWHERE, not even in the crosswalks.  Further add to that an excessively macho approach to driving and you get a situation described on the Lonely Planet website this way:  “Pedestrians are at risk as drivers assume they’ll get out of the way of moving cars – bad luck if your sight or hearing isn’t too good.”  Lonely Planet goes on to describe motorists who “would rather ‘mow you down’ than lose face by giving way.”  Now to be fair, drivers say they have no choice but to keep moving.  “If you stop suddenly to let a pedestrian pass, someone will hit you in the rear going very fast.” 

            So how do you cross the street?  There is the “take a deep breath and lurch forward” approach; there’s the “Usain Bolt” approach as you sprint as fast as you can before the driver has a chance to time your speed and lead you appropriately; and there’s the “dodge or die” approach where you play Frogger with traffic, dodging cars to progress across the street one lane at a time, often finding yourself marooned between cars cutting in front of and behind you as you hop from one foot to the other waiting for the smallest gap to appear between cars so you can sprint to the next lane.  Or you can take the underground passageways.

            The underground passageways are darkly ominous, often unlit, bodily-fluid filled, malodorous, graffiti-marked tunnels under the streets.  While some of the tunnels have been commercialized, like the two below, many are stinky, ammonia-smelling, dark tunnels used by the homeless or weak-bladdered as dormitories and/or bathrooms.  By the way, see that liquid on the steps?  It hadn’t rained in over a week the day I took this picture, so use your imagination to figure out what all that fluid is.  Think about it, but don’t tell me.  I don’t want to know.

            Ah, you say, that’s just city driving.  Certainly, it’s calmer on the highways outside the city.  Less targets, I mean pedestrians, after all, and fewer cars.  Ask my wife about that.  We drove to the northern part of the country on a beautiful, sunny day this past summer.  I think she aged about 20 years in that one afternoon.  It seems she found the ride a bit hair-raising at first, what with the reckless and incessant passing, and the total disregard for lane markers (when there actually were lane markers which was pretty rare).  I explained to her that Georgian drivers do not ignore the white lines at all.  In fact, they use them for alignment:  two tires on the left side of the line and two on the right.  As oncoming traffic is doing the same thing, driving can resemble a perpetual game of “chicken.”  And if you need to pass, no problem – by all means do so, whether on the right or left.  If you are going around a curve, so what?  It’s the other guy’s responsibility to avoid you.  He’ll move over.  Or not.

 

 

            She also didn’t understand the unwritten rule of Georgian driving, something buried deep within the psyche of every Georgian male:  that the vehicle in front of you must be passed at all costs.  And the longer you delay passing him, the lower your testosterone level drops, and the greater chance your wife or girlfriend will run off with that fellow in the BMW driving 60 mph on the unfinished shoulder.

            Debbie also was unaccustomed to another staple of Georgian driving, namely cows (and the occasional pig or goat or sheep) on the road.  Cattle roam free in Georgia, even in Tbilisi, and they particularly enjoy being on the roads with the cooling wind generated by whizzing cars.  The cows pay not a bit of attention to drivers.  A bus can miss a lazing cow by inches and she won’t twitch an ear.

            I figure that Georgian drivers must be the best in the world as they maneuver around pedestrians, parked cars, cows, pigs, blind curves, and potholes the size of small apartments, all with effortless aplomb and all while looking directly you as they talk.  But the best thing about Georgian driving is this:  if you stay with it long enough, you’re eventually going to end up at a place like this: 

 

 

            Thanks for reading.   

Driving in Georgia, part 1

Ask anyone who has visited this lovely country what they remember most and you’ll get the same answer:  Georgian drivers.  The point of driving in Georgia is not just getting from point A to point B; it’s so much more.  It is, in its simplest form, a series of competitions – competition between drivers and the police, drivers and other drivers, and drivers and pedestrians.  Let’s start from the beginning.

            Getting a driver’s license in this country is much more difficult than in the US.  As in the US, there are two parts of the licensing process – the theoretical and the practical.  In the theoretical process, the would-be driver has 30 minutes on a computer terminal at the local DMV to answer correctly 27 of 30 questions randomly chosen from a bank of 1500.  That’s right – 1500.  The theoretical manual is about 4” thick, and lists the 1500 questions and answers the examinee must know.  Most Georgians (well, Georgian women anyway; men tend to think they already know the answers to all driving questions and, consequently, tend to fail miserably on their first attempt) spend hour upon hour memorizing these questions just so they can pass the theoretical portion of the exam.  The test costs 50 Lari ($30), pass or fail, and the examinee must pay each time s/he takes the test. 

            If the examinee is successful, s/he moves on to the eye test.  Interestingly, and quite frighteningly, the eye test is only for color blindness.  There is no requirement, none at all, for the driver to have 20/20, 20/40, or even 20/40,000 vision.  I guess if you can find your way to the DMV and then to the correct room for the exam, your vision must be OK.   There is also, as you might expect, no hearing test, physical exam, or drug/alcohol screening.  This alone explains some of the moves you see on the highways here. 

            The other part of the exam is the practical portion.  Here the driver must negotiate an obstacle course behind the DMV.  There is no road test here.  Pass the obstacle course and you’re in.  But that’s not easy.  First off, you can’t use your own car.  Every examinee must take the test in a Skoda sedan with manual transmission.  Inside each Skoda is four webcams and underneath are sensors which register when the car crosses forbidden lines and curbs on the course.  The first challenge is backing into a parking space only slightly wider than the car.  I don’t know why they even test this since no one ever pays attention to the lines after the get their license.  People park wherever there is space, regardless of whether that space was designed for parking.  That explains why the sidewalks of Rustaveli and Chavchavadze Avenues double as parking lots.  And if the space is smaller than one’s car, no problem; instead of parallel parking into the spot, I’ll simply pull in nose first and put it in park.  The fact that my rear end hangs out well into the right hand lane doesn’t concern me at all.  It is, after all, your responsibility to avoid me. 

            But I digress.  After backing into the parking space, the examinee zigzags through a serpentine maze defined by traffic cones.  Not too terribly difficult, but enough to cause some white knuckled wrestling with the steering wheel.  Then a Y-turn into a square space large enough to handle two mini-vans side by side, followed by a figure-eight through more cones before coming to the climax of the examination:  the hill climb.

            The hill has a long incline, perhaps at 30-45 degrees, a long flat portion, and then a long decline, again at 30-45 degrees.  The driver must come to a complete stop at the bottom of the first ramp.  S/he must drive up the ramp, stopping halfway up.  From there, s/he must display mastery of the clutch and gear shift by getting the vehicle in upward motion again without either sliding back down the incline or flying over the edge.  S/he repeats the process on the flat portion of the hill, and then again coming down the other side.  This is the Waterloo moment when the driver and the examiner who rode with him/her suddenly get out of the car and switch places, with the examiner driving back to the DMV building.  The test is over and the examinee has failed. 

            You get five chances, one week apart, to pass the obstacle course.  If you do, you get your lifetime license.  Yup, lifetime.  There are no renewal protocols here.  Your license is yours forever.  FOR. EVER.  You are now permitted to enter the world of driving in Georgia where hesitancy is not tolerated and aggression is its own reward.  Suddenly, the traffic laws you memorized to pass the test become mere suggestions.  Lane markings are options for you to consider and zebra crossings are happy hunting grounds for drivers eager to show their superiority over mere pedestrians. 

            The only chance the pedestrian has for surviving the reign of terror created by Georgian drivers is traffic congestion.  When traffic only moves at 4mph, there is at least a 50% chance you can cross the street without serious bodily harm.  And what causes this congestion?  According to a nine-year study by the Georgian Ministry of Interior, the root cause of traffic congestion is, “more cars on the road than ever before.”  The other ally for the pedestrian:  highway construction.  I used to think the word “Tbilisi” meant “warm place.”  (It really does mean that, by the way.  “Tbil” means warm and “isi” is the suffix meaning place.)  Nope; “Tbilisi” really is translated as “under construction.”  I would guess two-thirds of the streets and highways in Georgia have been rendered completely impassible by highway construction.  Eventually, all of this construction will make Tbilisi, and Georgia, a better place for drivers and pedestrians.  Of course, by the time all the construction is complete, we will all be extinct and millions of cockroaches will enjoy crawling along the wide open, cone-free highway system. 

            To understand why highway construction takes so long, you have to look at how a typical construction project works in this country.  Phase I is when the Traffic Cone Division places 60,000 traffic cones in, on, and around the proposed construction site.  Often, this IS the project since placing traffic cones on a stretch of street the length of Pennsylvania uses up all the money designated for the entire project.  Since the money’s now gone, there’s no choice but to leave the cones in place and move on to the next project. 

            Phase II is characterized by fat men who come with jackhammers and sledge hammers to smash every piece of concrete and asphalt into pieces no larger than a dime.  Except for the larger pieces which are left behind for trucks to pick up and hurl at the windshield of the cars following the truck.  This moves us to Phase III where nothing happens for six months. 

            Phase IV begins when huge, powerful pieces of construction equipment are parked in and around the construction site.  Many of these pieces, I believe, don’t even have engines.  Eventually, these pieces are worn away by weather and vandals and are chucked over the shoulder into the nearest ravine.  Eventually, however, the project is completed and traffic moves again.  Or at least for six to seven weeks when the Ministry of Poorly Constructed Streets and Highways declares that particular part of the road impassible and returns the entire project to Phase I. 

            I’m probably being too harsh.  There is one piece of highway construction equipment that does its job perfectly.  As you pass the construction site at the same rate of speed as the Statue of Liberty, past miles and miles of traffic cones and construction equipment being swallowed by growing vines, you’re sure to find a generator-powered electric sign telling you in English to “EXPECT DELAYS.” 

            On the streets that aren’t yet under construction, the recent fad is “drifting,” usually in the prerequisite BMW or souped-up Honda Civic.  To get an idea of what drifting is, and at the same time to get a birds’ eye view of riding in a Tbilisi taxi, check out these sites:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EutGUdwHQQ

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ShZJM3WzFA

 

            As always, thanks for reading.  Next time, I'll look at driving in Georgia from the pedestrian point of view.  If I'm not run over and killed by then.   

The booming female reconstruction business

I spent yesterday living the European life, sitting in the outdoor café of Tartine, a French brasserie that serves pastis, an Ouzo-like aperitif.  It was 68⁰, probably the last weekend of the year that will be so nice.  It’s also the last weekend of wedding season.  As I sat there for an hour or so, sipping on my third pastis (did I mention that I really like pastis?), I watched three wedding parties driving around the square, honking horns and waving at everyone.  The whole experience started me thinking on the institution of marriage in Georgia.  I’ve already written about wedding protocols here, but this time I’ll take a slightly different approach to the subject.  I haven’t attached any pictures to this posting; read a little further and I think you’ll understand why. 

Georgia is a very conservative country.  It is a male-dominated society where the roles of women are very strictly defined.  Historically, women are encouraged to take husbands from the woman’s village.  That has its advantages:  the groom has been “vetted” over the years by the girl’s family, the young married couple will probably stay in the village (most likely in the groom’s family’s house), and the young bride has been pressured by society to maintain her innocence because she’s well known in her village.  This is important because one of the expectations for a new bride is virginity.  That’s becoming an issue in a country were the rate of illegitimate births is growing by bumps and grinds.  The issue is even more stressed when so many young Georgians come to the big city, Tbilisi, for school or jobs, but return to the villages to get married.  And lots of these émigrés to Tbilisi are young women who discover that their bubbles of dreams and hopes are not the only things getting pricked by city life. 

So what’s a young woman to do?  She doesn’t want to go against tradition by getting engaged to a boy from the city, an unknown to her family and neighbors in the village.  At the same time, she can’t risk returning to the village as “damaged goods.”  Thankfully, it’s Western technology to the rescue.

Recently in Tbilisi, several new clinics have opened to deal specifically with this problem.  They are called “obstetric reconstruction clinics” or “female aesthetic clinics.”  Their mission is simple:  they repair hymens, thus returning their young clients to a state of grace.  A sexual “get out of jail free” card, so to speak.  I’m not kidding you.  I have absolutely no idea how they do it.  I tried to figure it out, but I had a hard time focusing on the topic.  Well, I could focus on the “topic,” but not on the TOPIC, if you get what I’m saying. But, anyway, I digress.

Yes, Virginia, there is a sexual Santa Claus!  You simply make an appointment, pay up front, take a short anesthesia-induced nap, miss a day or so of work, and boom!  You’re ready for that trip back to the village.  My experts on the subject (meaning the two or three women I drink with at the Soviet Club, who may or may not have actual experience in this area) tell me that these clinics’ marketing strategy targets “athletically active” women who may have accidentally torn their hymens playing sports or riding horses.  Right.  Or to be more precise, Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.  It doesn’t cost much (about 900 Lari, roughly $540) and in some cases is even covered by insurance.  A small price to pay for a happy husband and an approving village.  According to my experts again, it’s all done no questions asked.  Well, except for one question, I guess:  do you have the money?  You do?  OK, go into room 2 and drop your pants.  (Which, truth be told, is what made the clinic necessary in the first place.)

And all this time I’ve been shaking my head at Georgia’s lack of technology and old fashioned mores.  Hmmm.  I wonder if the clinics handle male love handles? 

 

Thanks for reading.  And aren't you glad I didn't  post any pictures?  

 

Reflecting on working with Georgians

We’ve recently been tasked with revamping the academic program at the National Defense Academy here in Georgia.  I’ve been thinking about that and how we should approach it.  So I’m thinking aloud here, basing a lot of my thinking on my experiences in Iraq.  Sometimes it seems we have a “reverse Midas” situation – everything we touch turns to crap.  And the main reason is, we rely too much on what works for us.  I think it’s important that we don’t try to teach the Georgians how to do things the American way using American procedures.  I saw every contractor in Iraq do that; I know that I’ve been guilty of doing that with the Academy’s tactical officers and occasionally with my own “advisee,” and I know it would be a terrible idea to try it with the Academy folks because when our suggestion/recommendation doesn’t work we don’t ask why it failed; we simply say to the host nationals, “OK, then try it this other (American) way,” and to ourselves we say, “Thank God we’re here to fix this.”

You see, American contractors tend to look at problems in one of three ways:  as colonialists, as imperialists, or as missionaries.  This leads to either patronization, where we treat the locals as our servants, or to paternalism, where we treat them as children.  Obviously, neither of these is going to work with the current Georgian group.

My experiences in Iraq taught me several things:  1) if the locals don’t want your help, leave them alone.  We can’t force our ideas on them; all we can do is wait for them to decide to try our ideas.  2) To be successful, we have to take on the mindset of a servant instead of a leader.  That means asking the people we’re trying to help, “What do you feel is important and what do you want to do?  What does the final product look like to you?”  And that means that, sometimes, we have to direct them away from what they think they want.  They may want something that’s too hard, too costly, too dangerous, or just too wrong for them.  We have to direct them, through soft power, to what is best for them.  Once we do this, our role is to help the customers find the knowledge they need to do what they want to do.  Sometimes we’ll be the source of that information; sometimes we won’t.  If we’re not the source of that information, we have to do the research to provide it.

We forget that our job is to talk – specifically, to ask questions.  Even though it may sound counter intuitive because we’re supposed to be the advisor/expert, we need to listen more.  Our job is not to tell the Georgians what to do and how to do it.  Our job is to shut up and listen, and to offer options and ideas once they decide what they want to do.  Our guiding question should be:  “What can we do to help you get to where you want to be?”  Where they want to go is sometimes irrelevant; how they get there isn’t.  Having said that,…

Planning is incompatible to advising because we plan in a vacuum, because we plan using US methodologies and procedures, and because we plan assuming greater US resources and motivation.  I see our role as guiding the Georgians in their planning process, no matter how inefficient or slow that process may be.  I see our role as being planning resources for the Georgians, just as we would use higher sources in the US.  We also have to look at the Georgian planning process from their point of view.  The most important – if not the ONLY – things we can contribute to that process are confidentiality (so they’re not afraid to bounce ideas off us), passionate service (so they learn to trust us), and truth, specifically where they are, what they have, and what they need.  All of these, however, must be based on what they want, not on what we think they need.  This will be easier if we delete the word “I” from our vocabulary, substituting the word “we.”

We can’t change the Georgians; however, we can be a part of the Georgians changing themselves.  That means picking our battles.  And fighting small.  Let’s get some wins under our belt, let’s let the Georgians win a few battles, before we tackle the big issues. 

The late Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch wrote a book, and later produced a video, called The Last Lecture.  If you haven’t seen it, you should watch it; it’s on youtube.  In that book and lecture, he said a good lecture has a “head fake” built into it.  That’s where you think the lecture is about one topic designed for a specific audience, then you discover it’s meant to be a totally different topic for another audience.  Did you catch the head fake here?  I’m not talking about training Georgians; I’m talking about raising teenagers.

Thanks for reading.  And good luck.

The Georgian way of doing things

I’m planning my escape home in May.  The plan is for me to come home for Dan’s graduation and then Debbie will accompany me back to Georgia, spend a couple of weeks here, and then fly back alone.  So I did my due diligence online, scouring the web for cheap airfares.  I had to use a local travel agent because I couldn't get my return flight (PHL to TBS) to show up on Debbie's itinerary. In other words, I couldn't get us on the same flights online. It took 6-1/2 hours to get everything straight. It took only an hour or so to find an itinerary that worked -- short layovers and cheap fares. Then the bureaucracy that is Georgian rules kicked in.

Air France won't accept credit card payments online from Georgia (Georgia has an international reputation for running credit card fraud rings. It's been cleaned up a lot in the last 3 years or so, but the reputation is still there.) so I had to pay only cash. No problem. I go to the local TBC bank but they have a limit on how much cash I can get on my Amex. They recommend getting half today and half tomorrow except the travel agent has told me the itinerary might not be there tomorrow, so I decide to try my luck at the Bank of Georgia. Except the Bank of Georgia won't accept Amex so I have to use my debit/Visa card. Again, no problem. Except they need my passport for such a large transaction of cash. So off I go back to my flat to get my passport (not far but irritating especially in the cold). So now I have cash. (I'm making this seem easier than it was; it took over an hour and a half with waiting in lines at TBC and then BoG, running back to my flat, waiting in line again, getting the paperwork, & then waiting in line at the cashier window.)

So now I'm back at the travel agent (again, still walking in the cold). But before they can take my money and issue the tix, they need my passport info. No problem; I still had it with me from the trip to the bank. They make a copy and write down all the info they need. It’s going too well, I guess, so the travel agent throws me a curve.  Not one of the big, roundhouse, spinning curves you can see coming and time properly.  This curve is more of a Steve Carlton slider – looks like a fastball until you start your swing, and then, whoosh!  It’s gone.  Unhittable.  So here comes the slider:  the travel agent also needs Debbie's passport info. Why?, I ask. Because Ukraine Air doesn't accept e-tix so they're printing hard copies which can only be done after verifying passenger info and identity which is, of course, a passport. I think I have Debbie's info on my computer which is, of course, back in my flat. So back I go (farther than the bank walk so at least I'm getting my exercise for the day). Fire up my laptop; plug in my thumb drive, and voila! All of the info I need on Debbie's old, expired passport. Frustration level rising rapidly.

I call Debbie at her office. "Do you happen to carry your passport info on you? No, I didn't think so. Where is your passport? In the blue box? Got it. Thanks. I love you. Bye." So I call Dan (about 8.30am in PA). Dan runs up to the office but can't find the blue box. I tell him to call Debbie and then get on Facebook. He does this (very quickly, I might add) and gives me the info I need over FB. I then run back to the travel agent (OK, walk fast; it's been a long day). I give them Debbie's passport info (which is now in my updated thumb drive folder for the next time this comes up), doublecheck and verify my itinerary, and sign the form stating that I know the tix are non-refundable, non-transferable, and non-changeable. Time to give them my money and get the tix. Except their cashier is on dinner break. I wait 30 more minutes until he shows. I pay and go back to the travel agent's desk (who, by the way, can see the cashier's window and has watched me pay). She asks for the receipt from the cashier. Back I go, mumbling under my breath words that would greatly increase, but not necessarily enhance, the agent's knowledge of English. I get the receipt and hand it to the agent. She then, finally, prints my tix, gives me my itineraries, staples my receipts to the envelope, and hands me back the passport information. I leave the travel agent for home, 6-1/2 hours after I first walked in. And I'm pissed because I should have known better. Georgia runs on bureaucracy (holdover from the old Soviet days, I imagine). I should have realized this and left my flat with my passport, laptop and thumb drive, and cash that I had gathered over the previous 2-3 days.   But I didn't think ahead, so it cost me a lot of time and karmic energy. It's harder now to escape Georgia than it was when the Soviets ran this place.  Oh, well, at least I have the tix.

Just another Georgian day, giving me the opportunity to burn off some bad karma.  Thanks for reading.