Random Thoughts
It’s Friday afternoon in sunny Harare, Zimbabwe, and I will be able to get off work in an hour because WHO closes early on Friday afternoons. I’m over doing number crunching for the week, so I find myself with a 1000 different thoughts.
I’m enjoying watching Congress lay into the President and his agenda, although I think Murtha’s call for immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq is foolhardy and would be extremely detrimental in the long run. It’s obvious our mission is failing in Iraq. Perhaps if we had more troops to send in to crush the insurgency and enforce some kind of peace while the government gets going….oh, yeah, that’s right, we don’t HAVE more troops. Bush and Company have exhausted not only our regular troops but also the reserves.
My poor uncle has drank deeply of the GOP Kool-Aid, which is a shame, b/c he’s a very bright political scientist at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. But he really does take to the GOP party line like a hungry newborn to its mother’s breast. The only bright spot is that he believes Hillary will be elected President in 2008. Now, I don’t know about that, but if he thinks Hillary is a shoe-in, that means the Democratic nominee stands an excellent shot at winning.
I’ve been a bit disappointed that no one’s really been in touch with me via email. It’s lonely out here in the 3rd world as you listen to Africans chatter in various foreign languages. The most common you hear at WHO are French (which I can at least understand enough to follow along if I like) and Shona, the native language of a majority of Zimbabweans. I don’t understand a lick of Shona. So I find that I have a lot of time inside myself, even when I’m crunching numbers. Existence whenever I travel to Africa is very insular for me. I have plenty of time for reflection, and some could argue too much time. Still, email is a nice distraction/treat each morning when I arrive at the office at 7:30am.
That sounds pathetic - begging for email. I do have at least one friend who’s good at writing me every day, but then again, we seem to share the same brain most of the time, so I would expect nothing less :)
As interesting as being overseas for a job would be, doing it alone would SUCK. Everyone who’s an ex-pat overseas seems to fall into three camps mostly. First, you have your young, single, and carefree types who live to party on weekends and sleep their way around the local and/or diplomatic community. The Marines stationed here embody this type to perfection. Then you have your married people, the ones who come overseas with their honey and a home ready made, and focus on their job and forming a circle of friends wherever they are. That’s the group I’d prefer to be in. Then you have the single people who may not be so young and willing to whore around who basically give up on any romantic life overseas and largely hang out with the couples. I know that I’d be in this last group, especially if I was posted in Africa or Asia. Not that my dating life is stellar in Atlanta, but there’s at least HOPE. I would find it incredibly lonely to be posted overseas without having a partner/spouse with me. And if I can’t have my dogs with me, forget it! There’d be no point!
I’m such an impatient bastard. I want to find a life partner, NOW. I want to find an incredible new job NOW. I want to whip my butt into shape NOW. Everything NOW!!! All that does is cause frustration for me personally. Yet, I seem to be unable to help myself.
Anyway, alls well that ends well, right? Despite my harping, I’m in a pretty good mood and pretty pleased with my life in general. It just feels stagnant somehow, and I’m not sure what to do about it. Early mid-life crisis? Or maybe a belated turning 30 crisis? Who knows? 
