Owlspotting

My Washington, D.C. apartment is in a cool neighborhood. But location alone rarely makes one feel better about the cost of rent. I needed an extra to justify the price and I found it on my roof, pictured below. The little extra is a view, albeit minuscule, of the Washington monument. I circled it for […]

I still haven’t been lucky at tracking down a bottle of Coca Cola C2, something I’ve been trying for two months (as I mentioned in a previous post). Today I received an e-mail from a Coca Cola official in Atlanta who among other things said the beverage is available in his city along with Zero, […]

I’ll stay away from blogging about hurricane relief and the storm aftermath politics, but I can’t ignore the tributes and cvasi-obituaries being written about New Orleans. A few days ago, CJR Daily took a swipe at those who’ve began mourning the loss of the town while evacuations were still taking place. The Sunday papers carry […]

I’m not going to blog about the hurricane. I prefer to speak about it or as a friend told me earlier, “editorialize” in Romanian media. I actually wrote a piece called “New Orleans, the fall of a city,” which ran today on Romania’s best online news site. Raluca, a friend from college in Bucharest, is […]

Do you have the time To listen to me whine About nothing and everything All at once… I was safely sheltered by European pop, dance and techno (most of it coming from Germany and the Scandinavian countries) until I heard Green Day tear into “Basket Case.” I was in eight grade, with little rock references […]

I’m not used to being referred to as “the young lady.” So I couldn’t help but blush a little and turn slightly toward the wall when the cop pointed to the used-but-not-gooey condom on the counter and said: “There’s nothing in it, so I don’t think it was meant for the Young Lady.” Turning to […]

Last year, when Coca-Cola launched C2, I converted. Like any consumer afraid of too much sugar, but also appaled by Diet Coke, I welcomed the mid-road beverage. I was dissapointed with the marketing campaign and the 8-cans packages that cost as much as the regular 12-cans, but I stuck with it. Soon enough, Coca-Cola C2 […]

Earlier this year, I worked on a story on the Muslim community of Columbia, Mo. Although the central focus were local Muslims, the effort was meant to integrate their stories in a larger world-wide debate on the future of Islam, and the struggle within the faith between violent elements and ordinary believers. The story turned […]

Someone in my building received this package recently. It was in the hallway and I couldn’t resist running back for my camera to snap a picture. We all love getting mail from our retarded families.

I spent Thursday and Friday in Washington, D.C. looking for an apartment. It was the beginning of my process of accomodating to new city I had just taken a job in. If I think hard enough, I can summarize all my experiences in a few words. The summer of 1994 was soccer, the summer of […]