Ze Plane of Love

So here I am, on the train going from Paris to Brussels. How is it, will you ask, that I am riding when many cheap flights could in fact have taken me straight to Brussels, therefore sparing me the hassle of luggage carrying between terminals and of seeing the train station, which I despise so much? How is it also, may you want to add, that I manage to always travel in the cheapest of the cheapest category, in the very back of the plane and that, in fact, I was offered on several occasions to do the journey among the luggages, and yet am now sitting in the 1st class category on the train? I'd say moronism on the part of the Group and of most travel agents we work with explains it...

Quite unfortunately, every single time I come up with a list of cheap flights on reasonably secure companies, I end up receiving instead a ticket on Emirates. Worst still, this time I was traveling with Air France. Now, for someone who suffers of an ackowledged aversion to French people, as a generic group (although that doesn't pass for racism, for I am sadly enough half French myself), that is sheer mental torture. The prospect of an entire flight surrounded with self-satisfied looking men with a shirt tucked in their jeans or a black suit and white sports shoes (Guys, this is not the 90s anymore and you're not just about to go and play squash anyway, so get a life and learn to dress up!) tends to make me grind my teeth real hard. Add to this the fact that the second I reach Kabul airport, I always have the feeling I am abandoning all these people who are a bit more like me and think a bit more like me and have, like me, a growing alcohol problem, namely the expat 'relief' community, I develop an overwhelming feeling of hatred for all holiday-goers and other businessmen and consultants surrounding me, and you can imagine what a friendly face I show while boarding. So I tried to distribute evenly to most male passengers a stare suggesting something in the form of 'Look at me another second and I'll tear your ears ad will shove them up your nostrils, add some tabasco and stir', which usually works quite well.

Anyhow, fortunately, even the dinner served at 3 am and the breakfast provided at 4 did not stop me from sleeping awhile, therefore allowing me to stop the teeth grinding for a couple of hours. Speaking of which, why on earth do these companies stubbornly try and stuff you with food even in the middle of the night, henceforth keeping little babies up and crying, when all really just long for some sleep or, in my case, to play 'Who wants wot be a millionaire' on the small telly until I beat the machine? When I woke up though, I could still feel my jaws tense from the tension of hearing so many French speakers around. (I know, I know, at this point it's a case of pathological denial).

We landed as planned, all got up and waited to leave the plane. And waited five minutes, then ten. At last, while the queue hadn't moved an inch, the pilot announced, with a rather gleeful tone, that the buses had not arrived to the plane yet, hence the waiting. Too bad, I'd much rather blame it on Air France. Then he proceeds to give us an account of every single bus that arrives. As in 'Oooh, at last I see our first bus coming'. Break of 2 minutes. 'And that's bus no. 2 on its way'. And so on and so forth til the sixth one. Clearly the man enjoyed this, irrespective of all the passengers who may miss their flight and be stranded in the ugliest airport on the planet, surrounded with incompetent French people. Which reminds me of a terrible day when, coming back from Oxford, I arrived late at the Waterloo station, was indicated the platform to go to for the Brussels Eurostar, had someone scream at me 'Board! Board!'. Then the train left and it turned out I was on a direct to Paris. Bugger, bugger, bugger. And I can't say that comments from the French staff really helped. 'But why you don't want to go to Paris. Zis is a very nice city, Paris, ze city of love!' Yeah love, my ass.

At last we leave plane, pass customs and collect luggage, all fairly efficiently compared to my last time here. Head to the train station, buy myself a 2.40 EUR coffee the size of an espresso - fucking bloody rip off city, I'm telling ya... - and head to the platform, while pouring coffee all over myself and my luggage, for I always enjoy smelling of food and dirt and sweat in the early morning. On the platform the modern French train authority has installed a radio system, so we can enjoy NRJ or some other fantastic channel. For those French speakers on here with a good memory for genuinely crap music, we heard 'Une Autre Histoire', which is '90s soup that doesn't deserve the name of music even. Followed something from Elton John, can't remember what, but at least it wasn't that rubbish cry-baby song about Princess Di, which usually makes me prone to violence.

And here I am at last, on board, with my baby, my precious, eg a Compaq nx6120, not the best possibly, but mine, all mine. The Precious is all excited because we're just about to give it a little sister, in the form of an electronically purchased external hard drive the size of my thumb the day I squashed it in the hinges of a door, aged three. 100 Gb of memory to allow me to boost my working capacity, or possibly to violate all applicable regulations on music copyright. Who said there were no happy endings to my stories?

Women’s Day?

Call me irrational but I could not help but feel irate at the recent Women’s Day. How so? Because it only emphasized how every single other day of the year is, in Afghanistan (and not just there really), Men’s Day. I mean how is distributing roses going to help empower anyone? In a way, over here it feels like an ill-suited Mother’s Day, which after all was set up by Petain’s government, not exactly renown for its liberalism.

So really, what is Women’s Day about for the men I work with and those of a few other NGOs? It’s about sending a congratulations email to the 10 or so female staff out of 600. Am I the only one to see the irony there? And it is about offering roses and rings and the like. Right, because that’s truly going to empower us. I mean gender-clichéed gifts are certainly going to help women know how to achieve equality in society. I believe most men also settled for no wife beating on Women’s Day, but I trust that a few that failed to show sufficient gratefulness will have to make up for it the following day.

Worst still, I’m remembering a TV serie where a women rants that men are truly rubbish and that the only more rubbish thing than men are women. I’d sometimes tend to concur when I hear that some women in some office, for whom special events had been organized the whole day, went ‘Are we getting a present?’ No, you bitch! Your present is your job and the fact that your husband is allowing you to work and all the efforts your organization is making daily to make your environment gender sensitive. Your present is the opportunity you are getting daily to advance the cause of all women around the country. Your present is the acknowledgement that around you, some people are aware of your human rights and simultaneously that most of Afghanistan fails to meet basic standards in terms of right to health and education for women, but that at least we know this. Not that knowledge solves the problem, but it’s a first step in the right direction.

So for Women’s Day, here is my suggestion, let’s tell all our male colleagues to shove their congrats mails, rings and roses up their a…. Let’s send them to MoWA, where they will make sure to publish all our vacancies, and let’s set a target to ourselves: within 6 months, we will try to increase in all bases female representation by 15 %. That’s small, yet significant. A Happy Women’s Day to all with me on that.

Return to the Afghan Gotham

Before we get down to today’s business, I need to share a thought with you. How is it that the Broadband Wireless Connection in Dubai airport is slower than even our connection in Maymana office? As a matter of fact, I was planning on sending you a live note detailing how I’m delighting at the pains au chocolat and coffee here, but in truth I’ll have to settle for using a good ole’ word document and put it online whenever I’ll be able to connect – and that may not be anytime soon.

Anyway, after a whole 6 weeks away, I finally returned to Kabul last week. After hearing the praises of a couple of new places, five-star hotels and all that have become the place to see and be seen, and given that I had an army of mates, friends and acquaintances who happen to be in my mobile memory and vice versa to catch up with, I resolved to try the now famous Serena hotel.

I had heard a lot about the place and was rather prepared for a disappointment but I ought to be honest here, I was in awe. The internal decoration of the place is absolutely fabulous, with very pure lines and columns, often in dark Nuristani wood. The furniture is dominated by red and purple shades, with some white or yellowish touches here and there. Rather than the rich Afghan wanabe Bollywood decoration I was expecting, I saw something reminiscent of the best ‘Be the Aga Khan For One Day and Decorate Your Home’ kind of BBC shows. I have to admit being especially fond of the restaurant, all in dark wood, with a few lamps and old tea and water carafes in golden shades.

This said, you know me. I would not bother you if it were only for the decoration. So let’s get down to business: the food. We started with some pumpkin raviolis and on my part a duck salad with oranges. Although I only had one ravioli, it seemed positively good, with a hint of spiciness in the background and a melting effect in the mouth. As for my salad, not much green on there, but it was fantastic nonethless. A honey sauce offered a comfy bed to an army of duck breasts slices, with some orange (or was it grape fruit?) pulp on top. A beautiful sweet and sour contrast; positively one of the best salads I’ve had in Afghanistan ever.

The tomato and basil soup I ordered as a main was a bit of a disappointment, neither looking nor tasting quite right. (A bit of oil on top, as I suspect they used some basil marinated in oil, and way too hot, with not enough basil). Anyone in their right mind would think there was something not quite right about it, so I gave up after a while on my attempt to ingurgitate some vitamins. This said, based on the rest of the meal, I suspect the cook is a quick learner and will happily spend half an hour doing capacity building in the kitchen if it can guarantee us some decent soup next time.

When time for desert came, we settled for a cookie parfait with a strawberry sauce. If I may, that plate was clearly calling for more of the latter, but otherwise it was all very edible, with the parfait being somewhere between a mousse and Haagen Dazs’ famous Cookies and Cream.

All in all, it was all fairly good, a pleasant journey in a different environment and cuisine, for a total bill possibly slightly cheaper than at Atmosphere.

For contrast’s sake, I also have to develop on another entirely different food place.
We went with two friends to a new French restaurant, La Fontaine, only a few meters away from Flower street in the direction of Shar-e-Nau park. The place is simply decorated, with a few carpets and some chairs that hint at a Southeast Asian place. The menu wasn’t quite complete, but the owner promised it would be by next week.

As a start we bravely gave the green salad a try. The portion was rather small, but the mustard vinaigrette was simply fabulous, enough so that none of us felt like we had turned into healthy rabbits.

Afterwards, we had some lovely quiches with leeks that were to die for. Buttery, creamy, maybe a little small as one was clearly calling for another, but without a doubt a quiche like none I have eaten in this part of the world. As a matter of fact, it made me ashamed I dared serving something fairly rubbish to friends in the past labeling it as quiche. Meanwhile, one friend was having a steak with chips. Now one could argue that bringing the steak alone, no matter how big, with only fries as garnish would be a little disappointing. Wrong. This steak was the type of life-changing experience that one only goes through a few times in a lifetime (Ok, maybe read a year). Actually, just the thought of it and I find myself drawling again, which in the middle of Dubai Airport could get me in trouble.

To make the picture even better, the owner enjoys making his own chocolate, which consists of white or milk chocolate filled with one or two nuts. Anyone who knows me knows how dogmatic I am on the subject, yet it was delicious. In fact, I bit in one and had a flash of me and a few friends crashing for a DVD and eating those. Surely that’s a sign.

On top of it, the owner, who’s French, also bakes his own croissants. It goes without saying I had to come and try that… As it is, they start being served at 8.30 am until they run out and cost 40 Afs a piece, all worth it. Since I had to have an informal meeting with our coordinator ad interim, we agreed to have a brekky together to try these out. The shameless staff put before us a gigantic plate covered with 25 croissants and pains au chocolat, which we proceeded to eat. Amazing how two croissants call three, call four etc. And take my word on this one, outside of Europe, I have not eaten as decent croissants in the past 18 months. They were buttery, really crispy yet melting inside, calling for some jam, although I could not find the desire to ruin them with anything. In short, they were fabulous. We brought a bunch back to the office and I’m not sure what the people thought but the stuff run out fairly fast so I have to take it as a positive criticism.

All in all, La Fontaine is fairly cheap: less than 5 USD for a starter and between 5 and 12 USD for a main and provides decent ‘bistrot’ cuisine – their words – eg plain but good food. While the surrounding may not quite do it for a romantic evening, it is perfect for a working breakfast or lunch. Only down side, the owner is desperate for constructive criticisms, so he will not leave you alone. However, given that his repeated returns to the table involve some more chocolate tasting I have to forgive him.