Carnival Photos

Me and my pirate...Aaarrrrrrrrrr!

Viva Public Radio - KCRW rocks!

We just received our KCRW "premiums" in the mail. For those not familiar with this most excellent Santa Monica-based institution of music, news, food, funnies, political updates and intelligent journalism, please educate yourselves by visiting: www.kcrw.com.

And if you are not one of the fortunate few who calls Santa Monica home, no worries - you can listen to them 24-7 online. I used to do so in New Haven, sadly cannot here in Baghdad due to bandwidth restrictions.

For those looking to expand their music selections, may I suggest the 5 discs we recently received as a "thank you" for our annual subscription to this fabulous station, they are:

Sergio Mendes - Timeless
The Elected - Sun, Sun, Sun
KT Tunstall - Eye to the Telescope
Arctic Monkeys -
Kate Bush - Aerial

(And thanks to Barbara for resending the package, TWICE due to a minor error in the shipping address)

It's a small, small world

We had a Carnival party last night, 150 people on the roof-top bar above our restaurant, 25 liters of heavily improvised Sangria, 20 liters of Hurricane punch (*tastes like cough syrup*) and about 20 liters of a mystery pirate punch courtesy of our mixologists Chris and John. There was plenty of beer and wine to top off the festivities and the Salsa DJ from next door was plenty eager to entertain us all night long.

Somewhere between a Shiraz and a Pilsner, I was reminded once again how small the world really is - especially when working in the field of International Development, where everybody seems to have been EVERYwhere. Turns out one of our French chefs here in Baghdad, JP, is a partner in Presidential Nile Cruises, the company we did our Nile cruise with last summer. Too funny, he said when we're ready to go explore the untouched wonders off the Sudanese coast to let him know, he'll hook us up.