One of the perks of no longer being a student (almost 6 years now!) is being able to listen to lectures/speeches without the prospect of being tested on the material. I used to be a tenacious note taker. Now, I mostly note the quotable. Really, I should be keeping a quote book from my time here. But here are a few from the past week as a start:
One of the Ambassadors told an anecdote that a reporter asked Karzai to in one word sum up the situation in AFG. Karzai said "good." The journalist responded "well, I didn't really mean JUST one word, what about two." Karzai said "not good."
"Some people are sleeping. Is that ok?" One of our Afghan presenters. Now it's a tried and true tradition in American academia that students will occasionally nod off in class right? I have seen professors deal with this in a number of ways, but never with such a simple matter of fact statement.
"They didn't have computers." Speaker talking in amazement at her initial assessment of the working conditions she found in a Kabul office. My fellow ROLFSOs and I turned to each other telepathically thinking something along the lines of "isn't it great they have an office? Tables and chairs sound pretty great. So do paper and pens. Computers sounds like potentially a waste of resources/unsustainable/source of instability."
"I don't carry a gun because I'm a lawyer and that is frightening." Same speaker as above. True, very true.
"There's never been rule of law in AFG, it's rulers' law...the ruler says what the law is."
"The U.S. is part of the international community." Discussing the fact that sometimes the U.S. thinks it's "us" and then the rest of the NATO countries or the rest of the IC working in a given environment.
"Warrior companion." No longer battle buddies -- warrior companions.
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