My roommate’s voice was frantic over the phone. “They shut off our electricity!” “Who shut off our electricity?” I asked. “The power company! They say we owe a lot of money, and it has to be paid before they turn it back on.” I told him I’d take care of it and hung up the phone. My mind was reeling. It was November, and I had moved into this upp

Recently, I was at a workshop with almost 90 high-school students from Plovdiv, a town in south-central Bulgaria. Two of the boys were wearing shirts that sent, what I thought, were mixed messages. One said, “Stop Abortion. Kill Sluts.” The other had a typical “I (heart) NY” shirt, except that before the ‘NY’ was ‘HOR’ and after it was written ‘Gir

I'm not sure who reads this blog at this point, but I figured I'd give this a try to get this a little bit further out in the interwebs. My friend Ivan was in a terrible car accident in Rakitovo, Bulgaria.  He's been in the hospital in Plovdiv for a few weeks, and now doctors say he needs a shunt to regulate the intracranial pressure in his

(This post was originally published in May 2012 and was irrevocably lost due to some shenanigans that took place somewhere on the internet.) I basically talked about graduation from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and said that I have a Master of International Affairs (MIA)  Yay!  Also, I talked abou

I have been featured again in the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs newsletter.  While I am proud of this, I am haunted by the fact that it's because of a story about how I've exploited one of my dearest friends.  My wish is that this would change his situation for the better, but I am not optimistic.

I am still trying to figure out the tone of this blog. A lot of people at my school write, and they’re great at it. They practice. They freelance. They get published. Practice makes perfect. And a blog is a good way to practice. But there is no consensus on what the tone should be. Am I building my “brand?” Probably. I have to monitor my online p

After a lovely vacation in California, I came home to find a rental demand taped to my front door. Let me revise: It’s not my front door. I’m not the tenant. I don’t technically live there. I’m just a sub-leaser. I just *actually* live there. I just pay the tenant to live there. Basically it said we had three days to pay rent in excess of several

I've been published in The Morningside Post.  The story is about the connection between my desire for a smart phone and the exploitation of my closest friend.  Does writing this absolve me of some of my guilt?  Doesn't feel like it.  Take a gander.

October was rough. I moved into a new place. It costs twice as much as my last place, but it’s only a ten-minute subway ride to campus. It’s bigger, but it’s darker. It’s closer, but it’s noisier. I used to hear the M-train rattling at night. Now I hear the 1. The first night, I heard people shouting out in the lobby at 4 a.m., and I feared I had

I moved. It no longer takes me an hour to get to school. This has made me lazier.  Since I have class at 9:10 a.m., I like to see how long I can stay in bed and still make it to class on time.  So far, it looks like 8:40 a.m. is the limit.  Then I'd better have my feet on the floor.  It's much better than 7:40 a.m. - when I u