yrstruly

c'est moi

world wanderer. world wonderer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

although my likes, dislikes and interests that used to occupy this page have not changed, i decided that my bio page needed to be a bit more professional. however, i'm also not changing this to be your run-of-the-mill professional bio page because, and i've thought about this a lot and weighed the pros and cons, i do not feel comfortable revealing "my true identity" (mwah ha ha). i've considered linking to published articles i've written or uploading my master's thesis, but i think keeping a couple of secrets in my line of work is probably the cautious and smart thing to do.

you can learn a lot about me just by navigating the site. you can understand my musical, literary and celluloid interests by looking at my various media libraries. you can get a taste of my personality from my writing on this bio page and on my blog. and you can actually see how i look in my foto gallery (though, i have considered password-protecting that page as well). however, there are a few things you may not know about me just from simple navigation and paying attention.

therefore, the faq's of me!

q: what the heck is Yours Truly?
a: first of all, it's yrstruly. the lowercase and one word is quite important. i adopted it from my favourite novel, infinite jest by david foster wallace. there's a brief interlude in the twisted storyline of someone named yrstruly. i loved yrstruly's section and instantly liked the identity. so, i adopted it. but, even though i didn't invent it, i still see it as mine. as a wee undergraduate i started adopting the name in my second year. at that time i was also a fan of a local musician who thought he was ani difranco. i sent him a fan e-mail (if you're paying attention, you'll see at this point that i'm sort of a dork) and naturally signed it yrstruly. i was also part of his mailing list. when i received his next show update announcement i saw that he signed the e-mail "yrstruly." well, naturally, that set me off. i wrote to him and asked him where he got the idea for yrstruly and essentially accused him of copy-catting me. he never wrote back but never used yrstruly again. i see it as a minor victory.

q: tell me about your education (not a question, but that's okay)
a: i did my undergraduate work at miami university (in ohio. "miami was a university before florida was a state"). i was in the interdisciplinary studies program and my work focused on feminism, queer studies and jewish identity studies. my undergradaute thesis was entitled, "flirting with the 'i:' exploring the identities of jewish queer women." it was a great experience and my program was exactly what i needed. once i graduated i thought i wanted to spend my life in academia but took a year off to work in new york and take a break from school life. i then moved abroad to eastern europe and south east asia where i realised that academia wasn't for me. i was co-authoring a paper with a former teacher/mentor and when i saw how the publishing process worked i got really turned off on the idea. that's when my partner, david, suggested the foreign service. i've thanked him ever since (though my aunt takes credit for introducing me to the foreign service. she claims that she told me about it years before. i of course have no recollection of this but that's of no matter, i'm here now). after living abroad i moved back to ohio and worked at a university. given my free schedule and the perk of free classes, i got my master's degree at an unnamed institution. i again did an interdisciplinary program but this time in international development, international politics and human rights. my thesis was entitled: "the broken dream of shangri la: bhutan, development, identity and human rights." i have never been to bhutan and one of the reasons i bid so highly on bangladesh was so that i could go there. i can't wait as i've been fairly obsessed for about four years now.

q: if you were on jeopardy, what little story would you tell?
a: i've thought about this a lot (again, the dork factor). i think it would be one of three stories.

• i sold carpets in istanbul - yes, in 1999 i was traveling in turkey and long story short i was employed for a week by a man who needed two young american girls to show other american tourists that he was an okay guy and that they should buy carpets from him. he had an amazing collection of antique carpets and kilims and ones that people he employed hand-made. he was sketchy but i believe a decent businessman. in a weird twist of coincidence i even ran into my old childhood "other parents" and sold them a carpet!
• i wrote my master's thesis in two weeks - i think this one speaks for itself.
• i sold hotdogs and pretzels on the streets of new york for about 20 minutes. i was waiting outside bloomingdales for my grandmother and a hot dog vendor walked up to me and asked if i would watch his cart while he got some coffee since it was a cold night. i said sure, excited to try yet another oddball job. so i stood in front of the cart and someone actually bought a pretzel! i didn't know how much they cost b/c i do not like nyc pretzels b/c i do not care much for salt and nyc pretzels have those big chunks of salt on them. i asked her if she knew how much they cost and she said she thought $2.50 and so i took her money. when the vendor returned i told him i had made a sale. he didn't let me keep the two fifty, though...

q: tell me about your travels (again, not a question. oh well)
a: well, i first traveled internationally the winter of my second year of university. my family took a cruise around the caribbean. it didn't have much of an impact on me, though it was a nice excuse to get a passport. the next year i took time off from school to spend a semester in israel. i had enough credits to not have to go to another university, so i did the thing furthest from education - i lived and worked on a kibbutz. i also was part of an ulpan (intensive language study) and did a small course on israeli history and archaeology. it was a lot of fun, even though i cut my time short by a month. a friend and i decided that we wanted to travel instead of finish our time at the kibbutz. we bought a ticket for antalya thinking we'd spend two weeks in turkey and two in greece. with lonely planet in hand, we took off.

well, to make an already long story short, we fell in love with turkey and stayed there a month. we then returned to israel in order to get our possessions together and hopped another plane bound for prague. this time, with no lonely planet in hand, we spent two weeks in the czech republic. spent the night in the rome airport, met some nice people, and returned home.

i tell these stories a) to bore you and b) to shed a little light that i'm not a "typical" traveler. i could reiterate this point by telling the story of quitting my job in nyc, buying a ticket to eastern europe and deciding on the plane where my first stop would be (and not leaving that first stop for six months!), but i've already said too much. instead, here's a list, broken down by region and chronology (and will be updated accordingly):

middle east
lived: israel
visited: jordan, turkey

europe
lived: hungary
visited: romania, czech republic, croatia, bosnia-hercegovina, spain, netherlands, france

asia
lived: the philippines, bangladesh
visited: hong kong, viet nam, thailand, cambodia, lao, nepal, myanmar (burma), sri lanka, singapore, bhutan, china

latin america/caribbean
visited: mexico, honduras, antigua


q: finally, what's with the picture up there?
a: that picture was taken on a three-day hike in northern viet nam outside of sapa. i like it because it makes me look pensive.


so maybe this didn't turn out to be the highly professional bio i envisioned. i may change it again. consider yourself lucky if you get a peek at it. and, if you think of anything that should be included but i've forgotten, send an e-mail my way and i'll check it out.