The birthday

Last Thursday was El Moulid El Nabawi, and man, was it something. Two friends invited me down to Islamic Cairo to watch the processions, and of course I agreed.

Also inevitably, we screwed up. My friend's assistant had told him that the processions started at noon, so we got there around 12:30. Nothing was going on. We asked a nearby policeman, who looked surprised and said, "5 o'clock. 5."

To kill time we went into the Khan El Khalili, the big tourist bazaar. I never get tired of the Khan, the sights, the smells (yes, even those), the activity ... the hilarity. The place is great, just great. We traipsed through the bazaar a bit (our second of the day, actually) and then settled ourselves at Fishawi for juice and shisha.

Suddenly it's terribly hot here. Today it's in the 90s. And Thursday I got dehydrated and overheated, just like it was back in August and I was fresh off the plane. Consistency, thy name is Egypt.


Around 4:30 we appropriated a table on the balcony of a dreadful cafe right next to the Al Hussein mosque. When the procession started, the bazaar cats had these hysterical looks on their faces, like "what the hell????"




The procession consisted of Sufi orders from all over the world marching around the square. They sang, they chanted, they clapped, they drummed, they shouted. They were all incredibly different from each other, but the overwhelming feeling I got was one of crowding. Check out all these people!


Large gatherings of people make me nervous. Large gatherings of people seeking religious ecstasy? Double nervous. But here, at any rate, everyone seemed to be having a good time. The women standing by the side of the procession made ululating cries that sounded incredibly ancient. I got this shot of a woman walking in the procession who seemed transformed by her prayer. But mostly what I saw was people enjoying the good weather, enjoying each other's company, and exhibiting pride in their identities, not only as Muslims, but in their regional and national affiliations as well.




A few groups got quite worked up, complete with music and gyrations of various sorts:




Slight anxiety aside, I was very glad to be out and about on a warm day, with friends, watching something I'd never seen before. And a year ago, I'd had no idea that that was how I'd be spending my next Holy Thursday.

Nile dinner cruise videos

I realize I've got some video languishing on my laptop from various trips in Cairo. Here I'm going to post two videos from the Nile Maxim dinner cruise that I went on last month when my friend Bobby was in town.



The video up above is the very end of the dervish's dance. The guy was great - check out that costume! - but I seriously doubt he was a real Sufi dancer. The sufi show that's held in Islamic Cairo every Wednesday and Saturday night is better, but this was enjoyable.

Next up, the belly dancer! This isn't a great clip - she was far more athletic than this clip implies - but it's what I've got, so enjoy!

More food thoughts

A friend of a friend passing through Cairo offered me these great insights on food in Cairo, which I thought I'd share with you guys ....

Ok, so I have to add some additional tidbits to my original email. Wow, for a city with no food, I've eaten remarkably well! Thanks Tiffany for getting me started :)

1) The Eggplant Fatta at Taboula is a must-have dish. Exquisitely rich, it is not quite the traditional fatta, but was cooked perfectly and had a perfect balance of sweet, smoky, and sour. They also have the best hummus in the city with a hint of fresh parsley and bursting with bright lemon flavor.

2) The "saniwichet mixt" at Felfala was phenomenal. Each time I've gotten it, it's been different, but equally good. Just don't try and eat two for lunch unless you're really hungry. They are deceptively filling for a small pita sandwich.

3) In retrospect, it's so worth going to Del Al Amar just for the foul (fuul). It's by far (order of magnitude) the best in town, and there really wasn't a mezze I had there that was less than stellar. Mostly because they used at least 80 bulbs of garlic for each dish, but it worked well. The garlic lebne made me want to cry tears of joy (I do have a penchant for lebne).

4) I never did make it to the Bird Cage, but Sabbaya was quite a fun experience. It's a little pricey, but nice. It's the one place where service was impeccable. The stuffed vine leaves were my favorite dish here.

5) Abou El Sid was different and fun, albiet a bit too dark for trying to stay awake after a long day at the Pyramids. Both the stuffed pigeon and the molokyyia were nice, and the mezze were some of the best in the city. The baba ganoush was the best I've ever had. They also had the best strawberry juice ever. Must have.

Still gleeful in Cairo

I left my office about 10 minutes ago with 20 egyptian pounds in my pocket - that's US $3.60.

I bought 3 sandwiches (tipped the guy), a bag of chips, and a broom (tipped the guy) and ...

I STILL HAVE MONEY IN MY POCKET.

LE 2.50, to be exact - another sandwich and another chipsy.

Rock on.

Ballot blues

I admit I've been a little bummed about being abroad this year and missing the election fervor.

Life in Princeton was an overwhelming blue/left ride, with people actually pulling their neighbors out of their houses and driving them to polling places in an effort to oust W.

Of course, that effort failed. The point was made, but the democratic process rumbled onward. And now I'm here, missing this season of strenuous statehood. I haven't seen a single debate or campaign ad (ilhamduilleh), and I've got this funny feeling that I'm being left out.

I was greatly cheered by this article in the NY Times today. It looks like there's hope - although, ahem, they seem to have overlooked the expatriate community in Cairo for their article.

I've followed a link in the article to votefromabroad. The cynic in me says that my vote doesn't count in the US, so why should it count from here? But I have to admit there's a naive voice in me that still thinks "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" is one of the greatest films ever made.

And it's good to know that the Republican party disenfranchises its voters overseas, even though the gerrymandering at home rolls on. Who knows how all of this is going to turn out ....

Rant resolved: Recommendations

OK, so I've shot my mouth off about how everyone but me is wrong. What do I think should be done about it? Here's what I'm thinking - let me know your thoughts too.

1. Principal investigators.
A. Mandatory management training for at least 3 full days, required before the semester starts. It'd be great to formulate this as a group learning thing, where all new faculty members come together to identify areas of difficulty and produce discrete outcomes. While I think it'd be great to talk about the way people feel coming into this new situation, I think the emphasis here should be goal-oriented. Do this and this and this. Don't do this and this and this. How to identify potential problems and resolve them concretely. That sort of thing. There are management consulting companies that specialize in precisely this sort of training; why not utilize their expertise as a valuable resource?
B. Mentoring accountability during tenure review. The Academy should overtly place explicit value on the success of a PI's team members as an integral part of evaluating the promise and success of a tenure candidate. The PI should be required to provide concrete evidence of offering specific career advancement to every team member. Furthermore, every post-doc and grad student should be asked - in interviews, maybe, or anonymously - to review their advisor's performance in this area. There might be a worry here that postdocs/grad students won't be honest, because if the faculty member gets denied tenure, the whole team is up the creek. But I think if it's viewed as an ongoing process of reviewing strengths and weaknesses, where everyone's input is valued, people would be honest. Plus, buy a grad student a beer and he'll tell you his life's story.
C. Mentoring accountability post-tenure. I think mentoring abilities should be continuously reviewed after tenure as well. Maybe every 3 years, every PI should be required to provide, for every team member, an accounting of career advancement. For example, fellowships applied for, fellowships granted, papers in publication, talks/posters at meetings, and meeting attendance for every team member. The team members too should be supplying independent reports of the same thing. This way the advisor and the student are held responsible, as a team, for the student developing the skills needed to advance. These reports could lead to the highlighting of strengths and weaknesses, and generate recommendations for improvement.

2. Postdocs. I know a lot of postdocs who are panicked about their ability to get a job, hold it, get tenure, and succeed.
A. Discrete job application training and support. This could include application packages but also interview skills, job talk practice, and networking.
B. Grant writing training. Yes, by the time you're a postdoc you should have this figured out. But let's just say you didn't get the training you deserved as a grad student. You should have a chance to be supported in remedying the deficiencies.
C. The mentoring reviews mentioned under section 1.

3. Grad students. Grad students ARE NOT technicians, and the Academy should be held responsible for seeing that they are not treated that way.
A. Fellowship writing. This should be provided in the first year. My first year, I received an "invitation" from my department to start applying for fellowships. But no invitations to actually train to be successful. Yes, I got a fellowship in my 3rd year, but I'm still not sure why. I sure as hell didn't know what I was doing.
B. Networking. Every grad student should go to a meeting, and preferably present, at least once a year. Either the PI or the department should provide funding for the registration and transport, as well as coach students in how to give oral and poster presentations - as well as training on the etiquette of telling others about your work without getting ripped off. Once students receive a fellowship, they can pay for themselves, but they should still have access to the full support and training network.
C. The mentoring reviews mentioned under section 1.
D. Training in the peer-review process. There's a huge body of knowledge that people just "know", like how papers get published. This doesn't help people who don't know, because they feel stupid asking. This mentality has got to stop. Why should I know how papers get published if I've never published one?

I was asked at that party if I supported the "corporatizing" of the Academy. In some senses, no. But I absolutely think PIs - and grad students and postdocs - should be held personally accountable for the success of every member of the team. A PI earns his tenure off the efforts of his team members. They deserve something in return. Besides debt and regret.

Academia's biggest flaw

Last week at a cocktail party here in Garden City I found myself suddenly immersed in one of my most passionate rants. Maybe it was the 6 glasses of wine I'd had, or maybe I'd convinced myself that the woman I was talking to - a famous Arabist Duke literati - actually cared about what I was saying.

To wit: Academia does not value, train, or even discuss the centrality of good management in any collaborative exercise.

I am fortunate enough to know, at least slightly, many extremely good scientists. And in the last four years, I've started asking about the challenges of management in the Academy. I've even asked flat-out how many PIs have had management training.

Of the people I've asked, the answer is precisely zero. ZERO.

I've seen articles emphasizing project management skills in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries. But why should the Academy be exempt?

I'm certainly familiar with that old jibe about promoting to the level of incompetency. But why, why do we do this? Why do we set people up to fail, then blame them for it? Or worse - and even more prevalent - why do we ignore it?

KC pointed me toward an article from the NY Academy of Sciences. The article's a little too long, but the point is made - good mentors work. They don't treat their grad students and post-docs like technicians. They value their contributions to their students' careers. And, most importantly, they take seriously the obligation they incur by taking 5-8 years of a person's life.

I hate to beat on a worn-out drum, but being an academic comes at a cost. Yes, we get to do the thing we love - figure out the things we wonder about. Best case scenario, "work" is not even the right word for what we do. It should be fun. It should keep us awake at night. It should impel us to talk about our work over dinner, at the beach, at parties, in every one minute gap in doing other things.

But the downside? How about working 70 hour weeks - weekends, holidays, everything - for years at a time? How about making $30,000 a year when you're 30? How about paying off those educational loans while your Wall Street friends practice conspicuous consumption? And what about squandering your fertile years because you just don't have the time to be away from the lab?

There MUST be some reward for this institutionalized sadism. And the best reward should be obvious: learning the skills you need to advance to the next level - and succeed.

Let me enumerate those skill sets that should be provided to post-docs and grad students, not optionally, but in a way that is both mandatory and places appropriate value on the skills themselves.

1. Group management. No one in science seems to learn how to manage a team. Some of these ideas are obvious. Don't humiliate your workers in public. Find something positive about progress, no matter how many negatives. Foster an open, collaborative, RESPECTFUL environment.

2. Career advancement. Grad students and post-docs must be able to manage their CVs, travel extensively to give talks, and network with the people they need to know. That's right - everyone should be encouraged to speak about their work without hysterical paranoia about scooping. I think money-grubbing (ie, grant writing) is one of the most important administrative skills required by the Academy. How many hours, minutes, seconds of training have I received? Zero.

3. Respect for your teammates. Did I already say respect? That's not just advisor-student respect either, but student-student respect. I know a lot of people who think that labs shouldn't be managed, because it "stifles creativity." But if I cannot get out of bed in the morning because I hate the way people treat me, how much work am I going to accomplish? And I will pass over here the lab culture that treats women, and married people, and (god forbid!) people with children as second-class citizens.

That article lists a few publications that are available to aspiring lab managers. Some of them, like the NSF's "Making the Right Moves" are even freely available as PDFs! I've read three of the publications listed. Why is this even optional?

I'm going to stop myself here, because if I don't, this post will never end. All I want to say is this. We have the power to heal this gaping sore on the face of Academia. It takes responsibility and a willingness to admit the problem - and these things have to come not just on the personal level of each and every PI, but from the culture and administration of Academia itself.