Mom - there are wedding photos in this one.

By Conor | June 2nd, 2008 | 4 Comments »

Hey, did I tell you I’m going to NYU Stern starting this summer for business school? Can’t remember if I told you that. Just wanted to mention. And also, did I tell you that we moved to New York? Because that happened. And stuff.

You know, I really love not writing. Not writing: that’s where the action is. It’s hot, this action. Hot, groovy action.

But since I’ve already started writing here, no reason to stop at this very instant, especially with it being June 1st just two days from the new moon. And you know what they say about writing: Two days from new moon, oregano cat, Cheetos pontoon. So…better safe than sorry.

Also, I really wanted to put up some wedding photos. I asked Liz to find a few that don’t make me look too dorky next to my bride, who looked gorgeous. I’ll include those at the end. For posterity. (If that means what I think it means and not something to do with that gland that gives old men trouble.)
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Movin’ out

By Conor | May 11th, 2008 | 3 Comments »

Webster’s dictionary defines “lazy” as…well, you can look it up yourself, but my point is that I, Conor, am as lazy as they come. And when I say “they” I include house cats and futon pillows. I find new ways to be lazy. The real trick to being lazy is spending that time that you should be productive instead thinking about excuses why you have not been. We have to justify ourselves – we don’t get a free pass, like the pillows.

For a while I had a good excuse for not writing - I got married to my gorgeous wife, Liz, a woman for whom I would walk through a burning building. That is a busy time, gettin’ married. Those of you who have seen movies in which people are preparing to get married, like Father of the Bride, you know that nobody even takes the time to use the bathroom, even though the story spans the course of several months. Then there was the honeymoon, until mid-March, and since then I have had to come up with reasons for being so lazy that I could not write the blog. I considered listing some of those reasons, but that seemed like an awful lot of work, so instead I’m going to pretend that I DID write out all the great reasons, but then a computer internet virus worm wiped out all my legitimate reasons just as I was going into them. I think this will look most legitimate if I throw in some ones and zeros and then finish up as if no computer internet virus worm had taken place but many days had passed.

So, I really wanted to write sooner, but you wouldn’t believe what happened!!! I had sat down at my computer in March, and I heard this knock on the doo11110001110000010100101101000011……..eeks later, barely managing to escape with my life, pulling the Prime Minister of Panama and the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Fisheries on a dogsled, and let me tell you something that dude: he does not shut up about fish. Boy was I pooped! So believe me, I really wanted to blog, but where was I going to find an internet connection in Tristan da Cunha?

Just goes to show, huh? Just goes to show.
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The President and Me

By Conor | November 27th, 2007 | 5 Comments »

Thirty-three is a pretty important age, in the Christian religion at least, in that it happens to be the age by which the Savior of the entire human race had accomplished what he needed to here on Earth. Having turned 33 a couple of weeks ago myself, I have set my sights for this year substantially lower . I have even gone as far as to verbalize this, yet that somehow fails to ward off family members bringing up the Son of God. I’ll tell you what, my friends, you’re gonna be on the losing end of that comparison seven days a week.

So for the record, here’s my game plan for this year: I’m going to spend a lot of time trying to raise money for children in Nepal, I’m going to make sure the kids are being well taken care of (I’m in daily email contact with the folks in Kathmandu), I’m going to see if I can’t get a job a bit more lucrative than orphanage work so I can purchase/eat food and take care of my new family, and I’m going to spend a lot more time with my fiancée, my family, and my friends than I did in year 32 and most of the last decade for that matter.

What was not in the game plan, and yet what I managed to accomplish early on in my 33rd year (or is it my 34th year?), was visiting The White House. Liz’s good friend Katie, who works there, got me on the invite list to a conference on adoption, which was held on National Adoption Day, and then into the room where the President and the First Lady gave their official remarks. Read the rest of this entry »

With Liberty and Luggage for All

By Conor | October 15th, 2007 | 2 Comments »

I want to tell you about what’s going on with everything in Nepal, I do, because I’m pretty psyched about it.

But I want to start by proclaiming myself an official resident of Washington, DC! Which is to say, not “official” at all. For instance, I don’t have a driver’s license since they’re just tools for the government to track your every move and force you to buy soda pop. But I am living in America! Which, until yesterday, was more than I could say for my luggage. Whilst traveling via New Delhi two weeks again, my luggage decided to remain in the airport while I continued on to my destination . There was some miscommunication, apparently. So I traveled on to the United States, alone and unburdened, to meet Liz.

The interesting thing about this particular lost luggage mishap is not only that it lasted two weeks, but that Jet Airways knew exactly where my bags were – they were in the warehouse in the Delhi airport, having failed to make it onto the plane after my overnight layover in Delhi. The man in the office promised, swore up and down, that those bags would be coming up and be sent over absolutely immediately. They might even beat me to my destination, he laughed, with a slap on my shoulder, conjuring up an image of my bags tethered to an F-15 blazing past my window seat at Mach 2. Good ol’ Jet Airways!

It didn’t happen exactly that way. The way it did happen was that I stayed up late nights attempting to get on Indian time and calling Jet Airways to find out the status. Mostly they simply didn’t answer the phone, but when they did they wasted little time in shifting the blame to me, indicating that they could have had my bags to me a long time ago if I had just….well, never let go of my bags in the first place, I guess. Perhaps they held me responsible for my bags being especially wily, as if there were a dozen Indian guys in orange jumpsuits chasing my luggage around the warehouse with giant butterfly nets as my two bags dodged and hid and thwarted any attempt at capture.

To the credit of Jet Airways, and after a night in which I stayed up literally all night trying to get in touch with the right guy (typically I would get a response to the effect of “Oooh, he just stepped out again for a few minutes I’m afraid – would you mind terribly calling back in forty five minutes?”), they finally managed to send my bags to Liz’s apartment in DC with about thirty tags on each one, including one that said “Rush!”

So, fly Jet Airways, or whatever.

Now: much more important than luggage news is that fact that things with Next Generation Nepal are going great! Woo hoo!

Let me start by telling you about the situation with me leaving. It wasn’t an easy thing to do, as one might imagine – we rescued those kids ourselves and lived with them and built close relationships with them. There is never an easy way to leave. But the important part was that we made NGN a rock-solid, permanent institution for these children and the ones who will come after them, not just an organization of one guy who, as soon as he left Nepal, everything would come crashing down. This was our absolute number one goal for the last three months and we worked towards it daily.

What that meant in practice is that we would need to find somebody who could take my place as Country Director. From the beginning, this was a signficant challenge. Farid is a phenomenon who can run the day to day operations himself, but we needed somebody who could work with the government and foundations and donors, as well as managing and overseeing the financial and strategic side of the operations. More importantly, we needed somebody who knew Nepal inside and out, who understood even the smallest issues, somebody who we could trust would always put the children first in his or her mind, who agreed with our principles.

In starting to think about who could take this on, we modeled our perfect candidate after our friend and colleague, Anna Howe. Anna was already country director for an organization similar to ours but substantially larger. She had lived in Nepal for 14 years and spoke the language fluently. She had been out to the remote mountain region of Humla many times (where I traveled to looking for families), and had personally worked with the villagers. Last year she opened 10 orphanages and hired 70 staff. The kids she was responsible for (over 100 of them) adored her. When I was starting up NGN last year, I was in daily contact with her, seeking out her advice on everything, and continued to do so when I arrived in Nepal. We needed somebody like her – the best place to find that person would be at ask Anna for help in finding the right person, since she knew everybody in Kathmandu.

Then something happened that I still marvel over: Anna left her job. That was earlier this year. She began looking at other jobs in the UN in Kathmandu and elsewhere. I immediately called her to find out if she might be interested in working with us, understanding that we were very limited in the amount of salary we could offer her.

And miraculously, she was excited! She had no idea we were looking for somebody. She loved the way we worked (she should, she helped us all along the way), and this would be a dream job for her, even at the very modest salary. This is what she is passionate about. It was a perfect match. Our board of directors interviewed her and were immediately impressed.

So we have the amazing Anna Howe as the Country Director of Next Generation Nepal! I’m still a bit blown away by that. She’s deeply respected by all parties in Nepal. She has already had a long and full career in business and then in non-profit and only wants to do this kind of work with children. This is a woman who a few years ago received a personal Unsung Heroes award from the Dali Lama (!!) for her work in Nepal. This is her life, and she is working with us.

Believe me when I tell you – the kids could not possibly have a stronger and more competent advocate working to give them a better life, to make sure they see their families again.

So all is well! Our staff is up to about ten people, Anna and Farid and the rest our wonderful local staff who take care of the children and work on our reunification project. In addition, just before I left we opened the official NGN office! That got me totally psyched. The kids all wanted to help paint, so it got a bit messy (which was pretty hilarious), but it looks beautiful. It is the ground floor of the house next door to our children’s home, Dhaulagiri, which means while our staff is working the kids will be playing outside. I love that – it is a constant reminder, even when our heads are buried in paperwork and fundraising and opening bank accounts and dealing with hideous bureaucracy of who we are doing this for.

As for me, I remain Executive Director of NGN in America, where I work on fundraising and strategy, and I am still involved in the daily operations. We email back and forth several times per day to keep each other up to date. The main difference is that I’m finally near Liz all the time, and that I don’t have to boil milk before drinking it. We miss the kids like crazy though. That’s the toughest part.

The fundraising continues to be critical. As an NGO registered in Nepal, we must spend at least $50,000 per year on projects or we lose our license to work there. That’s a lot to raise every year, and it still falls on my shoulders. Your help is hugely, hugely appreciated. There’s a lot of exciting stuff happening out there right now, kids are going back with their families, more children are being rescued. But they need help, it’s that simple.

The political situation is also pretty ugly at the moment out there, making it that much more urgent. It now seems certain that the much ballyhooed (spellcheck is giving me the thumbs up on that word! Though, ironically, not on the word “spellcheck”) elections will not happen, and Maoists might take up arms again, as they continue to threaten. It’s hard being a Nepali.

There was a nice moment for them on the last night I was there, though – Farid and I were heading back home after a nice dinner out when we found our usually deserted tiny intersection mobbed with people to the point where we had to shove our way through. They had set up a crude outdoor TV – the first I had seen in Nepal – and were glued to the final of Indian Idol, where a young guy of Nepali descent was one of the two finalists. We both went home and forgot about it – but a few hours later I heard this absolute roar from outside, which was pretty unusual not only because I was listening to music with headphones (so it must have been deafening) but also because Nepalis tend to go to bed around 9 p.m. Turned out the Nepali guy had won. (Anna told us the next day she literally thought the revolution had started again.)

So on my way out of Nepal, a sad day, with red tikka on my forehead from the children, flowers in my arms, missing the kids already, I picked up the paper to see not the scowl of the Maoist leader nor a bombed out bus nor burning tires and riot police nor blaring headlines of peace agreements in jeopardy, but instead this 20-something year old guy with a goofy smile, almost hidden by falling confetti, looking back at me, and front page splattered with articles of how the different parts of the country of Nepal, glued to whatever television they might be lucky enough to find, all simultaneously (and I quote) “went totally bananas.”

I like that.

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Here’s where all you good folks can learn more about what we’re doing with Next Generation Nepal and how to help the kids, who, odds are, are doing something ridiculously cute right at this very moment.

All Star Team

By Conor | September 20th, 2007 | 10 Comments »

In no particular order of importance, here is what happened yesterday in Nepal: the rainy season ended (according to Farid, whose word I take because I don’t understand what anybody else is saying), the last of my visiting house guests (my mom) left, the Maoists quit the government and are now threatening bad things (civil war and junk like that), I saw our new (and first ever) NGN office (woo hoo!), and I told the children that I am going to be leaving Nepal this coming Monday. I also ate four peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner, which is made all the more gross by the fact that I’m kind of craving that for dinner tonight too.

Four peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, dude. Like, in a row. I told Liz (who was here for two weeks but went home a few days ago) that they were small and that I was hungry, and she sounded understanding, but I’m thinking she had an image in her mind of me with Smuckers in my hair and a disoriented look on my face and maybe accepting a blue ribbon with a big “Iowa State Fair” sign behind me and Mitt Romney’s handlers abruptly steering him away from the scene.

But like I said, there’s more than that going on: I’m leaving Nepal!
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The rain, again (w/photos)

By Conor | August 17th, 2007 | 9 Comments »

You know, usually the best thing about getting sick with, let’s say, a kind of flu, is being able to complain to other people, especially one’s significant other, about your distress. You tend to get a lot of attention and she brings you orange juice in bed, which is totally awesome.

You will lose that sympathetic high ground, however, when you subsequently pass that same flu onto your loved one. Then you’re just kind of a jerk. That’s pretty much what I did in London on my last weekend in Europe when Liz came to visit. I think she’s still a bit sick, which makes it hard for me to complain to her about my lingering sickness. I still do, though, complain, and pretend to cough a lot while talking to her on Skype and soaking up her sympathy while she is on the other side of the world downing Nyquil and really coughing and still going into the office and staying up late so we can talk.

And that’s how I know I found the right woman, my friends.
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Why June 29th, 2007 Was Totally Awesome

By Conor | July 22nd, 2007 | 19 Comments »

I believe that all great writing should start out with a bang. It should leap out at you with an opening sentence that makes the reader literally shout aloud with excitement. Imagine how many more copies of James Joyce’s Ulysses would have been sold had he opened with something like “Ulysses shot his way out of the liquor store, bleeding from the gut, and took off running after Osama bin Laden, who was running away down the street like a total scaredy cat. ‘You’re mine now, Osama bin Laden!’ roared Ulysses, loading up his flamethrower.”

“YAAAGH!!” the reader would shout.

But he didn’t start it that way, and that’s why nobody remembers who he was.

My opening line, by contrast, is really spectacular, especially if you are me or my mom. Here it is:

I’m engaged!
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Partying for orphans

By Conor | June 27th, 2007 | 5 Comments »

I am going to start opening every blog entry with “It’s been a krazee couple of weeks!!!!!!”

It will usually be a lie, of course, but if I always start out by saying “It’s been a krazee couple of weeks!!!!!!” then everybody will think there is a legitimate reason why I have not been writing and may, with any luck, go to their kitchen and take the voodoo doll out of the microwave.

In this case, it happens to be true – these few weeks have been kraaaa-zee! And I’m gonna tell you why. So, let’s begin:

It’s been a krazee couple of weeks!!!!!!!
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Permanence

By Conor | June 8th, 2007 | 7 Comments »

In a minute I’m going to tell you how Farid and I ended up on a motorcycle speeding through an otherwise empty, post-apocalyptic Kathmandu dodging burning tires and running roadblocks for almost a full day all in the name of trying to secure a visa to stay in this third world country, a visa that offered the twin benefits of a.) taking care of orphans for the long term and b.) avoiding jail time. But first, I have a public service announcement. Here it is:

Paypal may hate orphans.

Can I get sued for writing that? Because I’d hate for Paypal to sue me into bankruptcy and send their goons to my apartment in Kathmandu to seize my water bottle and foreclose on my pants. But I think they very well might – hate orphans, that is. Because if you’re looking to buy some retardo Deep Space 9 figurines on Ebay, Paypal runs like a well-oiled machine. Try to send some cash to buy food for orphans, however, and half the time the system goes down. So, QED. (If that means what I think it means – I think it kind of means “boo-yah”?)

Thus, with the help of my friend Josh, we set up Justgive.org on the website. (Josh, for those in the know, is my old college buddy who was quoted in the UVA Alumni magazine as saying “if you were going to pick the person in college would who start an orphanage, Conor would not be that person. Also, Conor has a haircut that looks like a shot raccoon and he can’t hold his bourbon.”

I’m paraphrasing (in that the first sentence is true and the second is also true but was mercifully left out of the article) but you get the general idea.

My point is this – if you tried to donate online to Next Generation Nepal through Paypal and it didn’t work, we have a new, additional system in place that sucks less, so please come back, because we love you very, very much and everyone who donates over $100 gets a brand new toaster oven!!!!!*

(*I’m lying about the toaster oven.)

Ok, back to the blog.
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Searching for families in Nuwakot (w/ photos)

By Conor | May 22nd, 2007 | 10 Comments »

I got back to Kathmandu about a week ago – I had been out of contact for about ten days.

What’s that? Where was I? Oh, nowhere special….just out in the mountains looking for families of conflict-displaced children.

(Wait for applause/finger snapping.)

Oh, please, it was my pleasure – what can I say, I love humans! So sue me! Sue me for loving humans!
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