IT IS FINISHED.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. That 2-ton weight that has been hanging over my head for the last year and a half, that has sucked the carefreeness out of every procrastinating moment, and shadowed my waking hours with a perpetual cloud of guilt that I SHOULD be working on my Queens thesis…Well it is finally over. All 110 pages of it – typed and submitted.

I feel like my life has lost some purpose.

It does mean though that I can now finally catch up on at least the last month’s worth of slacking off and frolicking around the city and blogging and such that I’ve been itching to do. Oh I have had so many unfinished posts that I simply didn’t have the energy to follow through on once I started them in my head. I will try and diligently fill you in over the next little while, now that my tongue has been loosened.

So I’ll tell you about my day today.

One of the things I love about working at the UN is the super-high concentration of incredibly diverse and interesting people, all packed into one building. It's great to walk down the halls and hear about 6 different languages spoken on the way to the bathroom. One of my favourite things to do is hang out at the packed cafeteria at lunch time (which has the best salad bar - one of NY's cheapest!), and go sit down at random tables. You never know who you're going to meet, and a simple smile and friendly hello can go a long way. Sometimes a bit further than you intended, when middle-aged diplomats start hitting on you. But today I had this delightful conversation with a nice old man from Paris named Jean, he was even kind enough to condescend to my broken French. It turns out this guy has been working at the UN since it first started in 1946, and happened to be the Director of the UN General Assembly for 17 years. Here's a description of him I found on the internet:

"Paris-born Jean Gazarian was for 26 years (1959-1985) the General Assembly's silent watchdog. Under his dark, alert gaze, fiery debates, passionate and somnolent speeches, intricate procedural manoeuvering and more than one historical moment unfolded. As the Secretariat's Director of General Assembly Affairs, his task was to keep things moving smoothly, to make sure that the world forum's delicate fabric remained reasonably unperturbed even in the face of diplomatic wrangling, protocol snafus or bomb scares. Now a senior fellow at UNITAR, the UN Institute for Training and Research and a roving organizer of international conferences-he has co-ordinated recent meetings on Cambodia, drugs, and Central American and Indo-Chinese refugees."

For a really interesting account of some of the things he’s experienced over the years, check out this interview with him. Here are a few excerpts:

Any particularly memorable moments you witnessed?
In my 26 years at the Assembly, I heard many interesting-as well as many not so interesting-speeches and saw many Presidents, Queens and Kings, Fidel Castro, two Popes, Yasser Arafat, and Mr. Khrushchev banging his shoe.
One of the most spectacular years was 1960, the fifteenth session of the General Assembly. That year, Prime Minister Nehru had decided to come to the UN. This was unheard of, unexpected. Many other world leaders decided to do the same, including Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro.
I was sitting there, at my usual place, a desk by the rostrum, to the left of the President. Mr. Macmillan, the British Prime Minister, was delivering his speech in a very eloquent way, like a British Prime Minister should. As he was talking, he heard from the back of the Hall, a very strange noise, one which had never been heard before and has never been heard since.
It was Mr. Khrushchev, who had removed one of his shoes-I presume his left shoe, because of his political affiliation-and was banging it with great strength while shouting in Russian: "This is untrue, Mr.Macmillan, the Soviet people are good people, the Soviet people are good people ... !"
Contrary to what some people believe, he did not have a spare shoe in his attache case: he banged his own shoe. Mr. Macmillan was so surprised that he interrupted his speech, raised his glasses and said these memorable words: "I should like to have it translated if it means anything".

What about Fidel Castro?
He said: "Ladies and gentlemen: I have the reputation of speaking at length, but this time I can assure you I shall be extremely brief', and he ended 4 hours and 20 minutes later, without any notes.
Later he came unexpectedly to the 38th floor with all his men, in fatigue uniforms, and asked Dag Hammarskjold permission to spend the night in the UN garden, because he was having difficulties with the New York authorities.
"We're soldiers, we're used to camping out. Please, let us stay in the garden", he told Hammarskjold. The Secretary-General resolved the incident by diplomatic means and Castro and his men decided to stay at the Theresa Towers in Harlem.

The more I follow all this global politics and international affairs the more I am reminded of children on a playground, pointing fingers at each other and shifting blame and picking sides to gang up against the other side, driven by egos and vested interests, hardly really listening or meaningfully communicating with the other side at all. It’s weird to think that when it comes down to it so many lives are at the stake of a few people’s egos.