DC Week (7 of 8): Meet the Ambassadors

Wow! I'm amazed that Javier the Intern found this spinning globe for us!

Today, we are going to list 20 ambassadors representing their respective nations in Washington, D.C. (between our two blogs) We must apologize to the likes of Iraqi ambassador Faiy Lukman and Finnish ambassador Ritav Koukku-Ronde for not finding a slot for them.

And, on our sister blog, we will name ten other ten ambassadors, including Dutch ambassador Rudolf Bekink, who we mentioned on this blog last week.

On our sister blog, we also jokingly suggested that Cong. Morgan Griffith (R-Va) meet with Turkish ambassador Namik Tan (pictured top) for lunch at Ezme, a Turkish restaurant in Washington, D.C. This is the link for that particular entry:
http://politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com/2013/10/dc-week-teaser-perhaps-cong-morgan.html

http://ezmedc.com/

The joke was that with a government shutdown, perhaps members of Congress could engage in some activities they never can while working on Capitol Hill. But, as it turns, both the House and Senate members are burning the proverbial midnight oil.

The ambassador pictured below is Jan Mattysen, the Belgian ambassador to the United States. We had a coin flip conducted by Javier the Intern and as a result we chose him over Bulgarian ambassador Elena Poptodorova for the below image.

For the daily goings-on in the diplomat circles, we highly recommend "The Washington Diplomat." http://www.washdiplomat.com/

And we learned from The Washingtonian magazine several months ago that Roble Olhaye of the northwest African country of Djibouti is the longest serving diplomat in the nation's capital.

Here is the list, we have put the serve they started their Washington missions in parantheses:

1. Turkey, Namik Tan, (2010)

2. Slovenia, Bozo Cerar (2013)

3. Israel, Michael Oren, (2009): Oren was actually born in New York.

4. Czech Rep., Petr Gandalovic (2005)

5. Djibouti, Roble Olhaye, (1988)

6. Belgium, Jan Matthysen (2009)

7. Bulgaria, Elena Poptodorva (2010)

8. Egypt, Mohamed M. Tawfik (2012)

9. Azerbaijan, Elin Suleymanov (2006)

10. Mexico, Eduardo Medina-Mora (2007)

http://vasington.be.mfa.gov.tr/

http://www.azembassy.us/

http://74.81.82.58/~bulgaria/

http://www.diplobel.us/

Coming Soon to This Blog Near You (No Promises): What You Might Expect in August

Greetings to our blog readers in Estonia, Ghana and Italy or wherever you might be today. It's now mid-noon in New York and Atlanta, 5:30 p.m. in London and 7:30 p.m. in Ankara, Turkey. If we are wrong about any of this, we will blame Javier the Intern and Zappa the Family Cat.

Today's image is of the early year American comic actor W.C. Fields (1880-1946), who once professed that anyone who hates children and puppies couldn't be all bad. Of course, he said this a full seven decades before Dick Cheney became vice president (forgive the political humuor-we prefer the Brit spelling).

Fields is buried in Glendale, Calif., a Los Angeles suburb, which is home to a very large Armenian-American population. Ironically, we know this because the person blogging this info is a Turkish-American.

If you need to explain the irony, I suggest you go to the Facebook pages for the Turkish and Armenian embassies respectively.

Here are three items we hope to post within the next few days, months or perhaps years:

1) Ten More Things To Do in Roanoke, Va: Perhaps we may even discuss some of the more unique attractions in the southwest Virginia area, including a pet cemetery in nearby Cloverdale and Mini-Graceland as well as some of the nifty places to hang out, such as Alejandro's Mexican Grill in downtown Roanoke.

2)  Ten Things to Do in Greensboro, NC: Though I am no longer a resident of North Carolina, the state holds a dear place in my heart for me. The Green Bean Coffee Shop in downtown Greensboro and the a/perture Cinema in nearby Winston-Salem, which is showing the indy dramedy "The Way, Way Back" along with two other films, would be among the places we would plan to profile.

3) Virtual Postcards: We are hoping to resume the series, which was fairly popular, in some way, shape or form.


Stay tuned.....

DULY NOTED: The links below will actually be for the Armenian Consulate in Glendale, Calif., rather than the embassy in Washington, D.C. Conversely, turkey.org is a web site for information on Turkey, and is not the web site for the Turkish embassy either (see links below).

For those wondering who the ambassadors are (thanks to Google), we can say that it Tatoul Markarian who is Armenia's ambassador to America. His counterpart is Namik Tan for Turkey.

Somehow, we don't expect either of them to be having lunch at Ray's Hell Burgers in Arlington, Va. (a D.C. suburb) any time soon!

http://www.aperturecinema.com

http://www.alejandrosmexicangrill.com

http://www.wcfields.com

http://www.turkey.org

http://www.armenianconsulate.org

This and That- Dr. Oz Makes the Cover of Time Magazine

Yesterday, while browsing magazines at a local Barnes and Noble, I noticed that Dr. Mehmet Oz, who the world simply knows as Dr. Oz, was on the cover of "Time" magazine.

A tweet from Namik Tan, Turkey's ambassador to the United States, said that Dr. Oz was the eighth Turkish citizen to grace the cover of the magazine. I presume Dr. Oz has dual citizenship, and that one of the other seven people was Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey.

And, a report from the English-language version of "Hurriyet," one of Turkey's most-read newspapers, confirmed that Dr. Oz was the eighth person to be on the cover of "Time" though no mention was made of the other seven. I am curious to know if Mehmet Ali Agca, arguably one of the most infamous people from Turkey in the last fifty years, was on the cover of "Time." 30 years ago, Agca attempted to assasinate Pope John Paul in Vatican City, and I'm wondering if this is the reason why no mention is made of who the other people are.

Though I am a "Newsweek" subscriber, as a fellow Turkish-American, I am very happy for Dr. Oz. The cover story deals with his own colon cancer scare. Dr. Oz, who was born in Cleveland, will turn 51 on June 11.

Speaking of Turkey, a tweet from Marc Guillet, who I presume is an international reporter, said the following which made me home-sick for my father's country, even though like Dr. Oz, I was born in America.

The tweet reads as follows:

"I'm at Kadikoy ferry where young people from the Black Sea region are dancing traditional music. I love it."

Kadikoy is arguably the most populated section of Istanbul on the Asian side of the megalopolis. The Trabzon-Rize region in the eastern Black Sea is indeed very well-known for folk dancing as well as tea farms.

While I was at Barnes and Noble yesterday, I also saw a book entitled "The Invisible Gorilla" by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simmons. The book is meant to show that our instincts are not always the most logical ways of resolving problems.

One part of the book deals with what chess masters and criminals have in common, and while one may think it is that both plan ahead, the answer, according to a member of the South Dakota Chess Association, is that both groups have high degreees of confidence. We wonder what Boris Spassky, the great Russian chess player, would make of this?!

Lastly, we have more details about the attack on the Paul Gauguin* painting "Two Tahitian Women" (1899) that goes for 1899 and is worth $80 million. The painting is on the display until today at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

I saw the exhibit several weeks ago, and I had blogged about the early April incident, which occured long before I went to the National Gallery, here. But, I realized that I had overlooked how the painting was attacked.

Apparently, Susan Burns, 53, from Alexandria, Va., a suburb of Washington, DC, did not attack the painting with a fork or a knife as I had presumed. I was wondering how she would have gotten past the tight security at the museum. As it turns, while yelling: "This is evil!," she tried to take the painting down before the guards restrained her. It has been reported that Burns felt the painting of two topless Tahitian women carrying mangos, which is one of Gauguin's most famous painting, was 'too homosexual.'

*-Alas, we also learned that we did not spell Paul Gauguin's name correctly in that entry!