What up world? Oh, yeah, I already what's up, with each and every one of you. How do I know, you ask? Well, I'm in the rustic countryside of New York City at the National Model United Nations Conference hanging out with ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY ONE other countries. After hearing a ton of representatives give speeches and through caucusing, I think I know what most countries are thinking- at least regarding the subject of my committee (World Intellectual Property Organization), which deals with patenting rights and the fight against HIV/AIDS in developing nations. Since this is my first post for this surefire future award winning blog, I'll summarize what has happened over the course of the past few days.
Monday (and, technically, Tuesday)
I was absolutely determined to make some headway on future homework, finish packing, and fall asleep by eleven o'clock in order to wake up at 4:30 to meet the other Model UNers at the Kinard parking lot by 4:45. Of course, should have known better. My roommate had just synced his Netflix account with his XBOX 360, and he had spent several thousand hours watching various movies and TV shows in the past few weeks (undoubtedly trying to improve his SceneIt skills, of course). Sunday afternoon, he had discovered the show Jericho, and quickly had both myself and my brother hooked after watching the pilot episode. So, once 11 o'clock rolled around, I had yet to even start packing due to this addicting Jericho business. I decided to take my time packing that night while watching Jericho, and also learned how to tie a tie. This was perhaps the greatest achievement of my sophomore year of college.
Anyways, many episodes later, Sean Ray drove Vihara and me to Kinard to pick up Ryan and drive to the Memphis Airport. We were all in the it's-too-early-i'm-delirious-please-get-me-caffeine phase, so we had some really interesting conversations. Once at the airport, most of the gang decided to look for food. While some Model UNers quickly sat down at the first appeasing "restaurant" they found, neither Ryan nor I would settle. We wanted real food. We wanted delicious food. We wanted Popeye's. Thus, we embarked on a minutes long journey to another terminal to reach the Land of Gold and Honey. We quickly scarfed down our biscuits, then met up with everyone else to wait for our plane. After boarding the plane a few minutes early, I quickly found my window seat and then quickly fell asleep.
I groggily woke up two hours later to the captain announcing we were fifteen minutes away and to fasten our seat belts. I was happy we were almost there, but my bladder was not happy that we had to stay in our seats. My two Monster energy drinks and nearly endless supply of water had caught up to me. I impatiently waited for the plane to land 30 minutes later, then rushed to the nearest men's room.
After grabbing our checked luggage, four of us got a cab to drive us to the Marriot Marquis on Times Square. I had shotgun for the nearly conversationless drive, and singlehandedly saved our poor driver from crashing into another car ON TWO SEPARATE OCCASIONS. I had to warn him when he got literally inches from driving into other cabs. Seriously, a barefoot, overall-wearing, 12 year-old Mississippian could have driven better than this guy. Which, in the minds of some Model UNers from cultured states, is the typical Mississippian. lawlz.
But, we did manage to arrive to our hotel safe and sound, so a few of us went to H&M a few blocks away after eating at Famiglia's Famous Pizzeria. After looking around for some cheap clothes, I finally settled upon a cheap pair of shoes so I could go to the hotel's workout facility (which I'll refer to as the Turner Center). A few hours later, we made it up to our hotel room, showered, then went to the NMUN's opening ceremony at 6 to listen to DIKEMBE 'NOT IN MY HOUSE' MUTOMBO!!!!! This made my day. I've been a fan of the 7' 2" former NBA star from the Democratic Republic of Congo ever since I was a tiny lad playing Pee Wee basketball. He had a deep, hoarse voice, but his message was clear- use this conference to learn from one another in order to make the world a better place.
My first committee began one hour after the opening ceremony ended. After a lengthy roll call (15 or so minutes) and a speech from the Dais, about 75 placards shot up in the air with each intent on motioning for a caucus. Once we voted on the length of the caucus, everyone jumped up and started shouting (which was against protocol, I later found out) "Africa!!" or "EU!!!" or "Middle East!!" while the U.S. of A. just casually walked around the room. As a first time Model UNer, I experienced an adrenaline rush and did not know what to do. I looked for some other African states, but could not find any for some reason. I found a big congregation of people just outside Astor Ballroom (where the WIPO committee is held) so I listened in on their conversations.
I found myself in the middle of European Union states who were debating the order of topics we would discuss. Everyone had their own opinion, and of course most of these states wanted to focus on climate change instead of fighting HIV/AIDS. Sweden, however, was undeterred in his plight to help developing nations. He argued that helping African nations fight HIV/AIDS would help strengthen ties among the E.U. and African bloc, but most of the European nations had apparently just seen An Inconvenient Truth and wanted nothing of the sort. Luckily for Guinea, most other nations do not care what Al Gore thinks; after caucus, a majority of the nations voted to help developing nations combat HIV/AIDS. Once committee was over, I went to the famous McDonalds on Times Square (I always end up eating unhealthy foods on days I travel). Once getting back to the hotel, however, I immediately met my new best friend- the Sandman.
Wednesday
I had fallen asleep around 12 the night before and woke up after 12:30 the next morni...er, afternoon. This was all fine and dandy, though, because we did not start committee until two hours later. I decided to head to a deli to grab a quick lunch, then ate it at the hotel (Oh, btdubs guys, New York is expensive. Like, Vaught-Hemingway Stadium concession-stand expensive. Good thing I'm gonna be rich and famous one day once my blogging career takes off so I don't have to worry about the prices).
When I was in the elevator heading down to committee, I met a delegate from The Gambia. As a fellow African nation, I made a point to sit near him at committee then meet up with him at our next caucus to see which nations he had met up with the night before. Roughly 30 minutes after committee started, we had our first caucus of the day, and I walked with him and the other Gambian delegate to the front left corner of the room to meet with (mostly) other developing nations. Yemen was spearheading the discussions with her laptop and bullet points, and I like the topics they and other members (Syria, Turkey, Myanmar, Argentina, and Israel, to name a few) had brought up, so I decided to work with them. I researched compulsory licensing until the caucus ended, and then we were out of committee moments afterwards. I was happy to have finally found a group to work with.
In between committee, I decided to take advantage of the Marriott's Turner Center on the 23rd floor. I changed from my jacket/tie/khakis combo in favor of a fraternity t-shirt, basketball shorts, and my "athletic" shoes I had bought the previous day. I was one of five people in the Turner Center, and one of those five worked the front desk. I sat down on a bench near the free weights, while a super super super super super super super super skinny and timid black man worked out by himself at the nearby Smith Machine. Knowing that the New York City Marathon had recently taken place, I thought that he might have run in it and then decided to stay in town for a few extra days to enjoy the sights.
Anyways, I worked out for about an hour and a half while enjoying daytime ESPN programs and grabbed a complimentary Granny Smith apple on the way out. I quickly showered, ate the rest of my pasta from the deli, and headed back to committee. I found the Speaker's List to be quite useless around this time, because most nations were simply sputtering rhetoric about how we must work together, and that HIV/AIDS is bad, and whatnot. We all knew this already. Thus, after every four or five speakers, we voted for to caucus every time. I spent more time researching the topics of my group's report, which included the TRIPS agreement and more compulsory licensing. After committee, I unwound in the hotel room and watched the NBA playoffs. I'm a big New Orleans Hornets fan since I live only 45 minutes away from the Big Easy, and I was pleasantly surprised when my Hornets defeated the number two seed Lakers IN LOS ANGELES this past Sunday. I was really excited to watch the game, but wound up going to bed disappointed once the Lakers managed to tie the series up at one game apiece.
Thursday
ThursDay was a good day for me, but ThursMorning was not a good morning for me. I earliest class each day of the week this semester has been at 11, 1, 11, 9:30, and 12. And that's Central Time Zone. NYC wants to rush ahead and do everything one hour in advance of everyone else in America, including the act of waking up. My committee started at 9:30 that morning, which is like 8:30 in Mississippi, so I had to wake up around 7:30 in MS time. My body was not happy. I was sore from working out the day before, and was starving from hardly eating anything that day too. So, I trudged along through committee and caucuses that morning, as I had absolutely no idea where the Starbucks was (the Marriott is 43 floors I think, and the first eight are filled with either general lobbies, shops, information centers, or tourist traps). I did not want to waste time looking for it, so I was impatiently waiting for the first of the three committees scheduled for Thursday to end. Without energy, everything seemed to take even longer than it actually was: the already-lengthy roll call, the counting of placard for voting, the researching, the sixty second speeches, the whole shabang. Jon needed caffeine and food.
So, once the highly anticipated time of 12:30 rolled around, I was ecstatic and ran to get food. I met Ryan and Rachel "WhatchuTalkinBout" Willis in the lobby downstairs and walked briskly in the wind to Chipotle's Mexican Grill, where I ordered an absolutely ginormous steak burrito and scarfed it down in minutes. I was the first one done, then Rachel finished a few minutes later, and Ryan only ate about half of his. It was a big burrito, and my stomach was happy.
I then ventured to the Turner Center for only a quick workout because our second three-hour committee of the day was approaching, but returned to committee with my Galaxy S in hand, ready to research (the Marriott's internet is unbearably slow, like Ole Miss slow, so I made due with the tiny screen of my cell phone to research information). Surprisingly, however, I did not have to research at all. When I was dealing with my body's hateful nature towards me that morning, my group had actually finished the report. In the first caucus of the second committee, I was handed a freshly printed report. So, naturally, I spent most of my time looking over the report, hoping to understand everything it said in order to be able to persuade others to become signitories. During this committee I also made sure to see what other blocs/groups were researching as well, much to the Dais's delight I'm sure. She had announced that they had received over fifteen papers, which is a lot. She recommended finding like-minded groups and merging papers, so I tried to do this. It didn't work out exactly as I had planned. Oh well, on to our second break of the very long day.
I met up with two of my roommates, Kegan and LaBrandon, and I led them to a Japanese restaurant for dinner. I take Japanese language classes and hadn't eaten Asian food in a while, so I was craving Japanese and I'm glad my roommates wanted to eat there as well. All three of us ordered a different kind of sushi, but I also ordered teriyaki salmon- I was starving after working off that burrito at the Turner Center. We had some good conversations, which ranged from food (of course), to Model UN, to life after college, to basketball, to do-rags, to #hashtags, and to many other topics. Kegan then surprised us by ordering fried ice cream for dessert, but I was perhaps even more surprised that a Japanese restaurant actually served fried ice cream. My small-town Mississippi mind was blown.
We then geared up for our final committee sessions of the day. At this point in the game I was basically just doing the same things I did from the second committee. So, I'll give two color commentaries (#NBAtalk) from what happened instead:
1. EVERY time the Holy See was called during roll, the delegate would always say, "The Holy See is Present" instead of simply "Present" or "Present and Voting." A majority of the room snickered every single time (myself included).
2. Another roll call story- There are four different nations that have the word "Guinea" in them: Equatorial Guinea, Guinea, Guinea-Bassau, and Papua New Guinea. When "Guinea" was called during roll, I would look at the Chair, stand up, and say "Present" loud enough for him to hear me. Then, without hesitation, he would call for "Guinea-Bassau." The first time roll was called, I was nervous and thought that I was the first delegate who he didn't hear or that Guinea wasn't important enough to merit a delegate for the WIPO. But then, once my nerves settled, I realized that he had simply called another country. I thought like this for at least half of my committee roll calls.
After this third committee, Rachel Willis came up to my hotel room to hang out with the "cool room" people: Kegan, LaBrandon, Ryan, and myself. We played cards for a long time, watched The Simpsons and then the Trailblazers-Mavericks game, and talked until the wee hours of the morning (i.e. roughly 1 AM). We all had to wake up early for Friday's first committee, so we went to bed rather peacefully.
Pray for me that I don't die tonight..I know I won't be resurrected on Sunday #goodfriday
Until next time,
Jon
No comments:
Post a Comment