Since this site is becoming more serious, and less about my personal life, I decided to invite a friend to contribute. I am looking forward to his posts, as I am sure they will be of much higher quality than mine! He will be posting as “The Dragoman”, and his bio is below:
The Dragoman is the pseudonym of an Indonesian transplant in his 20s living in Washington, D.C. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia, where he studied politics and economics, and a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins University, where he concentrated on macroeconomics and international relations. A long-standing observer of East Asian and Middle Eastern affairs, he has researched and assisted in publications focusing on topics as varied as Japanese nationalism, Sino-Vietnamese relations, Iranian domestic politics, and Turkish foreign policy in Central Asia. The Dragoman is also avidly interested in Japanese contemporary literature and Persian literary classics, and speaks fluent Indonesian, German, and Japanese, when he is not dabbling in Mandarin Chinese and Turkish. The pseudonym referred to an interpreter-diplomat in the foreign service of the Ottoman court in Istanbul.
He can be contacted at tercumanieffendi at gmail dot com.
