A rather long and rambling series of thoughts on Christmas

Christmas 2000. (Yes, just eight years ago, much too recent to be nostalgic. Just work with me here!) The end of finals coincided with a big snowstorm, and heaven knows New Haven looks a lot better under a blanket of fresh snow. I’ve been out Christmas shopping, and on arriving home I park the car and looking up at the kitchen window to see the lights on while the roomies are cooking dinner while the snow falls beautifully in the dying gray light. Inside, I hear a CD blasting on my roommate’s stereo – a CD I had bought for her and left on her pillow that morning. When she sees me stumbling in the kitchen door with an armful of gifts, there’s an enthusiastic thank you that greets me along with the heady warm air from the stove, and my cup of cheer most certainly runneth over.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to let this memory get too treacly. You see, that shopping trip was the one on which I bought my then-sweetie a pair of gloves for Christmas. She’d said she needed a new pair, and these were her favourite color. They matched the scarf she used to wear all the time. But...and here I must pause and remind those of you who knew me in 2000 that you know which ex this is, and of course there was going to be a “but” here...but being who she was, Christmas morning, she took one look at the gloves and asked me if I had kept the receipt. (I had, but I don’t recall if I ever gave her a straight answer or not.)

And that’s perhaps the all time best example of why every Christmas, I look forward to the big moment when you know the craziness is over and you’re free to just enjoy the moment on your own. Really, the whole Christmas season tradition was always a bit oppressive to me even when I was a kid. I always looked forward to the peace and quiet of whenever the craziness ended. The downright sadistic parties at school, the get-togethers with neighbours and family that nobody really enjoyed, and the constant barrage of saccharine television commercials that just screamed “your Christmas sucks and everybody else is living in a Thomas Kincaid painting”...sooner or later all of it would finally be in the rearview mirror and wherever you were, that’s when you could bask in the Christmas Spirit in your own special way, remember?

Usually I didn’t – and still don’t – know just when moment would occur, but I would know it when I felt it. Watching a favorite Christmas episode of some show on TV maybe, or listening to the oldies station under the covers after bedtime, that’s a fine memory. In college, it was usually sometime after Waltz. For the vast majority of my readers who did not go to Grinnell, Waltz is...well, think of the senior prom, only with decent music and nobody bothers with pretending not to be drunk. It was usually a lot of fun, but usually really tedious too. Every semester I would seriously consider not going, and then I would go and have a wonderful time in spite of myself, but I also found I was always a bit relieved the whole thing was over. Yeah, I’m a lump of sugar and all that, but I usually do a pretty good job of hiding it even from myself. Anyway, after Waltz it was usually about two weeks to finals, and after the calm inevitability of finals and the slow realization that they hadn’t really been that bad, and then there would be a glorious three or four days before heading home where you could just hang around with your friends and bask in the relief. And the seasonal joy, if you wanted it.

In DC, Christmas usually coincided with a bunch of housemates leaving. It put a bittersweet damper on the barrage of Be happy, dagnabbit!, but it was also an excuse for spending plenty of quality time with people you actually enjoyed spending time with. I have a number of especially fond memories of dinner at Childe Harold on Dupont Circle with various soon-to-be-scattered friends, and then there were the late drinks at Eagan’s. That’s one of the few things about DC I still miss since I wore out my welcome there last time around. At Yale, well, see the beginning of this entry. And since then? Well, it’s been almost too low key for the past several years, usually because I was either busy studying right up to the last minute or living in a country where Christmas wasn’t a big deal.

But what about this year? Actually, this Christmas season has been just as quiet as the last several, and I like it that way. But this time around, there was no real “moment,” because for once there was no serious buildup of gun-to-the-head cheerfulness. There’s been plenty of garish decor (Singapore being Singapore, there always is anyway), but the hot weather has kept it from feeling like the cheer-up-or-die business I had come to identify with the 25th and the several weeks before it. With work keeping me fairly busy up through Wednesday and the better half off visiting her parents in Abu Dhabi (yes, I’ve been seeing somebody and yes, there’s a reason why I haven’t mentioned it on here before, but it’s nothing the least bit sordid), it was easy enough to forget the whole thing. Wednesday night, it was off to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner – my gift to myself, and I was quite happy with it. It was raining, but the lights strung across the street were beautiful despite (or even because of?) the weather. After dinner, it was across the street to an Irish pub where I had a bit too much, ensuring a late Christmas morning while my roommates celebrated the big event with their two year old.

Okay, that’s actually a little depressing, isn’t it? Trust me, I had a nice time whether it sounds like it or not. Hope everyone else had a happy holiday as well, wherever you all are and whatever you’re up to!

Smart baby

Passed on without further comment...

Every time a kid shoots his eye out, a bell rings

I see the annual love-to-hate-It's a Wonderful Life fest is in full swing at the New York Times. This might surprise some of you, but I agree completely with the article. I had thought of some of those things before, of course, especially the fact that the "bad" Bedford Falls looks like a lot more fun. But it had not occurred to me before that all those manufacturing jobs George brought to town arrived just in time for an economic slump in Upstate New York that is still in full swing six decades later. So he just set the town up for an even bigger fall than it otherwise would have had. Ouch. Note that he also makes the case that the movie has some brilliant acting and some well-crafted scenes - just that the "happy" ending is still pretty depressing. (And also inaccurate, since he still probably would have gone to jail.)

Now, here's what I want to know. When are the Scrooges (and Potters) going to start in on A Christmas Story as well? Take away the warm fuzzies and what is the real Christmas Story? Well, Dad goes behind Mom's back to buy their son an extremely dangerous gift - with some potentially ugly hints at his future to boot - and then the kid comes within an inch of exactly the disaster that everybody warned him about, but he escapes any consequences by lying to his parents about the whole thing. That's it! It makes me want to run and hide behind a stack of videotapes of Very Special Episodes of every bad eighties sitcom.

On a less cynical note...I've been saying for years, the best way to illustrate who was the creative genius of The Beatles was to listen to John and Paul's respective Christmas songs back to back. It hardly even seems like a fair comparison, the former is so superior to the latter. Apparently somebody else has figured that out too, because twice in the past two weeks I've heard both songs played back to back in stores and restaurants. Don't take my word for it, listen
here and (or not) here. Not even close, huh?

Just a friendly reminder of what we're still up against

One of the many interesting things about living with three Ukranians is their unique, mostly blank-slate perspective about American politics. I was reminded of this just the other night, as the latest wingnut cause celebre - "Obama wasn't born in the US" - made its way over here. It was just a minor story in the paper, nothing that would surprise anyone who paid any attention during the Clinton administration (and its accompanying sideshows with congressmen shooting pumpkins in their back yards to prove something or other about Vince Foster, etc.). You and I know nothing is going to come of it.

Not everybody who read that article did, though, and when I arrived home the other night, my roommates were dying for the inside scoop. "Dave. What is this with Obama not becoming president because he is not really American?!"

That's right, they believed it. I don't mean this as a knock at them in any way. They're intelligent, educated people who read in the paper that there may be a wrinkle in US law that keeps Obama out of office. Not the kind of thing people from a place like Ukraine expect to pop up in the Land of Liberty unless there really is something to it. And that's their first mistake.

Anyhow, just wanted to bring this up because I know a lot of Obama supporters out there seem to think the partisan excesses of the past are now going to stay in the past for some reason. Not as long as the right wing s**t machine can still generate enough momentum behind a completely baseless story to send it halfway around the world and fool anybody who trusts America to live up to its reputation. Here, you don't even get Act II, in which the manstream media wrings its hands and wonders how these ridiculous tall talles always slip into the public consciousness, totally oblivious to their own role in making it happen. All people here see - unless they really go looking for more information - is an article in a mainstream paper reporting that somebody somewhere thinks Obama was born in Kenya. Or Indonesia. Or England. Or something.

It hasn't snowed a single flurry (and it won't), but...

It's happened a couple of times now, going back a couple of weeks. Christmas decorations, everywhere. There is, after all, no Thanksgiving to get in the way here. A city obsessed with shopping is even more susceptible to the decorations, of course, and a shopping-obsessed city in Asia...well, you can imagine.

Right, but what is it that has happened a couple of times now? Well, I'm walking past some elaborate storefront with garlands and ornaments everywhere, or a Christmas tree at the mall. And I think - just for a second, but I think it just the same - "But it hasn't even gotten cold yet!"

Power of suggestion is that strong, sometimes.

Equally amusing, I think, is an ad I saw recently from some credit card company, encouraging us all to do a list of extremely expensive things at least once before we die. One of them was "spend Christmas on a tropical island." Technically, I will be doing that this year.

Goodbye 1994, hello 1964!

Well, it wasn't the one-sided blowout some of us (myself included) were hoping for, but I'll take it. Right up to the bitter end, I wasn't quite sure it wasn't going to slip through our fingers. Of course, now we have to see if the Dems don't let the ball drop again like they did in 1993-94. I find it hard to believe anybody anywhere near Obama could fail to appreciate what the right wing s**t machine has in store for the next two years at least. But one should never be surprised at the Democrats' ability to underestimate how dirty the other side plays most of the time.

Then again, they didn't underestimate the threat this time. I'm still a bit surprised they didn't fall into the trap of refusing to criticize Gov. Palin...it's all too easy for me to imagine her getting away with one stupid comment after another without a peep in protest. Maybe something really has changed.

Anyway. Dave's picks and pans:

Most gratifying win: North Carolina (there's still a slight chance it won't go to Obama, but it's looking like a very slight chance just now). Not just at the presidential level, but across the board - Senate, governor (for the fifth time in a row!), and we picked up a House seat. That "godless" ad from Sen. Dole was disgusting, but back in the days of Jesse Helms, it probably would have worked. My only regret is that Helms isn't around to see his home state vote for a...well, you know what he would have called Obama.

Biggest surprise: Rep. Virgil Goode, R-VA, may yet hang on - he was down by somewhere between 80 votes and 522 votes last time I checked, depending on which source you believe - but even if he does squeak through, it's a pretty shocking outcome. Goode was perhaps the last of the old-fashioned right-wing Democrats elected to Congress (he switched parties several years ago), and he has embarrassed himself repeatedly in the past few years with a number of openly bigoted comments. But his district is exactly the sort of place where conventional wisdom holds that a real Democrat can't win, which is perhaps why his far-right profile was tolerated back when he was a Democrat. His big mouth never got him in any trouble before (and neither did his party switch), so it's nice to see it probably catching up with him at last. The Dems definitely won two other seats in Virginia, so if Tom Perriello hangs on against Goode (and I'm guardedly optimistic that he will), they'll have gone from an 8-3 minority in their House delegation to a 6-5 majority - as well as having both Senate seats for the first time since 1966. No wonder the Republicans don't consider it "real America".

Biggest disappointment: There's still a slight chance Al Franken will come out ahead in Minnesota, but it's not looking great there. It's not just that he (probably) lost that bugs me, it's the matter of whom he lost to and why Norm Coleman is a senator in the first place. Coleman won in 2002 almost entirely because the right wing s**t machine got away with lying about Paul Wellstone's funeral turning into an inappropriate political rally. Guess who eventually got the truth out and set the record straight? Yep, it was Franken. Heartbreaking.

I guess I could also throw in a word here about being disappointed with McCain for selling out his principles to get the GOP nod. It's easy to forget now, but a lot of progressives used to consider him our favorie Republican. But from what we've learned about the guy during this campaign, I'm not so sure we were right about him in the first place.

The "if so many Republicans had to lose, why him?" award: I'm blanking on this one this time. There just aren't that many moderate Republicans left. I guess I could name Chris Shays, but he's not as moderate as he has been pretending to be for the past few years. Besides, the sheer symbolic value of having not a single House Republican left in New England is worth it. I'm all but certain that having a party completely shut out of a given region is unprecedented since the Civil War - even at the height of the Solid South era, parts of Tennessee remained reliably Republican. You might think the Republicans would accept this as the price of having some of their more outspoken members argue that the Northeast isn't really American at all...you might think so, but I don't. My theory is that they really and truly believe progressives do hate America and thus shouldn't be offended when they accuse us of as much.

So, no, I'm not too sorry to see Shays go down. A somewhat more legitimate candidate for this title would be Rep. Wayne Gilchrest, R-MD, but he lost in the Republican primary. (The Dems do appear to have won his seat by a tiny margin over the guy who ousted him, though.) Everything I've ever heard about Gilchrest has suggested that he was a decent guy and a good fit for his conservative-but-not-right-wing district. But he was a moderate (I've always expected he was only a Republican because a big plurality of his constituents were too), which was bound to be a problem in the primary for him sooner or later. In fact, although MD-1 is a Republican district (it's the Eastern Shore and some of the more remote exurbs of Baltimore and DC), Gilchrest probably would have been better off switching parties once he was personally popular enough to get away with it, which has been the case for quite a while now.

Quote of the year: "Can I call ya Joe?"
Short, but packed with accidental eloquence about its speaker and exactly who and what she was, that little question didn't just talk, it screamed. It showed just how careless McCain had been with his VP pick. It showed how oblivious she really was to what a laughingstock she was outside the far right. And it showed why plain-folks appeal is a subtle art, best left to folks who aren't really plain. There's a reason why Bill Clinton the Rhodes scholar and Yale Law grad could out-folksy a pig and still be taken seriously: he knew when to turn the populism off. Even George W. Bush's faux-cowboy baloney was more convincing than Failin' Palin.

I was tempted to go with another quote from the same debate, about Biden's wife being a teacher and how her reward was in heaven (I'm leaving off the quotes here because I can't recall her exact words offhand). But where "Can I call ya Joe?" spoke volumes, that comment was just terrifying. The combination of Biden/wife/heaven was also in incredibly bad taste, but I concede it's probably not common knowledge that his first wife was killed in a car wreck unless you're a political junkie like myself. That said, somebody should have told Palin about it so that she wouldn't say a thing like that.

Blessing in disguise: I supported John Edwards in the primaries...and am I ever glad in retrospect that he lost! I know cheating on one's wife is a private failing and it's not really our place to judge - but what if he were the Democratic nominee for president when word had gotten out? He probably would have been on the short list for Obama's cabinet (attorney general, maybe?) if he'd kept his pants up, so I guess the price is paid. But still, what a disappointment from a guy I used to have so much respect for. That said, anybody who has ever cared about DC does owe the guy some gratitude for retiring Lauch Faircloth.

What's left: There will probably be a runoff in the Georgia Senate race, and if Ted "Tubes" Stevens hangs on in Alaska, word is that he'll be either expelled or persuaded to resign his seat. Either way, we could get another crack at that seat...but really, if we can't beat a senile old man who's just been convicted of seven counts, and keep in mind who they elected governor...let's just say I don't like our chances too much!

And in closing...I was impressed with McCain's concession, very classy and conciliatory. I was not so impressed with his audience. It's more or less traditional for the audience at a concession speech to boo at the first mention of the winner's name (I've seen it happen with Democrats and Republicans alike), but only at the first mention, not repeatedly like that. We see how well that disrespect served them this year, so it'll be fun to see if they ever figure it out.

Oh, by the way...

Colorado: 53-46 Obama
Connecticut: 60-39 Obama
DC: 93-7 Obama
Iowa: 54-45 Obama
New Hampshire: 55-45 Obama
Pennsylvania: 55-44 Obama
Virginia: 52-47 Obama

Looks like I did my share. ;)

Is it wrong that I find this offensive?

Getting a work visa almost has to be a hassle, and that's okay. It's the price of being an expat. I also knew when I moved to Singapore that the place was something of a benevolent dictatorship, and I can live with that too. Cultural differences are also bound to pop up, and I'm perfectly used to that. But. One of the hoops we have to jump through to get an Employment Pass for Singapore is an HIV test.

I wasn't scared, much. Obviously an HIV test is always going to be nerve-wracking, but I've been careful, and I knew I was about as likely to be HIV-positive as I was to be pregnant. But that's beside the point. It seriously rubs me the wrong way that the government wants a record of that particular issue when it comes to foreigners. Or anybody else, really. It ain't right, cultural differences or not.

On the bright side, I will get my EP finalized tomorrow, and my raise with it. Which almost makes it seem worth it!

Happy Deepavali

One of the great things about living in a new-to-you country is that the holidays come as a pleasant surprise - who knew you were getting Monday off? This coming Monday, as it turns out, is Deepavali. Deepavali, also called Diwali, is a major Indian holiday, and Indians are a big presence in Singapore (including all but one of my work colleagues). It's a "festival of lights" which may have originated as a harvest festival, or may mark the anniversary of the release of a group of political prisoners 2,500 years ago, depending on whom (and what) you believe. Whatever its origins, Deepavali is now celebrated by lighting oil lamps - and now in some places, fireworks - to celebrate the triumph of good over evil in all people. And of course, being an overeducated expert on world cultures, I knew all that without resorting to Wikipedia. Yessir.

But seriously, I really find the whole thing inspiring. Maybe it's the elections and the extremely ugly rhetoric we've heard from some quarters, or maybe it's more personal than that, but I really like the idea of everybody taking a minute to consider the good and bad within and making sure the good side wins. I've had a few wins and a few losses in that area myself lately. Nobody's perfect, huh.

The 401K(eg) Plan

From a friend back in DC:

If you had purchased $1000 of Delta Airlines stock one year ago, you would have $49 today.
If you had purchased $1000 of AIG stock one year ago, you would have $33 today.
If you had purchased $1000 of Lehman Brothers stock one year ago, you would have $0 today.
However, if you had purchased $1000 worth of beer one year ago, drunk all the beer, then turned in the aluminum cans for recycling, you would have received $214 today as redemptions. Based on the above, the best current investment plan is to drink heavily & recycle. It is called the 401-KEG Plan.

Taking the VERY scenic route

A couple of weeks short of six months since I arrived in Singapore, and now my worldly posessions have joined me. I've managed well enough without my winter clothes, and books I've mostly already read and CDs I have saved to my iPod, but it's still nice to have everything in one place again. As it looks more like my stay here is going to be longer and more stable than I'd hoped, I guess there's poetic justice to having it all finally arrive.

But still, six months? I know it's an awfully long way, but six months?! Really, there was no choice. During the past few moves, I have intentionally kept everything with me regardless of the hoops I have to jump through to get it there, since it's always been unclear where the fates were going to send me next, and how long I would stay there. (The colossal false start that was Luxembourg is the perfect example of this, but it's not the only such example, only the most extreme one.)

But this has led to jumping through a lot of those hoops, and it was only going to get worse. When I first decided to move to France, I went to a great deal of trouble to pack everything neatly back in Denver and rented a minivan to drive it all to the post office...only to discover that I had misread the guidelines and most of my boxes had to be re-packed. I bought the appropriate boxes and did the repacking right then and there, out of the back of the van in the post office parking lot. It took well over two hours and was awfully tedious, although the woman behind the counter complimented me for my patience. ("Most men would have gone off the deep end by now." I was so relieved to be done when she said that that I managed to let it go by - barely.) While decompressing over a well-earned lunch at Red Lobster afterward, I vowed never to put myself in a position like that again.

Only I did. First of all, there were two moves within Denver before I took off for Paris, with everything I still had with me at that point. These were completed by taxi, which ought to earn me a few Palin-points for acting like an ultra-average American on some level or other. Then, when I got to France, all those boxes I'd repacked at the last minute had gotten there safe and sound...but they were delivered to the temporary MBA building at the far end of campus as the real MBA building was being renovated at the time (my colleagues will, by now, have envisioned the long walk back to Expansiel that involved...maybe some of them even saw me lugging those boxes up from the grande ecole).

Never again? Wrong. Luxembourg. That time I rented a truck, which wasn't too bad. Of course, since the whole sojurn in Luxembourg was cursed from start to finish, it's only fair that moving back to Paris couldn't be too easy either. I didn't really make it clear at the time, but the move back to Paris was on extremely short notice. (I wrote that entry immediately after the decision was made, and was too stressed out and depressed to dwell on the whole thing at the time...the fact that I was depressed about moving to Paris shows I wasn't thinking things through very clearly, I suppose!) I found out on Monday morning that I would need to take another class, and by Thursday I was back in the city of lights prepping for class and making appointments to look at rooms.

A week after that, I'd already been back with my rented Citroen to drag most of my stuff back to Paris, but not quite all. I had to come back to close out the apartment anyway, and figured I'd carry the last of my clothes and such in my suitcases. No dice. I overestimated what would fit in the suitcases. Luckily, I had a couple of boxes lying around, so I texted my new roommate for her postal address, ran to the supermarket for packing tape, and just made it to the post office with my two boxes of clothes before a rather nasty rainstorm. The storm meant I was pretty wet for the last train ride back to Paris - all too fitting considering the way things had been going at that point - but I'd conquered the moving beast once again.

Never again? Close enough. I mean, one can't very well mail 20 boxes of CDs, books and clothes from Paris to Singapore on a reasonable budget, especially without an address to send them to. So I broke down and hired professionals, after once again meticulously packing everything...only to be told they could have done that for me. Just as well, I'd rather have them packed so that I knew where everything was.

Not so fast. The moving rep told me he would have to break down all the boxes, take inventory, and re-pack them at the warehouse in London before they got on the boat for Singapore. He also told me not to send any DVDs because anything more risque then your average Disney movie wouldn't get past the censors in Singapore. (I now know he was wrong about that, but my DVDs are at least safe back in America where I sent them instead.) At least my job would end with the boxes being picked up.

I think they told me to expect the trip to take about three months. Not unreasonable, as long as that sounds, but hopelessly optimistic as it turned out. Other observations, now that it finally has arrived, include the fact that they did not really have to repack anything. Everything arrived just as I shipped it, in the same boxes with my handwriting on the sides and no evidence that they'd ever cut the tape on any of them. Which no doubt means I'd have had no trouble getting the DVDs into the country anyway, even if I did have any porn (which I don't!). At least it's here, in any case.

Amusingly, after the trip took months longer than it was supposed to, the delivery company told me to expect them "between 2 and 5" on Monday afternoon. They arrived at 2:15.

Why I love the progressive blogosphere

There's lots I'd love to say about Gov. Palin and the debate, but I'm too busy at work right now to go into it in much detail. But I did want to offer this up right away.

From Jonathan Chait at the usually-mediocre New Republic:

Palin's final quote was from Ronald Reagan, warning that without vigilance, "you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children's children, what it once was like in America when men were free."

In fact, Reagan was not warning about a general lack of vigilance about freedom, he was warning what would happen if Medicare was enacted.

I don't know how much the right still goes around predicting that the progressive blogosphere will be the death knell of the Democratic party, by way of pulling it too far to the left or creating an echo chamber or whatever...my guess is it's still pretty common. But Palin's misrepresentation of Reagan is exactly the sort of thing they used to get away with all the time (in fact, Reagan more or less built his career on such intellectual dishonesty). Her fans will still believe what they want to believe, but those of us who are interested in the truth can now set the record straight next time we hear people reciting the soundbite in line at the supermarket.

Incidentally, I don't think Palin was lying. I think, like most Reagan-worshippers, she doesn't know much of anything about the truth of his record. It's all too common on the right - when they want to drum up support for a particular point of view, they just say "that's the way Reagan saw it" and there's no further need for discussion. The issue of whether or not he really would have supported the issue in question doesn't matter at all (and, often as not, isn't really answerable anyway since his record is so convoluted and inconsistent, and he spent so much time lying about his own past). In any case, this article has the truth about that quote and what he really was getting at.

You mean they listened?

Every time I try to steer the blog in the direction of something other than politics...well, there's not a whole lot going on just now over here anyway (rainy season, but I'm pleasantly busy at work without being overwhelmed, etc.). In any case, I had given up the bailout for lost (that is, I expected the stupid thing to sail through the House), but it's been stopped for now. A nice surprise, but just what were the Dems thinking?! They're poised to gain another 20 seats or so, public opinion is wildly against the bailout, the entire world is counting down the days until Bush goes back to Texas...and they give him a majority of their votes while the Republicans supply the votes against it? Way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, guys! I guess I have to give the Republicans credit where it's due for living up to their claims of fiscal conservatism for once.

What should be done instead? I don't know. I do know that taxpayers shouldn't foot the bill, and I also know that the number 700,000,000,000 was chosen at random because they needed "a really big number". One thing I'd like to see changed immediately is the principle of "it's too big to fail." If a bank is too big to fail, it's too big, period.

The selfish bastard in me can't wait to see how far the US dollar sinks against the Singapore one.

The whole world is watching

Among my guilty pleasures of late is an American-style diner at one of Singapore's numerous malls. (I suspect Singapore probably has the most malls per capita in the world.) You know the sort of place, kitchy and over-the-top with its decorations from several different long-ago decades, but the food is great nonetheless. It's not really that unusual for Asians to try too hard in their own way to act American, but this place takes it to extremes. Tonight, though, I was in the mood for some comfort food after almost making it through a good but fairly tedious week, so off I went to the diner.

They have a rather wide selection of burgers. I usually don't order a burger because I'm trying to watch my weight (and I'm also now old enough to see that some of the more elaborate specialty burgers are, well, gross), but just out of curiosity I checked that part of the menu tonight. They had a new addition to the lineup: the Obama Burger. Just a reminder of whose side the rest of the world is on, I guess. I did check to see if they had a dish named for McCain...maybe a mooseburger, or something involving extra-aged beef...but they didn't, although their fries are made from McCain potatoes. (I don't think there's any relation, though...isn't the potato company Canadian? I do know they have a big processing plant on Prince Edward Island.)

I chose not to read anything into the fact that the Obama Burger comes with black pepper sauce. If they were trying to be offensive, they probably would have topped it with collard greens or some such.

Look out, you might get what you're after

Senior year in high school, my advanced English class read parts of the Canturbury Tales. I suppose the most precise thing to say here is that we read "selections from the Canturbury Tales, but for reasons I can't really explain, "selection" is one of two literary terms that I have always actively disliked. (The other is "extended metaphor." But I digress.) As my fellow literary snobs know, the prologue to the Tales is a character sketch of all the pilgrims Chaucer met on the road to Canterbury. After we'd read the prologue in class, we were assigned to write a series of character sketches modeled after it, a tale of a chance meeting with a group of people on a journey and a more detailed look at at least three of them. You might say we were asked to write an extended metaphor of the prologue. You might, but I'd rather you didn't. The tale could be told in rhyme, like the original; but it didn't have to be, as our extremely arrogant teacher wasn't sure we'd all be up to such a challenge. Best of all, we were allowed to work in groups of up to four.

Now, I had four best buds in that class - three guys and one gal - and I always did my group projects with some combination of them. However, on this occasion, the four of them teamed up before I even had a chance to talk to any of them, so I was left to do the assignment on my own. That's high school for you! I was down, but not out. After a healthy dose of teenage angst, I sat down one afternoon at my parents' 1987 Atari 1040 and, in one sitting, pounded out seven or eight pages in rhyme and iambic pentameter about a guy who's driving to the beach and meets a busload of rednecks at a roadside diner. I set it aside to edit and/or rewrite as necessary, but never thought of any way to improve it and just hoped for the best. On the day the assignment was due, we had to recite our compositions in class. After each group (and they were all groups, except for yours truly) had one member read their work, the teacher would provide some positive comments and some critical ones.

But when I read mine - coincidentally just after my four friends who had forgotten me - there was no criticism forthcoming, from any corner of the room. What did the notoriously hard-to-impress teacher say? "Well, what can we say after work like that? Incredible." The four friends? "We don't call him The Venerable for nothing!" By the end of the week I was getting compliments from friends who weren't even in that class. (The teacher had taken the liberty of reading my work to the other classes, as an example of what they could do if they tried harder.)

Six months later on the morning after graduation, as I was leaving the all-night grad party, a girl from the class - whom I had barely known - hugged me and said, "Bye, Dave, it was great listening to all your stories this year." That remains the closest I have yet come to what I'm guessing John Lennon felt at age 15 when he saw Elvis getting mobbed by girls on television and decided to go buy a guitar. Thanks, Laura, wherever you are. Hope you like my book if I ever finish it.

Why, you ask, am I bringing all this up now? Two words: Lehman Brothers.

Of course I was delighted when I got the chance to come to Singapore last spring, but I had been hoping to get a job in a bank. I did make the first-round cut in a couple of places (not Lehman's, though - I don't think they hired anybody from my class), but with no prior banking experience, it just wasn't going to happen in this economy. I didn't feel too sorry for myself over that this summer, as I was just glad to be employed somewhere. But I now feel secure enough in my current job to admit that I really didn't think it was going to fly for a while. It was boring (sometimes it still is, but things have picked up), it wasn't what I had planned to do with my degree (but then I always knew I might have to fall back on something else at least temporarily), it wasn't very well-paid (that's about to change), and I missed Paris. Who wouldn't miss Paris, of course? I told myself getting a job there without an EU passport is just about impossible anyway, but it isn't really. Difficult, but not impossible...if you can afford to wait around until somebody turns up willing to sponsor you. I, of course, could not. On top of everything else, after the false start in Luxembourg, I figured it was just a matter of time until the same happened here.

As I've discussed before, things have improved quite a bit after that slow start. I'm not rich yet, but business is picking up and it looks like there's going to be a lot of business-travel around Asia coming up pretty soon (not to mention a possible trip to Las Vegas in February). But that's beside the point. Whether there's a pot of gold down at the end of Orchard Road or not, it's a steady income that I can count on for the time being. If I had gotten a job with a bank...well, no need to dwell on that right now!

Where have I been? What do I think of Palin?

Apologies for my long silence. Things finally started to get busy at work. Before they got busy, I was seriously considering chasing after other options, but the current job came together a bit more at last before any such options really presented themselves. Working for a startup agrees with me so far. We release our flagship product in October, and after that it looks like there'll be a lot of business travel around Asia. Having not left Singapore since April, I'm definitely looking forward to that. In better-still news, I got a big raise this past week, although I won't actually see the money until the end of October. There will probably be more in store shortly after that, as that's when we start selling our software.

So...after going back and forth on the issue several times, I have tentatively settled on sticking around here for a while yet.

I didn't see any of the Democratic convention last week, but I read all the major speeches and was mostly quite impressed. It's about time Democrats start talking like Democrats again for a change. So what of Sarah Palin? I'm really trying to figure out what McCain must have been thinking, but I can't. I don't get it. If I had to guess, I'd go with the theory of appealing to disgruntled Clinton supporters. That at least makes the pieces fit together a bit better: he thought picking a female running mate would do the trick (and yes, that's ridiculous...but it is the way right-wingers tend to think about these things), and Palin is the only prominent female Republican out there at the moment who isn't either pro-choice or too close to Bush. He doesn't appear to have considered much else about her, but then there isn't a whole lot else to consider.

I have to admit that I am a bit concerned about the VP debate. I already wasn't very fond of Joe Biden because of his incredibly inept performance in the Clarence Thomas hearings, and having him debate a woman is only going to make that issue that much harder to forget. The fact that said woman is to the right of Thomas should neutralize that issue, but I'm not sure it will.

And since the misogynistic comments and "jokes" are already appearing around the net, this site is worth a look. I am curious as to how many of the offenders are McCain supporters, and how many of those will think twice about voting for a ticket with a woman on it. I don't want that to be the reason why Obama wins, but the poetic justice would be delicious at the same time.

Bikini mud-wrestling, DC style!

As a loyal member of the party that is best known for infighting among its own members, I can imagine all too well what the House Republicans think about this...but I have to hand it to Rep. LaTourette, what a comeback!

Rep. Dean Heller, class of 2006:

The Republican Party lost its majority in the House of Representatives in 2006, and is likely to lose more seats in November, but Nevada Republican Dean Heller says he doesn't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

"I'm of the position that we really need to clean house in this Republican Party, and I think the next couple of election cycles are going to do that," Heller said.

Republicans who should be swept out, in Heller's view, include some from the historic class of 1994, which gave the GOP a majority in the House for the first time in 40 years.

"It's an old mantra: they came to change Washington, and Washington changed them," Heller said several weeks ago. "I think we got to the point where the majority of Republicans were trying to change America and tell (Americans) what they wanted instead of listening to ... what they need."

And in response, Rep. Steve LaTourette, class of 1994:

The fact is, the Class of '94 created the longest serving Republican majority in recent history, and we didn't lose it until Dean showed up.

Eeeeeyow!

There ain't no voices louder than the one inside your head

In a decade or so of spending almost all my time in consciously international settings (even if they're only "international" to me), I've run into a couple of recurring oddities. One of these is Canadians bearing tales of how excessively friendly other people suddenly become when they say they're not Americans. I don't doubt that it really does happen now and then, but seeing as I have never been treated rudely for being American while I was elsewhere in the world - that's right, not a single time - I have a hard time believing it happens as frequently as they seem to think it does.

I ran into another incidence of that tonight, with a Canadian woman I had dinner with after a supply chain conference. (Yes, the conference was just as boring as you're probably thinking. But a job's a job, and I ate and drank for free!) We got to talking politics, of course, and when she gave me the usual snide remark about how Americans will never elect a black man president (and became even more skeptical when I said I expected Obama to name Gov. Sibelius of Kansas his VP nominee - "There's no way America will elect a black man and a white woman!"), I bet her $10 that Obama would win.

The story only begins there. You see, after we shook on the bet, we got to talking about the election in more detail, and only then did she discover how closely I follow politics. She could have picked up on it earlier if she'd paid a bit more attention; I mislead nobody. Perhaps feeling a bit insecure now that she realized the bet was a fairly informed one on my part, she delved into some personal anecdote about somebody, somewhere, sometime, who had asked if she was American and, on finding she wasn't, gushed about how wonderful that was. Which took away any sympathy I might have felt earlier on toward her for entering into a bet with someone who knew a lot more about the issue at hand than she did. "I'm sure you know you're not very popular in the outside world," she chirped, in response to which I explained that I've lived overseas for four of the past five years and have never been mistreated by anybody who knew where I was from.

Like I said, I don't doubt that it does happen, but does it happen that often? I have my doubts. For what it's worth, I've been on the receiving end of the same reaction once, when a guy at a bar in Paris found out I was American. He asked if I was English, and on finding out I wasn't, he let loose with a tirade about les rosbifs and then paid my bar tab.

I took the snotty comment as a compliment in disguise, though, because really, my rattling off of a dry list of statistics about states that haven't gone Democratic since 1964 where Obama is now ahead in the polls rounds out my trilogy of the best comebacks ever.

The others? One of them featured almost exactly the same dynamic, actually: during the Monica Lewinsky mess, a Canadian gal I knew remarked that "Hillary ought to be running the country, but Americans aren't ready for a woman president. Jerks." All I had to do was say "Kim Campbell" and, well, I've never seen anybody bus her tray and disappear quite that quickly. The other involved a guy at a party who overheard me say I was a Jimmy Buffett fan..."Oh yeah?" he asked incredulously, "Name three of his songs!" The printed word can't do justice to his tone, which made it clear that he was certain I would name "Margaritaville" and maybe "Cheeseburger in Paradise" and then get stuck. Instead, I rattled off three extremely obscure songs, one of which has never even been released officially, and of course he accused me of making them up. I got as far as explaining the story behind two of the three (if any parrotheads are reading this and wondering, they were "Don't Bring Me Candy," "Richard Frost," and "Peddlers and Pushers") before the guy suddenly remembered he needed another beer and never returned.

Careful who you question, folks!

You can't make this stuff up!

During the Monica Lewinsky mess, there was a lengthy list of right-wingers who supported the impeachment and who also turned out to have infidelities in their past. Those of us who followed the impeachment closely can probably still recite the list. Henry Hyde was the favorite of many: he claimed "youthful indiscretion" as the justification for an affair he'd had in his mid-forties. (A few years later, he admitted what a lot of Republicans still haven't: that the real motivation for the impeachment was getting even for Watergate.)

In the years since then, I know some folks on the right who will immediately recite "I did not have sexual relations with that woman..." as an excuse for anything Bush et al are caught doing. In response to that, a lot of us on the left will say we miss the days when there was even time to worry about politicians' sex lives, as opposed to major cities being destroyed and illegal wars and such.

Lucky for us, those days aren't gone completely:

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Sens. David Vitter, R-La., and Larry Craig, R-Idaho, have signed on as co-sponsors of a proposed Marriage Protection Act that would amend the constitution to declare that marriage is a union between one man and one woman.

What is there to add to that? I am going to miss seeing Mr. Wide Stance in stories like this, but at least we'll have Diaper Dave to kick around for another two years or more.

Quote of the Week

"The federal government should not be in the public education business."
-Jason Chaffetz

Who is Jason Chaffetz? He's a gadfly, insurgent candidate who ran for Congress in Utah this year, challenging a six-term incumbent in the Republican primary. As an underfunded longshot challenger to a longtime incumbent, he didn't surprise too many people with his extreme rhetoric. That happens all the time in primaries with incumbents. The loon gets 10-15% of the vote and is soon remembered only by people who buy those books of dumb quotations by politicians of the party they don't belong to.

Except in today's Republican party, if the incumbent doesn't hate immigrants.

That's right, Chaffetz won. The Utah 3rd is the single most Republican district in the country (Bush got 77% of the vote there in 2004), so next January we are all but certain to have Chaffetz come to DC to share pearls of wisdom like that for at least two years. Given how conservative the area is, I guess it's not too big of a shock, really. Rep. Chris Cannon barely survived the last two primary seasons as well, because he ran afoul of immigration hardliners in his district. (This is politically incorrect, but I am honestly pretty surprised immigants aren't more popular in rural Utah. More Mormons just waiting to be converted, after all.)

I don't feel too bad about the outcome, really, for three reasons. First, the Dems have been doing the same thing with mushy-middle representatives in safe Democratic districts (most recently in Maryland in February) and I've been a big supporter of that, so I don't feel I should complain now with the shoe on the other foot.

Second, Cannon won the seat in the first place in an anti-environmentalist protest vote in 1996. (The area was, amazingly, represented by a Democrat back then; Cannon won the Republican nomination when it looked worthless, but then Clinton declared much of the district off limits to development that summer. Cannon ended up with 51% of the vote because he had an R after his name.) While Chaffetz will probably be even worse on environmental issues, at least he won't be the area's congressman specifically because he opposes keeping beautiful Southern Utah beautiful.

Third, if there are going to be places that are that deep red on the Congressional map, I'm all for them being represented by the most extreme right wingers the GOP can possibly dredge up. It'll make it that much dicier for the likes of Chris Shays and Dave Reichert to explain why their moderate-to-liberal constituencies should be sending them back to DC when that amounts to putting guys like this in the majority.

Okay, four reasons. That quote is really funny, and I'm looking forward to many more like it. Utah has long been a great source of such things. I've written before about my work for Rep. Jim Moran's first campaign when I was in high school...shortly after he took office, I recall reading in the newspaper that he was involved in a fender-bender on the way into DC. The driver of the other car was a woman who worked for one of Utah's senators (I can't recall which one offhand), and Moran said later that she joked about how the accident was a hint from God about Moran's support for abortion rights.

It is an amazingly beautiful state. "This is the place" indeed.

And now for something nonpolitical (and I hope funny)

I am currently a party to an ongoing online discussion of made-up terms. When it started, my first thought was that I didn't have any, except the occasional political one. But as the thread has worn on, I've come to realize I actually have quite a few. I've been thinking I ought to write them all down so I'll have the list to refer to next time around, and some of them are pretty amusing. You'll notice that many of these are based on people's names...rest assured that I won't be referring to anybody there's any risk of my crossing paths with again. Nor do I particularly care if any of the people I do refer to here happen to read this (which they almost certainly won't) and recognize themselves (which is even less likely).

Pulling a Wilda - Criticizing somebody for doing a lousy job on something when in fact they did a fine job, and you're reaping the rewards of their work without even realizing it. Wilda was an ex boss of mine who once gave me a lecture about how I shouldn't have rearranged the mail flow in our office because everybody was used to the old method. As she was hassling me about this, she filed a stack of letters in about half the time it would have taken before I made those changes she hated so much. You might not think this happens often enough to warrant a term of its own, but there is a reason why Dilbert and The Office have been so popular for so long.

Don't be a f***, bring it back! - A cry of frustration in hopeless situations. Inspired by an incident in college where I left a slice of pizza in the dorm refrigerator and of course it disappeared before I came back to collect it. Just to be funny (and let people know there was a moocher in our midst), I put up a sign on the fridge: "Whoever the f*** took my pizza Sat night, don't be a F**K, bring it back!" Various girlfriends have since found this uproariously funny, or have used it as an excuse to tell me to get a life, or both.

The Suzanne Dance - (I didn't make this one up; I just used it rather frequently with those who did.) Stand with your legs apart, bent at the knees, and wiggle back and forth looking agitated and uncomfortable. Swing your arms one by one up against your forehead, slapping yourself gently with the back of each hand, and say things like "Oh! My life is over! Oh no! I'm ruined!" in a high, tragic voice. That's the Suzanne Dance. I would like to explain Suzanne to you all, really I would, but I can't. If I told you even one of the numerous illustrative anecdotes about her, you'd just insist that I must be exaggerating or that she must have been joking. Those who knew her could tell you otherwise, but they don't need me to tell them anything about her.

Something in the Mail - A euphemism that hides its meaning too well, so that nobody knows what you really mean and you end up embarrassing yourself more than you would have if you'd just said the real thing out loud to begin with. "Getting something in the mail" was my ex's favorite euphemism for her period. The first time she used it with me, I thought she was hinting at a credit card bill she didn't want to have to see or something like that.

Itsplaining - Trying to smooth over hurt feelings without actually apologizing, in a situation where you know you really should just apologize but won't do it for whatever reason. (This happens all the time in DC, not surprisingly.) This one comes from an office meeting I sat in on just before Thanksgiving several years ago. A newly married colleague mentioned that she and her husband were staying in town for the holiday rather than going home, but she wasn't looking forward to cooking dinner and maybe they wouldn't have one. She lived in the same neighborhood I had lived in back when I first came to DC, and there was a great Mexican restaurant just a few blocks from her building which had been a T-Day tradition for my friends and me. I told her about it and suggested it as a possible alternative, but she rolled her eyes and said, "Oh, I hate that place!" Realizing a second too late that she'd been rude (which happened a lot with her!), she quickly added, "I mean, it's plain. Don't you think it's plain, Dave?" Naturally, I didn't answer. She knew perfectly well that I didn't think it was plain, otherwise I wouldn't have recommended it!

Missed by an enchilada - To just miss something very unpleasant. This one comes from the same Mexican restaurant mentioned above. One Thanksgiving, I went to a big group dinner at an estate out in Maryland. When we got back to DC, three friends and myself decided to go to said restaurant for a midnight snack. (It was the only open restaurant in the neighborhood; even McDonalds was closed.) Everybody else who had been to the estate for dinner got food poisoning, but the four of us were fine.

No-trayers - People who ask for something without really knowing what it is, and who then get upset when they get exactly what they asked for. This one goes all the way back to Arby's. I probably got at least three customers a day who, when I asked if they wanted their food "for here or to go," would answer "to go," but when I presented their food in a bag, they'd snap, "What, no tray?!" Another example of no-traying at that job was people who ordered a Super when they really wanted a Giant. That was even more common, but I never came up with a pithy term based on that one. Supering? Nah. My own determination to never be a no-trayer is such that I ate a raw steak once in Luxembourg, having ordered it by accident. It was actually pretty good.

Can't-do-everythinging - When you call a co-worker on his or her failure to complete a job on time and the response is "But I can't do everything, when the real problem is that s/he hasn't done anything. That's can't-do-everythinging.

Gina bad - Gina was a colleague of mine from when I was teaching. She had a real mean streak, and the kindergarten kids were terrified of her. When a kid misbehaved, it was standard procedure to send hir to a different classroom for a time-out, but we didn't send them to Gina's room unless they had really been way out of line. Talking out of turn, not finishing your lunch quickly enough, not sharing the toys...these were minor infractions, and they deserved only a mild punishment if that. But if somebody hit another kid, threw food, yanked up a girl's dress, etc., well, that was being Gina bad.

A Jeff apology - In honor of my ex-best friend/roommate from hell. A Jeff apology is essentially, "I'm sorry it happened, but it's really your fault and there's nothing I can do about it now anyway." (He actually said that to me once after locking me out of our room when I was in the shower.)

Rachelisms - Extremely lame excuses for not doing your homework, i.e. "I meant to do my part of the group project that's due today, but there was this party I just had to go to, and I got back at 4:00." The Rachel who inspired this one was not the one I knew in DC or the one I worked with in Taiwan, so if you knew me during either of those periods, it's not who you think. Interesting, though, that I knew these three different yet like-named women in the space of less than six years and they were all incredibly irritating in one way or another.

I see your true colors...

Reportedly for sale at the Texas GOP convention:



Can't wait for November!

Doesn't anybody ever remember anything in politics?

I know I'm reaching the age where I can't really say I'm "young" anymore, but really, 1990 wasn't that long ago. Every now and then, though, I'm reminded that for people who depend entirely on the Internet for political news and history, it might as well be 1890.

I just experienced one such moment when I read about this on Daily Kos. Ol' Claytie Williams and his "rape joke" were huge news at the time. How on earth could that have escaped the attention of everybody in the McCain campaign who could have put a stop to it? I don't get it. Some of you are probably expecting me to argue that Republicans in general must not find rape jokes offensive, but my opinion of the party overall isn't as low as my friends tend to think. They're not all that bad. Which makes me wonder how they could have let the ball drop on this one. But that link has McCain's spokesman saying the campaign "was unaware" of the notorious remark.

Sadly, I do find I can believe that McCain himself wouldn't find Williams' "joke" all that bad. He might not have really said "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you c**t" to his wife in public (I admit I find it suspicious that word didn't get out for sixteen years and then three people were willing to come forward at the same time), but then he might have. He did make that tasteless joke about Janet Reno being Chelsea Clinton's father about ten years ago (and, to his credit, he apologized...but still, he said it). This fits that pattern all too well.

By the way, another thing I remember - but which that link fails to mention - is that Williams' loss to Ann Richards was not because of the rape joke. He continued to lead in the polls for months after making the joke, and Richards pulled ahead of him only after he refused to shake her hand at a debate. Apparently it was okay to make light of violence against women in general in Texas, but you still had to treat an individual lady like a lady. That makes it just a little bit easier to understand why their next governor after Richards was who he was, doesn't it?

The McCain Clinic

">Brilliant!

It still irks me when I think of the newscast I saw on Election Day 2000, with the all-female focus group in suburban Chicago...one woman after another chirping "I disagree with Bush on abortion but I'm going to vote for him anyway because I trust him not to be actively against abortion." Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot?
This is what I love about the progressive blogosphere; no more faux moderation!

If the embedded video doesn't come through on your computer, see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arw-yNas2xc

Of dirty tricks and old wounds

As some warn victory, some downfall,
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don't hate nothing at all except hatred

-Bob Dylan, "It's All Right Ma, I'm Only Bleeding"

After a rather nasty e-mail exchange I had this morning, I'm curious about what others think of this.

I was reading an acquaintance's blog post about Obama's possible running mates. John Edwards was listed among them (rather disingenuously, since he has already said he doesn't want the VP slot again), and he was immediately shot down as a poor choice because he "attacked Cheney for having a gay daughter" in 2004.

Now, I already felt Edwards would not be the best choice for Obama, mainly because he didn't do a particularly good job as the VP nominee in 2004. (I hate to have to say that, and I did support him for president this time around, but it's true all the same.) But the claim that he "attacked" Cheney is just ludicrous in my opinion. For what it's worth, here is an account of the exchange in question. And the "offending" remark from Edwards:

I think the vice president and his wife love their daughter. I think they love her very much. And you can’t have anything but respect for the fact that they’re willing to talk about the fact that they have a gay daughter, the fact that they embrace her. It’s a wonderful thing. And there are millions of parents like that who love their children, who want their children to be happy.

Now, I do see how that can be seen as a bit passive-aggressive. It reminds me a bit of Clinton's brilliant comeback against Bush Sr. in the first 1992 debate regarding the "issue" of his patriotism ("But a senator from Connecticut stood up to Joe McCarthy, named Prescott Bush! Your father was right...") Both were obviously more about rousing the base than addressing the real issue at hand. But then again, one could argue that there was no "real issue" in the first place in both cases: Clinton's patriotism was only ever in doubt among people who hated his politics, and unfortunately, Kerry and Edwards were only marginally less hostile to gay rights than Bush and Cheney were. But still, does that make it "an attack for having a gay daughter"?

I don't see how, unless you're a homophobe. I really don't. I do think it's fair to call it an attack on someone for being a bigot against a group that includes a member of his family, but why is attacking that a bad thing? More to the point, why is an Obama supporter making excuses for Cheney's bigotry? I see it all too often, really: people who claim to be Democrats - or at least not Republicans - will feel compelled to regurgitate GOP propaganda like that. I call them the "I'm not a Republican but" crowd, and I really wish I could understand what inspires them. For one thing, maybe people like me could get through to them better if we could understand their perspective.

I did try to reason with this person about that. It didn't work, but this person did, I think, end up revealing a bit more than intended. Apparently Edwards was unreasonable because we can still love our children even if we "don't approve of their lifestyles." True, but that still doesn't make the above an attack on somebody for having a gay relative.

In any case, that exchange having devolved into a round of gratuitous insults without finding any common ground, I am curious as to what others think. I'm a bit disappointed that I wasn't able to make my own case any more articulately (is that a word?) than I did, but I guess that's what happens when two people look at the exact same quotation and see two completely different things. Was I off base? If so, why?

Oh, and the final parting shot from my friend? "It's my blog and I can write what I want there!" Yes, yes you can.

A tale of EPic proportions

I got my Singapore Employment Pass yesterday.

It had been in the works for quite a while, of course, but the deal wasn't finalized until yesterday. We received the requisite letter about two weeks ago, but the boss reminded me that I needed to go get a physical exam at a local medical clinic. I went off to the clinic to do so, only to read the fine print on the way there and discover for the first time that I did not need a physical. Apparently that is usually a requirement but it wasn't in my particular case for some reason. With that out of the way, I settled on Monday to set aside an afternoon to sit in the consulate waiting for my number to be called.

Monday came, I waited, and finally got to the desk with all my papers. The lady behind the desk said everything was there except the "white card" from immigration that I needed to fill out when I got off the plane. Nobody had told me up to that moment that I would ever need that card again, naturally. Luckily, that's just the sort of thing I have learned never to throw away, so I found it in my desk that night and then headed back to the immigration ministry on Tuesday. This time, another lady behind the same desk told me that I also needed my certificate from Yale. I had the HEC one with me and I thought I also had the Yale one, but I didn't.

That's where things start to get interesting. I went home and couldn't find a hard copy of the diploma translation anywhere, but I did have a scan of it saved. So yesterday morning I came to the office just long enough to print out the scan, hoping they'd accept a copy.

They did, but there was definitely a communication breakdown along the way. When I got to the desk, yet another woman took a look at the translation and asked me for my certificate.

"That's an official translation of it," I told her.
"No, this isn't a certificate."
"The diploma isn't in English. That's the official translation."
"We don't need a diploma, we need a certificate."
"What exactly do you mean by 'certificate' if it's not a diploma?"
"It's a...certificate!"

Now, I never did learn quite what she thought a certificate was. When I made it clear that I had no idea what she wanted, she told me to wait and went back to speak to someone or other in the back office. When she returned, she asked me to write on the copy where the original was and sign it. I wrote, "Original diploma is in USA and is not in English."

She looked at it. "USA, does that mean France?"

I'm not joking. Neither was she. Nearly everybody in Singapore speaks English fluently. Leave it to one of the few who don't to end up in a job that involves dealing with people in English all the time!

Nevertheless, the papers were processed at that point and I got the EP later on yesterday afternoon with no further troubles. I think she may have been confused by the fact that I had one degree from an English speaking country and one from a non-English speaking country, but the latter correspondence was in English in the original while the former wasn't. (In keeping with Yale's deliberate pretentiousness about almost everything, its diplomas are in Latin. This is not the first time that has gotten me caught up in red tape.) I doubt she ever quite caught on to my situation, and I still haven't got a clue what the difference between a certificate and a diploma is.

It was still a lot easier than it was in France!

RIP General Odom

For the past eight years and change, I have had a problem a lot of people would probably welcome, and which I find I can't complain about too much. I'd rather have it than not have it, I suppose, but there are times when it can be irritating all the same. The problem: inability to refer to where I went to school by name without people accusing me of snobbery or worse. My friends can refer as casually as they like to "a friend of mine from GWU/Georgetown/Duke/etc.," and nobody will bat an eye. But the minute you refer to Yale, you're a pretentious, namedropping blueblood.

I got a taste of it even before I actually started there...in that otherwise great spring and summer of 1999, I recall any number of times I told people I was going back to school "up in Connecticut," whereupon a friend in the know would say, "Stop being so modest, he's going to Yale!" So after a while, I went ahead and said that...but no matter how low-key I tried to be about it, it was never enough for some people. It was a no-win situation if there ever was one. Surprisingly, that doesn't seem to apply to all of the other Ivy League schools, as I knew long before I had anything to do with Yale. How did I know? Anybody who went to Grinnell will tell you, 95% of the time when you tell people you went there, they think you said "Cornell." Annoying as heck, but nobody ever gave me a hard time about that one. (If anything, it was the other way around..."No, Grinnell, in Iowa...no, not the potato state...no, it's hundreds of miles from Cleveland...") No, it's something about Yale that makes people think you ought to keep your fond memories for the tables down at Mory's - wherever that may be - to yourself.

Of course, some of them were probably just jealous. Which is okay. But still, it could be annoying, and still can.

But there are times when it's only right to refuse to let such things bother you. Sadly, such a time is upon us, with the passing of Gen. William Odom. If you've followed the anti-war movement over the past few years, you've probably heard of him. Such are the perks of Yale that, fair or not, he's not just a name on the blogs to me. I had the honor of sitting just a few seats down the table from him once a week in the spring of 2000 in a class on security policy. And what an honor it was!

I did not look upon it quite so kindly at the time, I must admit. To be honest, I can't even recall exactly why I was interested in the class in the first place. Yale has what they call a "shopping period" during the first week or so of the semester, during which you can go to as many classes as you like and make a more informed decision on which ones you want to take. Odom's class was one of several that I sat in on during that particular shopping period in which far more people showed up than there were spaces in the class. He therefore had everybody fill out index cards with their contact information and a paragraph or so on why they wanted to take the class.

Although his lecture was quite interesting during that first session, I was somewhat indifferent about taking the class by the time it was over. Then, just after it was over, something happened that made me decide I definitely didn't want to take it: a female undergrad approached Odom and made a direct appeal to be allowed into the class even though she was a freshman (and thus at the biggest disadvantage of all for getting in) because she was hoping to transfer to West Point after that semester. Odom, himself a West Point grad, let loose with a barrage of just about everything short of "machine guns and PMS don't mix" (and I imagine he was thinking that too) about why women shouldn't be going to West Point. Anybody who knows me can imagine what I thought of that.

Nevertheless, when I unexpectedly got into the class, I ended up enrolling. Like I said, I don't remember exactly why. It might have been something as mundane as how it fit with my other courses, most of which were rather tedious that semester. In any case, I took the class and ended up loving it. He was blunt (in the "I can laugh about it now" department, I made an incorrect point about Clausewitz in my first paper for him, and he wrote "Poppycock!" in the margin), but not as unreasonable as that outburst the first day had made me expect. I did end up locking horns with him on women in the military and some other issue that was near and dear to his heart - I can't recall what it was, but I do remember there were two incidents that made me conclude I'd never get an A but it was worth it to stand up to the guy. As it turned out, I got an A anyway, or maybe even because of that. And yes, there were war stories, including some tales of Oliver North and how Odom knew he was trouble years before any civilian had even heard of him.

Along the way, I picked up that, gender issues aside, he was anything but your typical career military guy politically speaking. Nice surprise! So it wasn't such a big surprise when he emerged as a voice of opposition to the war. Every time his name has popped up since then, I have gotten a kick out of imagining Bush's cabinet sitting around his classroom table and him letting them all have it. (Odom was not at Yale back in the '60s, by the way - he was at Columbia then - which is too bad, as the idea of Dubya himself as a "student" in his class is just priceless.)

Getting back to my earlier point, when I've seen his name in the news since the war, I have often been tempted to mention that I studied with him, but have mostly restrained myself to avoid any accusations of wearing Yale on my sleeve. But not today. Thanks for the memories, General, and thanks for doing what you could to get the truth out about the war!

I'm sure he'd be disappointed in me if I didn't add that I still think he was a sexist pig. But what an education.

I didn't vote for him but...

I'd nearly forgotten why Bob Dole is my favorite Republican...

"There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don’t have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues," Dole wrote in the personal e-mail. "No, your type soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits, and spurred on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique."

"When the money starts rolling in you should donate it to a worthy cause, something like, 'Biting The Hand That Fed Me,'" he wrote. "Another thought is to weasel your way back into the White House if a Democrat is elected. That would provide a good set up for a second book deal in a few years."

Dole also made clear he has no plans to read the book.

"I have no intention of reading your 'exposé' because if all these awful things were happening, and perhaps some may have been, you should have spoken up publicly like a man, or quit your cushy, high profile job," he wrote. "That would have taken integrity and courage but then you would have had credibility and your complaints could have been aired objectively."

"You're a hot ticket now but don't you, deep down, feel like a total ingrate?"

Okay, I know he's just upset because the partisan wall of silence has been breached (again), and that link shows he also threw in some predictable whining about "the liberal media," and I can't help being bugged by his judging the book when he hasn't read it (that always makes me think of a prof I knew in Iowa who once told me she would never watch Forrest Gump because "it's a celebration of anti-intellectualism" - how could she know without watching it?). But that said...

First of all, while McClellan's disclosures have been music to my ears this week, thee's nothing there that everybody who cared wasn't aware of years ago. Speaking of years ago, Dole is right, that's when he should have quit if he's known all along about the lies he "exposes" here. I really hope nobody out there thinks he's a hero for speaking up now, but I'm getting the impression some folks do.

From a more selfish but realistic point of view, there's also the matter of partisan loyalty here, and I know how that feels. Now Republicans everywhere know what it's been like every time Joe Lieberman has opened his mouth for the past five years or so.

A month, already?

Actually, it's been more than a month, hasn't it? Today does mark one month on the job, which means it's been a month and a week since I arrived. And it feels more like three days, except when I'm in the neighborhood of the hotel where I stayed during those first several days. (I still go back there quite a bit for dinner and such.) That area, of course, already felt like old times to me on the morning I arrived, since it was also the area I knew best from my prior visit here. It's still a comforting escape anytime.

So what can we make of the first month and change in Singapore? Since I am still job hunting (or really, "job hunting again" would be closer to the truth, since I did stop trying for a while there in order to concentrate on finishing up in Paris), I don't think it's appropriate to talk much about my current job in public. Suffice to say it's going pretty well for an internship. I am learning a lot about strategy, as well as making one's own way in a startup business. While I do like it, I don't see myself staying here long term, which is a pretty good incentive to get back into the swing of looking elsewhere. Now that I've had a week to get used to the idea that I really am done with the MBA and now I need to pay for it, it's on to finding ways to do that.

I am planning to look primarily here and I figure my chances are best here, but I am also still looking elsewhere. For now I'm thinking of my stay in Singapore as a six-month trial sort of thing (I'm not wedded to that length of time; it's just a good working number). I knew before I even got here that I wouldn't necessarily love it on a permanent basis just because I loved it as a tourist. So far I do like it - the weather is a bit muggy sometimes, but one thought of December in Luxembourg is all I need to get over any complaints about that! I do miss Paris like I knew I would, but the job market is probably much bigger here. We'll see soon enough. I can't say I really feel at home just yet, but that's probably mostly because I'll be moving again at the end of June and most of my stuff is still on its way here.

The only thing I really don't like is that, having won the epic battle over finishing my degree on time, my only reward is another battle to find a job in this economy. But that would be an issue no matter where I'd moved to. So yes, it's been a pretty good first month.

Wonder what they dip the fries in

This may have made the rounds on the Series Of Tubes a few times already, but...a New York restaurant now has a $175 hamburger. Times obviously aren't hard for everybody. Note the foie gras bit...why would you do that with foie gras?! (Yes, among my souvenirs from Paris is the fact that I now really love the world's most inhumane food. Don't knock it till you've tried it.) The whole thing is just wrong, though, isn't it? I'm reminded of the Hardee's Monster Thickburger from a few years ago (never ate one, never will), where the whole point was to be as anti-nutritious as they possibly could - here, the name of the game is being as wasteful as you can get.

It does make me feel a bit less guilty about the "gourmet burger" I bought in London that time for thirteen pounds. It was good, but not that good...but it also didn't cost more than a week's worth of groceries!

A stake through the heart of finance class, and pass the sheepskin

It's officially over: I will be graduating from HEC in June.

You might have thought that would be a done deal, since I finished my last class a month ago. Time was, I thought so too. For all I know, maybe it was. But immediately after I finished that last exam in April, I had the rotten luck to run into a well meaning but overzealous administrator who proceeded to give me an unwanted pep talk. I am almost certain she meant to be encouraging, but all she really did was make me think it'd be just short of a miracle if I ever got my diploma. I wrote a rather long entry explaining the story behind the story here. But having just re-read it, I think it's a bit dirty-laundryish for me to explain everything. Besides, I probably was worrying a lot more about the whole issue than I really needed to. But there is a reason for that, rational or not.

The whole uncertainty issue really cast a cloud over my last week or so in Paris (which admittedly wouldn't have been a very happy time in any case - long goodbyes are tough) and made me ponder the possibility that the past three years could end up being a dead loss. Happily, they weren't. But how uncool is it that the possibility ever even existed? Perhaps because I was dealing with this whole thing for so long, I still haven't really gotten over my panic about it all. I actually received the good news yesterday afternoon, but opted not to share it on here just in case I got another e-mail saying there had been a mistake. Yeah, I know, paranoid...trust me, you probably would be too!

Graduation is in June, but I won't be attending. I don't have the money or the time to get back to France, and I also find I really don't want to go. You'd think the happy ending would make me want to go back and indulge a bit, and I'm actually kind of surprised that I don't feel that way, but I definitely don't. The bad side of the whole thing is still pretty raw in my memory, and will be for a while. I wouldn't wish the past six months or so of my life on my worst enemy, and I certainly don't care to celebrate anything about them just now!

Since the ending was a good one, I am sure that the whole episode will come to be nothing worse than a memory of a rough time that I survived and a reminder of why one should never give up. To some degree, that's already happening: while moving back from Luxembourg to Paris in February, I stopped at a lovely little hotel in Verdun. It was wonderfully quiet, there was a dusting of snow on the ground and no traffic anywhere, the lobby was quaint and pleasant looking, the desk clerk looked shocked when I handed him my American passport and told me my French was terrific, and the room was as cheap as it was cozy. I knew as I drifted off to sleep that the idyllic and quiet setting amidst all the nastiness in my life right then made for a great turning point - maybe the worst was over. I know now that it was! But it's too fresh in my mind for me to want to bother with graduation.

Certainly, though, I do appreciate the offer.

Bruuuuuuuuuce endorses Obama

An interesting piece of news I missed during the big trip. (There's no hyperlink; scroll down just past the tributes to Danny Federici.)

After the terrible damage done over the past eight years, a great American reclamation project needs to be undertaken. I believe that Senator Obama is the best candidate to lead that project and to lead us into the 21st Century with a renewed sense of moral purpose and of ourselves as Americans.

Over here on E Street, we're proud to support Obama for President.

Bruce Springsteen

Now, I don't much care what a rock star thinks about politics, no matter how much I like his music. (I do continue to be perversely amused by the irony of Reagan using "Born in the USA" as a campaign song, but that's another issue.) While Springsteen is more well-read than most of the others that I know of - I'm thinking in particular of Paul McCartney's clueless pontifications about animal rights - I think he'd probably be the first to say being popular for something completely unrelated to politics doesn't make his opinion any more worthwhile than yours or mine.

What I do admire here is that he's not pretending to be "above politics" as so many non-political public figures do. Every campaign season seems to include at least one case of a candidate being asked to stop using a song because the singer or band whose song it is "doesn't want to get mixed up in politics." For whatever reason, they can't just say "I don't want you using my song because I disagree with you politically."* Instead, it's usually "I'm not political." I've always believed everybody is political in one way or another, and people who say they aren't usually are and just don't quite accept that they are. Worse, in my experience they tend to look down their noses at those of us who are, well, honest with ourselves about having opinions. I can at least sort of understand that mentality - even if I still don't approve of it - coming from people in academia for example. (The first and most memorable example I was ever exposed to was my spectacularly pretentious 12th grade English teacher...you don't want to get me started on her.) To hear it from people who play three-chord music for a living is just absurd.

In any case, it's good to see someone I already admired isn't afraid to share his opinion. (He was also one of the few I can recall who openly supported the Dixie Chicks when they made the mistake of not taking marching orders from Bush in 2003.) And yes, that goes for Republican rock stars as well, though there aren't very many of them that I know of. I do recall an amusing incident several years ago when Goldmine magazine ran an interview with Ted Nugent in which he made several characteristically right wing remarks. The next issue featured several letters to the editor taking Nugent to task for his views. The issue after that printed one letter to the editor from a conservative reader demanding to know why so many liberal letters had been printed bashing Nugent and not a single one in his defense.

The editor responded that he hadn't received any pro-Nugent letters.





*To his credit, Tom Scholz of Boston did do that when Mike Huckabee used "More Than a Feeling" for a campaign song earlier this year. Scholz supports Obama too, but Obama apparently is smart enough not to liven up his pep rallies with a song about a long-lost girlfriend.

An honorable retirement

Back in Paris recently, I was asked to consider saying goodbye to a dear old friend of mine.

It was an uncomfortable moment, for I had known for some time that the day was coming when I would be so advised. For some time now, I've been unable to deny that although we've been through some great times together, my friend is rather the worse for wear. Wrinkles and blemishes abound where once there were none, there are even a few permanent injuries here and there, and not all is quite right anymore on the inside either. Perhaps things could be fixed to some degree, but my friend will never be young again, and you know how so many people feel about subjecting one to great indignities just to prolong a not-very-happy life a bit longer. I had a feeling things would change in our relationship once I got to Singapore anyway, so I was able to fight the urge to part ways with my old friend.

I am talking, of course, about my leather jacket. It's beat, but it's served me so well for so long, how could I give up on it now? A shoe salesman I stopped to see in St. Michel didn't see it that way. "It is worn out!" he said in classic too-precise non-native English. "Look at these new ones I have! Half off and they go with your new shoes!"

They did, too. But an old friend is an old friend. Oh, I admit it helped that I had no business buying a new leather jacket - even on sale - when I was a poor student who was just a month or so away from moving to a city just a few miles from the equator. But mostly it was a matter of loyalty to old friends.

We do go back a while, after all: all the way to Christmas 1998, the end of a year that started out rough but ended very well indeed - just the sort of precedent I'm hoping to follow a decade later, actually. It was a gift from my incomparable Great Aunt Lillian, once she forgave me for being a Democrat. Aunt Lil has since gone to heaven (even though she was a gym teacher - hope she's not too lonely up there), which is another reason not to part with it. But that's only part of its sentimental value. It's been with me through all kinds of weather since that Christmas day. It joined the ride just in time for those heady last days of the International Student House era, and the many road trips with Sarah, Pat, Lathan and Barbara - Shenandoah, Annapolis, Harper's Ferry...and Niagara (inside joke - I don't mean the waterfall, though it's been there too). It saw me to Yale and back to DC, with all those chilly winter afternoons organizing for the union in the Grad Ghetto in between, countless trips to New York, three times to Canada, and one frigid New Year's in the hills of North Carolina (Cold Mountain was a good book, but the title is an understatement), through all the thick and (mostly) thin of my second round in DC, on to Taiwan (where the zipper broke and it spent most of the two years on the extra bedroom floor), to Denver (where I finally got the zipper fixed), and traipsing across much of Europe with me since then. The scuffs and discoloration and the holes in the lining are just badges of honor picked up along the way.

I won't be needing it here in the tropics. But I sure as heck won't need a replacement either, and I can't think of one good reason to throw it out. When I moved into my room here, it was the first thing I put away. I very reverently hung it on a hanger at the far end of the closet where I hope my old friend will enjoy a peaceful retirement in this nice warm climate.

The first few days

Somewhat coincidentally, the hotel where I had a room waiting for me when I arrived here (thanks to some help from my parents) was just up the street from the club where I stayed last time I was in Singapore. I say "somewhat coincidentally" because it's not really that big a surprise: all the nice hotels are right downtown in the shopping district. No surprise there.

Naturally, since that last trip was over three years ago and I was awfully tired when I arrived, I didn't recognize everything right away. But it didn't take too long to realize I was in the same neighborhood I had gotten to know way back when. That made for a nice surprise, though; it meant I already knew where quite a few points of interest were. For starters, it meant I knew where the nearest bookstore and coffee shop were, so I could go there and kill time until my room was ready. It also brought back some nice memories at a time when I needed something like that to relax!

There were a couple of things I had to get done over the weekend, chief among them being to settle on an apartment. But the first order of business was getting some sleep. I'm a bad international traveler - I never bother with that whole rule about waiting until the time you would normally go to bed. So far I have never run into any trouble with going to sleep when I'm ready to, even if it's in midafternoon. It didn't hurt this time either.

Finding a place to live is never much fun, especially when you're in a rush to do it. In the age of Craigslist, it can be a bit easier but it also now has considerable scam danger. Luckily, I'd met a prospective roommate online and she had already staked out a few places we'd "found" - two of which turned out to be too good to be true. (One of them led me to go have a look at the apartment by peeping in the window while the owner was off on business! Luckily, I found the building and then realized the apartment number didn't exist, so I didn't have to subject myself to any such thing anyhow.) I did end up finding a nice little room in an apartment shared by three French guys, of all things. Hey, at least the culture shock will be eased! I moved in this morning and all is looking pretty good at this point. The lease is up in two months, at which point the gal I mentioned earlier and I will probably get a group house together somewhere. (She's staying with her family in the meantime. We met Saturday night and had a nice long chat.)

I'm not thrilled about having to move again in June, but at least this way there'll be time to do it the right way. Meantime, my current digs have all the essentials: a bed, air conditioning, and a swimming pool just outside! No complaints there.

One worry I do have is getting used to actually working in Singapore. I have a fair bit of experience as a tourist here, but now it's a new ballgame. But since I haven't worked in six months and I've spent most of that time wishing I could, I don't think it'll take too long to adjust. We'll find out the day after tomorrow, which is set to be my first day on the job.

But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Now that I'm moved in, it's back to enjoying one more day of what amounts to a rather nice little vacation. I am going to miss the hotel downtown...if I do end up staying in Singapore long term (and there's no reason to think I won't; everybody tells me there's lots of work available), I can definitely see the Marriott becoming a nice sentimental spot to think of whenever I pass by it. The Marriott in Denver served the same purpose throughout the year I was there, always reminding me of the welcome back to the States it provided when I got back from Taiwan.

There is, of course, no telling yet if I'll be staying in Singapore for even a year. But the early reviews are good enough to make me think I will.

Au revoir, ma belle France!

I hadn't been back to the insane asylum known as De Gaulle Airport since the morning I first arrived in France. (I flew through Orly when I went to Morocco last year, and all my other comings and goings in Paris were by ground transport.) So it definitely appeals to the storyteller in me that this particular story ended with my one and only return to the scene where it began a year and a half ago.

A year and a half...it feels funny to type that. It seems a lot longer ago than that, and yet it doesn't seem like it's been any time at all. My wonderfully poetic and introspective response to that seeming paradox is, it's both. It really is. I'm not feeling up to expanding on that just now, but I figure anyone who's been on an adventure like moving overseas knows what I mean.

In any case, it was with equal parts joy and sorrow that I arose one last time in my rustic prewar flat in Paris (April in Paris, no less, but I didn't take notice of any chestnuts in blossom) and headed up the block to the Metro to make my way out to the airport. It's endlessly fascinating to me the way so many different stories run together for those few extremely busy and crowded moments on a city sidewalk or a subway train...most of us are just going about or daily routine, a few of us are tourists heading off to the usual fun and/or educational spots, and one or two of every crowd is embarking on a major change like moving to a different continent.

For reasons I prefer not to discuss at this point, there is a slight chance I'll be going back to Paris in the not-too-distant future. While going to Paris is always a good thing on some level, if that does happen this time it'll be for a rather unpleasant reason. That tempered my joy at getting on with my life, especially at first as I dragged all my bags down the block to the Metro in the very gray morning light. I really had hoped my departure would be a trimphant one, and it probably will turn out that way in the end - but it wasn't something I knew for sure on that last train ride that mirrored my very first train ride in France almost exactly.

Still, I'd lost most of my blues by the time the RER got out into the northern suburbs, which I hadn't seen since that first ride back from de Gaulle. The sun was breaking through, the scenery was about as un-romantic as you can get in France, and the worst of the heavy lifting of my suitcases was over. This was not a time to feel sorry for myself! The trip, of course, was quite a bit shorter than the one on my arrival had been, since I was only coming in from Paris rather than from Jouy.

Given the amount of international flying I do and the state of airport security these days, it seems inevitable that I will one day have some kind of horror story to share about getting through immigration or security. Thankfully, my number was not up yesterday. I got my newly renewed passport stamped for the very first time, no questions asked, sort of an odd ending to my European saga really - just that one little stamp on the first page. Getting everything back in my pockets at security took a while, but I didn't even have to take my shoes off like you usually do back in the States these days. I was left with the pleasant problem of having two hours to kill in the terminal.

Singapore Airlines is great. I'd never flown with them before, but I'd heard only good things, and the good things were true. The food was actually good, not just edible, and there were lots of movies available on the monitor. Of course, even for a guy who loves to travel, twelve hours on a plane just isn't much fun. At least it was more bearable than it could have been, I'll give them that. I highly recommend them, and will definitely be joining their frequent flier club now that I'm in the neighborhood. But the big move blues did set in soon enough.

Maybe you've never experienced the big move blues...they come hand in hand with extremely long airplane rides and jetlag and big life changes. No matter how happy you are about the new adventure you're embarking on, there comes a point when you've been sitting in that seat for hours and there are still hours to go and you haven't seen the sun in forever and oh my God, what have you gotten yourself into? I remember getting a bad case of them on the first trip to Taiwan, and I knew enough to expect it this time around too. Sure enough, they reared their ugly head in the form of a minor panic attack about that last exam (still haven't heard anything, but I do think I passed, really) and borderline terror about trying to find work in Singapore, even though I already have work for the next several months and generally wishing I'd settled down years ago in some small town back in the States like so many of my friends from college did. Even if I wouldn't have been very happy with my life, think of how much more secure it would be!

But then came the sunrise and the landing, this time in an airport I actually knew and a city I knew well enough to head for the subway instead of an overpriced taxi. On the way there, I got a good look out the window at the palm trees and the hazy sunshine that was definitely warning of a torrential rainstorm. A few minutes' walk found me on the subway where I was in the familiar position of being the only white guy, and sure enough, the rain came soon and hard - but not for too long.

And then there were the 7-11s everywhere and the crazy traffic and the smell of sweet popcorn at the movie theater across the street from the hotel and the heat and humidity and the open storefronts crammed with radios or toiletries or clothes on racks spilling out onto the sidewalks...yep, back in Asia at last. Has it really been three years?

Not quite, actually, but close. For now anyway, the blues are back under a rock where they belong!