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!

Step on the gas and wipe that tear away

Still a lot of lands to see
But I wouldn't want to stay here
It's too old and cold and settled in its ways here

-Joni Mitchell, singing about Paris

Believe it or not, the vast majority of my HEC experiences were very positive. The trouble is that the negative ones were extremely negative, and they were also disproportionately recent. For that reason, I am confident that once some time has gone by and I've gained more perspective on the whole thing, it's going to be a good memory for the most part. In fact, that has already started happening since I got back from Luxembourg in January. I think now about how stressed out and depressed I was during that week when I suddenly found myself headed back for yet another class, and it's hard to believe that was barely two months ago.

Still, for the time being at least, there is nothing I'm going to miss about HEC. (Yes, that includes my friends, because I've already been missing most of them for several months now!) I've been almost done for months, and now that the Class That Wouldn't Die is finally over with, it's time to move on. Past time, actually! This latest big adventure, which began so quietly two and a half years ago in a bar in Denver when I realized I just didn't like political theory well enough to make a career of it, has been a good one. But the curtain has been ready to fall for quite some time now.

It is still not quite official, as I just turned the exam in. I am also painfully aware that I waxed so very poetic about never coming back here back in December. But I knew well enough when I didn't pass, and I think I can also tell when I did pass. So unless somebody in the administration really hates me, this quiet scene in the computer room overlooking the parking lots of HEC is the grand finale. I am feeling characteristically sentimental about the scene, recalling the morning I moved in not so very long ago, dragging my suitcases one at a time across that same parking lot from the hotel to the dorm, smiling awkwardly at the other new students and not sure whether to address them in English or French...and appropriately enough, now they're all my friends and for the most part they're flung to the four winds.

As I will be too, next week. Back in January I was offered a six month gig at a company in my beloved Singapore, but this latest and last academic hassle derailed that...but only temporarily! The company was kind enough to wait for me to get my academic head out of you-know-where, and I'm due to start there on the 24th. It is only a six month job for now, but it's in a good location and anything can happen next. All my belongings except for some clothes and books are soon to be on their way there, and I'll be following suit the next day. Meanwhile, there's some last minute tourist stuff to be done in Paris. Actually, in Paris, that is always an option if not an obligation!

Paris really is all that they say and then some. The people are far nicer than their reputation would have you think (although I do wish they would look where they were going on the sidewalks), the architecture and monuments are even more beautiful in person, and even the dirty streets have a unique charm. Since I've had little to do but study since January, I have caught up on a lot of things I never got around to last year, most notably a trip to the Louvre. It's true, the Mona Lisa really is smaller than you think. The Louvre isn't. It doesn't matter how big you thought that place was, in reality it's bigger. I've also had occasion to spend lots of quality time in various cafés and pubs and restaurants, and had a wild weekend with an old friend I hadn't seen in five years...hard to imagine a better locale for that!

In fact, it's hard to imagine a better locale, period. I'll miss the place. But just as the reason why I had to come back to this wonderful city was a really crummy one, the reason why I have to leave it is a really good one. I have always loved Singapore, and I've been ready to get back to work pretty much from the moment I quit the last internship. But I don't want to dwell on that experience just now.

And what of the immediate future? There's time for one last dinner of escargots and fondue, one last jaunt down the Champs-Elysées, one last aimless wander through the agonizingly beautiful streets...but there's another week yet for all that. Now I'm off to dispose of my finance notes in some creative way or other. And then, to paraphrase Michael J. Fox in The American President, "I'm gonna go get a big steak and have a bite for everybody that tried to F**K me!!!"

Yeah, it has been a tough several months. But if what I've been through since October hasn't driven me to despair, I don't think anything ever will. I lead a charmed life, sort of.