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.