confusion

See [ cscs.umich.edu ] how the votes where really spread out. A new take on the red states verses the blue states that gives a better picture of how people voted.

It’s bad when you have been gone a month and the first night you go into a bar the waitresses say “hey, long time no see…” And what is even worse is they know you by name! Honestly I am not an alcoholic but we have been to that bar way too many times. Last night we closed it again at 2 am and then went to another bar! I got like two hours of sleep last night.

On the bright side I am moved into my flat now. It’s nice—I need to buy a lot of stuff. All I have is a bed right now. Well, their is a couch too, but I need to buy everything else. C’est la vie, Ikea is across the street—I can go all Sweedish ultra modern cheep!

“For any of you who are driving in Chicago for the first time tonight, let me give you the rules of the road. There are three rules: Green means go, yellow means speed up and red means the first five cars go through. If you follow those simple rules you’ll fit right in and no one will know you’re from another state.”

This is how the driver of the Hertz courtesy shuttle greeted us on the way from the main terminal at O’Hare to the rental car lot. Why am I in Chicago? Shouldn’t I be back in Singapore? Well, I am not in fact in Chicago—that was last night and this morning, I am back in Chantilly now—and I was supposed to be in Singapore, but I got interrupted by events beyond my control… They canceled the conference I was supposed to be at two weeks ago and so I had to go to the one this week in Seattle. Yes, Seattle, I was there Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning. Then off to Chicago to meet with a customer and an vendor for a four hour meeting—which was remarkably like a three hour tour: the people in charge were totally lost and we were tossed about in a storm of questions.

Anyway! Now I am in Virginia and I should, changes in itinerary not withstanding, be back in Singapore on Monday, which I understand is a holiday. And I understand I now have a flat—as in a place to live not a flat tire, though I had one of those last week and it cost me over $100 for the replacement tire!—and will only need to spend a few days in a hotel. Yea! We’ll see how it goes.

P.S. the title is the chorus line from a Soul Coughing song…

This will tell you how fucked my mental state has been in the past two weeks: read the entry below called ‘London Calling,’ then read the entry two back from that, called; ‘London Calling.’

I did not realize it when I did it. I thought I had not posted the entry about London. Parts of the two entries are different but parts are word-for-word the same. I need to get my mind of day dreaming and start paying attention. Although having a bad cold does not help. I think it’s from getting soaked walking in the London rain. Fucking British Isles weather…

While I was in London I wrote a long journal entry about all the feelings associated with being back in London, but I never got around to posting it. So here’s the short version: I miss London. I hated it when I first showed up in London in 2001—my relationship was on the rocks and I was alone. I don’t make friends easily and for the first few months I kept totally to myself. I found every reason I could to hate London; the people were rude, the streets dirty, the weather bad. I walked around quite a bit but never saw the beauty of the city because of my emotions.

All that changed over time and by the time I left London I had made it my home. I didn’t want to leave, I tried everything I could to find a way to stay but I could not find a job and had no money to stay in school. I met a lot of people in London and made some good friends and it was painful to leave. It did not feel like coming home when I came back to America. It felt like leaving home.

Last week when I stepped off the plane at Heathrow it felt like coming home. The accent of the announcer, the gray sky and rain, the smell of the tube, even “mind the gap” made it feel like home.

Seeing C███████ again was great. Seeing Liana was a blast, even getting pissed with the guys from the office was great. I spent £10 to take a cab from my hotel up to Islington to get food from the Barbican Kabob Center just like when I lived in London. It was totally worth it.

I still think that of all the places I have been London is the living city I would most like to in right now. Singapore is nice but I don’t think I could live there for a long time. I would like to live in Paris or in Tuscany one day but now, while I am still young and working London is the place I want to be.