Cities in a vacuum

If I had to choose an American city to live in without any other deciding factors than the way I feel about the city (i.e.- family, friends, money, etc. are not a concern). In other words, choosing a city "in a vacuum". It would be one of these:

Portland, OR
Boston, MA
Los Angeles, CA
San Francisco, CA
New York (or environs), NY
Prescott, AZ

There would probably be others, but these are all cities I've been to and I wouldn't like to list one that I had not been to. Another caveat is that a large part of me really wants to have a big piece of land with some animals on it which is obviously not possible in most of the above, but I'd be hard-pressed to come up with a city/town at this point.

Our Exit Strategy

While the Bush Administration and the Military Industrial Complex wrangles with "the Liberals" over an exit strategy for Iraq, K and I have come up with ours for leaving England/Europe. It is called Project: Repatriation. You'll notice that the title of our blog has changed to thus.

We concocted this plan late last year. I say "we" but it was really K who came up with it. We had decided that we definitely were going to move back to the US soon after her PhD graduation (this Fall). It was a real mind-f*ck to contemplate the subject. Where do we move back to? How do we apply for jobs from here? How do we bring our stuff back over? How do we tie up loose ends here? Just too many factors to make sense of. That's when K had the brilliant idea: use Florida as an intermediate step/launch-pad.

It would go something like this. Move to my parents' house in South Florida initially for a couple of months of re-acclimating to American life and getting our feet under us. Basically, staying there for the holidays and then move "somewhere" yet-to-be-determined in the beginning of 2009. We would get rid of all the stuff here that we don't want to keep and ship the rest to the Florida address. It should arrive by the time we are ready to move "somewhere". K's e-Employment plus our savings from earning Pounds Sterling will be enough to cover the basics for a couple of months. We will sell the BMW which should cover the cost of shipping our belongings with a bit left over. The deposit from our UK apartment will be put towards a new computer and other necessities. Additionally, we have been "feathering our nest" by purchasing household items on Amazon.com (taking advantage of the exchange rate and free shipping). This structured, meticulous strategy should allow us to maintain our current quality of life without going into major debt like we did when we moved to Europe. Less like starting from scratch!

During our re-acclimation period in Florida, we will apply for jobs in various places we would like to live (more about that in a future post) and possibly take up some part-time employment, but mostly, we will be relaxing a bit and helping my mom fix stuff around the house. And, hey, I might try to write a book about these 5 years in Europe/England using this blog as a basis.

We're looking forward to repatriation, but we will definitely have a wistful departure. It's been a great adventure. K has utmost confidence in this process and doesn't seem to have any fear about it. I'm a bit frightened, though. This is going to be a major change and a shock to the system and it means I will be pulling myself out of the momentum of my job here and sort of starting again. It would be great if I could transplant my job to the US. And I've always considered myself European, so it will be hard for me to leave. Having said that, I feel just as much of a pull to go back to the US (slightly different reasons than K, though). We just don't see ourselves living in Europe, certainly not England, for the rest of our lives. The main reason is family. As I said before, we're just tired of being so far away from everyone. And, man, are we tired of trans-Atlantic flights!

But tonight we're going to revel in our Europeaness and watch The Eurovision Song Contest!

Countdown: 178 Days, 15 Hours, 41 Minutes

The Times They Are a'Changing

[Pic from: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2008/05/18/2004423477.jpg ]

This is just incredible. Way to get the Republicans (and Hillary who?) on the ropes. Gee, do you think there are some people crying out for a change? Well, there must be a few in Oregon, at least! This is fantastic. Makes me proud to be married to an Oregonian. Very interesting times we're living in.

---

PS - Speaking of change... today marks the 6-month milestone to when K and I move back to the US. There, I said it. We're making it official (to our blog-readers, at least). This is something we have been mulling over for quite some time and something that we didn't start considering seriously until sometime last year. We've always known that we would eventually move back; just not when. It's been a challenge to not talk about it here for so long. There has been a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes regarding this subject and we just can't keep it bottled up any longer. It's important to express it on this blog that has been with us since we started this adventure in 2003. In September, it will be 5 YEARS since we left! That's a long time. We miss our family in Florida and Oregon. And we've been in this near-limbo for long enough. So, on November 19th, we're getting on a plane with one-way tickets to the US. We have a re-entry strategy which we will share with you over the coming months, but we just wanted to get this announcement out of the way (bet you're really surprised... not!).

There's a bit of a problem with "outing" ourselves: no one knows about it at my workplace and I don't intend to tell them until the late summer at the earliest. I have to give two months notice (and so do they). I'd like to tell them earlier so that a) I get it off my chest; and b) they can plan accordingly. But I'm really paranoid that they'll say, "Nah... please leave as soon as possible." That would be a catastrophe. Yeah, I know... we just outed ourselves on the internet. Well, I haven't told anyone at work about this blog, we've removed our names from every entry, and I've tested a few times by Googling. We should be fairly safe. Famous last words, right? Let's hope not!

Day-Trip to London

From Day-trip to L...

Today I took the day off work so K and I could go up to London to see a matinee performance of The Phantom of the Opera in its birthplace: Her Majesty's Theatre. We bought the tickets about a month ago. It's something we'd been talking about doing for a long time now. K had never seen the musical and since we're living in England, we thought we'd better go see it!

We took a 9.55 train from Bournemouth to London Waterloo. The last time I had taken a train to London was when I worked there. It's much nicer to travel outside of rush hour! There were plenty of seats and the trip was fairly quick.



Arrived in London around 12 o'clock. An absolutely glorious day. The sun was out, but not too hot. We had a leisurely walk across the river and up through Trafalgar Square and into Soho. The plan was to have lunch at Maoz, an Israeli franchise specialising in falafel, then head to Her Majesty's Theatre around 2pm. We got to Maoz at the perfect time just before lunch. Good appetite from the walk and the initial sensory overload of London. Had lunch facing the window to watch the colorful Soho characters walk by. K had a salad of various pickled vegetables, olives, etc., with fried aubergine, falafel, and hummus. She said it was the best hummus she has ever tasted! I got my usual: the Maoz sandwich meal. A wheat pita stuffed with falafel, aubergine, hummus, pickled veg, and tahini sauce. And it comes with luscious Belgian-style fries (chunky, twice-cooked). Very filling but oh-so-scrumptious.

After lunch, we strolled back through Soho and Leicester Square. K got a frappuccino from one of the 10 Starbucks we passed.

From Day-trip to L...

Down by Trafalgar Square, I had a quick peak in the National Portrait Gallery. K wasn't allowed in with her frapp. Then we sat in the Square for a while and did some people-watching, trying to pick out the American tourists in the crowd. At one point, a 100-strong flock of Spanish tourists came around the corner. They basically enveloped us because we had a nice place to sit, apparently. [Spain called. They want their people back.] Luckily, it was just about time to head over to Her Majesty's Theatre. When we rounded the corner to the theatre, there was a stream of pensioners on their way into the theatre. Haven't they seen this play by now? It's been running for 30 years!



We were sitting in a sea of white, yellowy, and light gray hair. The theatre is quite small and the stage seemed a lot more compact than the two US tours I've seen as a teenager. We had pretty good seats; central in the Grand Circle (the middle bracket of ticket prices). Of course, the seats were very cramped and small. No surprise there.

[I saw Phantom for the first time when I was about 13. I was ENTHRALLED! Subsequently, I became a Phantom fanatic for about 3 years. Put together the costume and everything. Knew all the lyrics. It was quite nerdy, looking back at it now!]

Even though I've seen it before, I still got goose bumps a few times and even a bit choked up.

The current London cast is quite good. Ramin Karimloo, the Phantom, was fantastic. He brought some interesting elements to the role and some nice melodic changes. Very good voice. Robyn North, Christine, was good in the louder, fuller bars of the songs, but a bit shrill at times. The staging and special effects were, as usual, amazing. They squeezed every inch of utility out of that tiny theatre. Despite being a bit creaky, the set is probably one of the most jaw-dropping aspects of the show. We're really glad we went to see it, but having said that, we probably won't see it again. This was a good note to end on. It's just a bit pricey.

After the show, we had about 3 hours to kill before our return train. So, we wandered up to Oxford Street to go to Selfridges. I was vaguely interested in getting some Venezuelan Black 100% Cocoa, but mostly, it was just something to do. It took a while to get there because part of Oxford Street (which is ALWAYS crammed with pedestrians) was even more crowded because they shut down one side and the entire road due to a knife murder that had taken place yesterday. The police were still there searching for clues. Not sure why. Seems like a open/shut case. Lots of witnesses. Murder weapon found.

Selfridges is nice. We looked at all the posh (over-priced) food. It's like Harrod's or Fortnam & Mason. You can buy a package of imported Oreos for £7. Funnily enough, the Venezuelan Black cocoa was also £7, but for a scant 200 grams. We didn't buy any.



By this time, it was getting to be time for dinner. We avoided the bustling Oxford Street this time by taking the quieter streets paralleling it. For dinner, we were craving some good Thai or Vietnamese food. I had written down a couple of options in Soho. The one we ended up at was Busaba Eathai, a bustling, chi-chi restaurant with "communal" tables. The dinner was REALLY good. K had these little banana-leaf wrapped chicken parcels with a lush teriyaki dipping sauce that she said reminded her of Hawaii and some coconut steamed rice. I had a seafood stir-fry with jasmine rice. The service was speedy and friendly enough. We'll definitely remember this one. If we lived in London, we would eat out much more often than we have been doing. That's for sure.

After dinner, we had a brisk walk back to Waterloo, making it to our train with about 15 minutes to spare. We were a bit exhausted from all the walking we had done. Both of us had sore feet. The train we were on was one of the slower ones that stops at more of the smaller stations. We got home around 10.30 and soaked our feet in cold water for a while. Then we slept like two rocks.

It was a good little day out.

The American Empire

I've sort of been harboring the belief that America The Empire is on the downward slide a la the Roman Empire (or at least the British Empire!). It's hard to escape the visual image of fat Roman senators, in their wealth, sitting blind to the crumbling power they had come to take for granted. Every empire will fall. It's only a matter of time. K disagrees with me, of course. And so does this guy (and the optimist in me hopes he's right):

Forget the naysayers - America remains an inspiration to us all

Browsing through an American bookshop does not lift the spirits. Books that chart the end of American supremacy, predict wars over finite natural resources, study the squeezed middle class or the catastrophic Bush presidency proliferate. The United States is going through a period of introspection and the Boston bookshelves, at which I spent part of last week, heave with the results.

In one respect, it is hardly surprising. Iraq, Afghanistan and the rise of China. The credit crunch. The $124 a barrel oil price. The unbelievable unfairness of Bush's tax cuts. The racism and violence that still pockmark American life. Yet the pessimism is overdone. The more I visit the US the more I think the pundits predicting the US's imminent economic and political decline hugely overstate their case. Rather, the next 50 years will be as dominated by the US as the last 50. The US will widen its technological and scientific dominance, sustain its military hegemony, launch a period of reindustrialisation and continue to define modernity both in culture and industry.

The fashionable view is that the American economy is a busted flush, a hollowed-out, deindustrialised shell housed in decaying infrastructure that delivers McJobs and has survived courtesy only of a ramped-up housing market and the willingness of foreigners to hold trillions of dollars of American debts.

China and India are set to overtake it in the foreseeable future. At best, the US will have to get used to living in a multipolar world it cannot dominate. At worst, it will have to accept, along with the West, that the new economic and political heart of the world is Asia.

The US economy is certainly in transition, made vastly more difficult by the spreading impact of the credit crunch. But the underlying story is much stronger. The country is developing the prototypical knowledge economy of the 21st century, an economy in which the division between manufacturing and services becomes less clear cut, in a world where the deployment of knowledge, brain power and problem-solving are the sources of wealth generation.

What counts is the strength of a country's universities, research base, commitment to information and communications technology and new technologies along with a network of institutions that supports new enterprise. Here, the US is so far ahead of the rest of the world it is painful.

The figures make your head spin. Of the world's top 100 universities, 37 are American. The country spends more proportionately on research and design, universities and software than any other, including Sweden and Japan. Of the world's top 50 companies ranked by R&D, 20 are American. Fifty-two of the world's top 100 brands are American. Half the world's new patents are registered by American companies.

This year, American exports have grown by 13 per cent, helped by the falling dollar, so that the US has reclaimed its position as the world's number one exporter. Moreover, and little remarked on, two-thirds of America's imports come from affiliates of American companies that determinedly keep most of the value added in the US. The US certainly has a trade deficit, but importantly it is largely with itself.

The US will recover from the credit crunch. Already there is an aggression and activism about how to respond that makes the British look limp in comparison. Four-fifths of new mortgages are underwritten by public mortgage banks, interest rates have been slashed and a bank bail-out was launched instantly. More activism is planned. There is a dynamic readiness to fix things in a tight economic corner, irrespective of ideology, that can only be admired.

It is a dynamism that infects the political process. I was in the US on the day Indiana and North Carolina went to the polls in the Democratic primaries. The conventional wisdom is that Obama and Clinton's fight is self-defeating and it would be better if Clinton had stood down earlier. I disagree. It has brought politics alive. Democrats are enrolling to vote in their hundreds of thousands because their vote and opinion now count. They will stay enrolled and vote in November.

There is also a great maturity about the process. It is a political argument that necessarily demands respect for your opponent because if you win you will need their support in November. Americans do public argument well. The tradition might have corrupted since de Tocqueville made the same observation in 1835, but it lives on. And it is a vital underpinning of American success.

It is this strange cocktail of argument, of plural institutions that check and balance, of investing in knowledge and of a belief that no problem can't be fixed that underpins American strength. China is the only country in the world with a similar continental-scale economy and bigger population that conceivably could mount a challenge, but it has none of these institutions and processes. Despite its size, it has only three universities in the top 100, not one brand in the top 100, not one company in the world top 50 ranked by R&D and it registers virtually no patents.

China has no tradition of public argument, nor independent judiciary. Unless and until its institutions change, it will always trail the US in the 21st century knowledge economy and experience upheaval and possible revolution along the way. India, a democracy with the right institutions, is much better placed - but with income per head 2 or 3 per cent of that in the US, a challenge will take centuries rather than decades.

It is the maligned EU that has the institutions and economic prowess to emerge as a genuine knowledge economy counterweight to America.

Sure, the US has problems. It runs its financial system like a casino. It is a grossly unfair society. Its road and rail systems have been neglected for decades. University entrance has become too expensive. It has fetishised deregulation. Money corrupts its political process. To compromise the rule of law in order to 'win' the war on terror was stupid. But none of those problems can't be fixed and the US is about to elect a President who will promise to try, in a world in which it remains the indispensable power.

Anybody who would prefer China's communists needs to see their doctor. The greatest danger is that we start believing the pessimism. The United States is - and remains - formidable. Which is just as well for all of us.

-- Will Hutton, The Observer, Sunday May 11 2008

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/11/usa