Where Our Sights Are Set

We have just hit the 145-day mark in our countdown to repatriation. Every once in a while one of us has a tiny little "freak-out" about the whole thing. It's kind of scary actually. K probably feels like I did when we moved to Europe (not as scared because it's almost like going home). We will just have some major readjusting to do and we have no idea where fate will take us.

The US is an enormous country, but strangely, we have been having a tough time picking a place we would like to live. We would like to try to maintain a "European lifestyle" (public transportation or walking, small neighborhood with good independent shops and restaurants, etc.); have good job opportunities to do something we enjoy; be near family and/or friends; have good transport links to easily see family and friends that don't live near us; not rely on a car; vibrant cultural scene (concerts, movie theatres, festivals); liberal political atmosphere with opportunities for activism of various kinds; good beer brewing; the possibility outdoor fitness activities; and a chance for us to buy a nice, reasonably priced house.

So, we have a list of places. A list that keeps fluctuating. Sometimes there's just one place on it, other times there have been a lot of places on it. This is something that has been going on for well over a year, but now that repatriation is imminent, we are looking at it much more seriously. By this time next year, we will hopefully be firmly ensconced in this new place of our dreams. The plan is to move "there" in January 2009.

Below is the list. It is divided into three sections. THE LIST! is a list of the places we like the most. If you were to say it out loud, you would have to put one or two thumbs up and say it with gusto and a smile. The List is the "batter's box" for places that we like, but don't necessarily tick off enough of our criteria to make it into THE LIST!, though might jump up there at some point. Again, to say it out loud, you say it somewhat flatly, but with a positive inflection in your voice. Finally, the list is for places that we definitely do not want to live in. Pronounce it with a slight hiss and contempt in your voice. Without further ado, in no particular order:

THE LIST!
St. Petersburg (or Tampa area), FL
Portland, OR
San Francisco (area), CA
Austin, TX
Idaho
Seattle, WA

The List
Charleston, SC
Savannah, GA
Arizona
Montana
Washington DC
New Hampshire
Colorado
New Mexico
Hawaii

the list
Everywhere not listed above

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Hmm... decisions, decisions!

145 Days, 12 Hours, 46 Minutes

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.

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.

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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!

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

Funny cuz it's probably true (unfortunately)

Florida!

We had a really nice, relaxing time in Florida. Neither of us was looking forward to coming back to England. K had been there since the end of February and I was there from March 15th. Most of our time was spent taking in American culture, eating at our favorite places (like Pollo Tropical, Fernanda's, Taco Bell, The Cheesecake Factory, and others), doing work around the house, and generally "wasting" time. Hardly thought about work at all, except for dreading this coming Monday (it's going to be insanely busy for the first 5 weeks of term). Also read through K's PhD. It's very good! I had a red pen in hand, but I didn't need to use it much.

Last weekend, we drove up to the Tampa/St.Pete area to see my sister and her fiance. We had a great, low-key weekend doing the same things mentioned above. It was just nice to see them again. The St. Pete area is very intriguing.

My mom came back from Sweden this past Tuesday, so we got to spend a little time with her, too. She had a nice time seeing her family and only had to spend about a day in the Stockholm snow before being back in warm Florida.

It was comforting to be back in the US. I thought I would have had a bigger culture shock, but it wasn't too bad. And we quickly delved into the American consumer habits (driving around in an SUV and buying things). I'd like to think we weren't too extravagant, though. We were just buying food, some clothes (which we really needed), and a few other bits and pieces.

Now we're back in England. We left Friday on a 1.40 flight through Washington DC. Got to London Heathrow at 5.50 in the morning. It was a really short flight, so we must have had a hell of a tailwind. They had to get special permission to land at Heathrow during curfew (no flights before 6am). Took a National Express bus at 7.10 and arrived in Westbourne around 9.30 tired as hell and bleary-eyed. A nap was definitely in order! Then we went to M&S to get some food for the weekend. Since then we've been unpacking, checking email, and restarting our life over here. I'm so glad it's Sunday tomorrow so I have another day to unwind before going back to the salt mine on Monday.

Tonight Europe finally turns its clocks forward.

A Pro-England Blog Entry - Part 1

We've been rather critical of England during the time we have lived here, right or wrong. Of course, we don't think we're wrong in these criticisms, but it still makes us feel a bit sheepish sometimes. Other times it's just fun and cathartic!

In an attempt to strike a bit of a balance, I am writing a two-part piece about things that are good about England/UK. This segment, Part 1, concerns some things in British society that I agree with. Now, three of these things are shared with Europe, but still.

The Brits are right about...

- The way they pronounce words with the letter "T". Whereas Americans usually soften the T sound to a D sound (budder, wadder, tomado, etc.), the Brits actually pronounce the T as it should be, using the fricative hard T sound like BuTTer, waTer, tomaTo, etc. To my ear, the American pronunciation sounds a bit silly, something that didn't really become clear to me until living here. I've also noticed that Brits sometimes have difficulty understanding words pronounced with the soft D sound, so one ends up having to repeat oneself. Being conscious of this has lead me to pronounce my words with a harder T sound, not quite as hard as the English pronunciation, but somewhere in between. It perhaps sounds a bit Canadian.

- How dates are written. In Europe dates are written Day/Month/Year as opposed to the Month/Day/Year in the US. Why is this "correct"? Because it makes the most sense. The date is expressed in ascending order of incremental value. Think of those Russian dolls. The small one covered by a larger one covered by a larger one and so on. The Day is the smallest doll, the Month second largest, and the Year the largest. It just makes more sense. You wouldn't be able to put the middle-size doll inside the smallest one. Do you know what date Europe has trained itself to write/say incorrectly? 9/11 (which would be the 9th of November here). That's the only exception. When we first moved to Europe we had some problems with K's financial aid because of this. The US student loan company had typed 9/01/03 (September 1st, 2003) on the start date of the loan. When the university in Belgium received this they read it as 9th of January, 2003 which, of course, was a bit of a problem for them since K was due to start in September. A few frantic phone calls back and forth sorted out the confusion.

- The use of the Metric system. Ok, this is cheating a bit because the UK doesn't really use the Metric system fully (but Europe does). They still have their Stones, inches, feet, and miles. But they've at least partially adopted it by using Celsius, metres/centimetres/millimetres (for some things), and litres. Again, it just makes so much more sense to have units of measure that are divisible by 10. Who thought dividing units of length by 12 was a good idea? And don't even get me started on ounces, cups, and gallons! When I use an American recipe, I get annoyed when I have to measure dry ingredients by volume. Did you know a cup of flour can weigh anywhere from 3 to 6 ounces? That's a huge difference! Recipes written in grams and millimetres are so much more accurate. Wonder why your from-scratch cake doesn't quite turn out as it should? Maybe it's because you're measuring flour volumetrically.

If I was allowed to be a despot ruler of the US, I would put the above things into law. Everyone would have to pronounce their T's, write the date correctly, and use the Metric system!

- The PAL video standard. The European video standard is far superior to NTSC, used in North America. While the standard used in the US has 525 lines of horizontal resolution and a clunky 30 "frames" per second display rate, PAL is 625 lines of resolution and 25 "frames" per second, closer to that of film. Furthermore, the color rendition of PAL is better. Bottom line: NTSC is C-R-A-P. Fortunately, this will soon cease to be a concern because everything is going HD, which is one single standard.

The Sad Thing About America

On the bus home this evening, I was listening to some songs on my iPod (bless that little thing!) and one of them just resonated amazingly with me. Rufus Wainwright's "Going To A Town". It really captures the sentiment of sadness I feel with regard to America. The core ideals of the US are so beautiful, pure and awe-inspiring, but I feel like those ideals are being consistently stripped away. And that's what makes me sad. It can be such a great nation. It's getting ruined by so many things. The Bush Administration, lawyers, pharmaceutical companies, the war in Iraq, rampant capitalism, ignorance, horgging resources, too many guns, and a docile citizen majority who just lay down and accept all this. And did you know there are people in New Orleans that are still homeless?

These are things we want to commit ourselves to changing, even if just a little.

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Going To A Town

I'm going to a town that has already been burned down
I'm going to a place that is already been disgraced
I'm gonna see some folks who have already been let down.
I'm so tired of America

I'm gonna make it up for all of the Sunday Times
I'm gonna make it up for all of the nursery rhymes
They never really seem to want to tell the truth
I'm so tired of you America

Making my own way home
Ain't gonna be alone
I got a life to lead, America
I got a life to lead

Tell me do you really think you go to hell for having loved?
Tell me and not for thinking every thing that you've done is good
(I really need to know)
After soaking the body of Jesus Christ in blood
I'm so tired of America
(I really need to know)

I may just never see you again or might as well
You took advantage of a world that loved you well

I'm going to a town that has already been burned down
I'm so tired of you, America
Making my own way home
Ain't gonna be alone
I got a life to lead, America

I got a life to lead
I got a soul to feed
I got a dream to heed
And that's all I need
Making my own way home
Ain't gonna be alone

I'm going to a town that has already been burned down

Not Fair, America

We are NOT facing failure in Iraq, ministers tell U.S.

Ministers went on the defensive yesterday over U.S. claims that the British effort in Iraq is on the verge of failure.

The Defence and Foreign Secretaries took the unusual step of joining forces to counter allegations in Washington that Britain's resolve in southern Iraq is weakening and that a withdrawal is imminent.

It came as President George Bush made it clear he wants Gordon Brown to keep British troops there because there is still "more work to do".

[...]

The growing U.S. attacks on its biggest and most loyal partner in the coalition have clearly rattled Downing Street, and the intervention of two senior ministers was seen as a sign of Government anxiety that relations with Washington are being undermined by U.S. carping.

That criticism has grown in recent weeks with the revelation that British troops would soon pull back from their Basra Palace HQ to the last remaining base near the airport on the outskirts of the city.

In the Post piece, Mr Browne and Mr Miliband argued: 'We pledged to help Iraqis develop a functioning state, with armed police and other institutionscapable of delivering securityfor the people.

"We also promised that, when we had done that, we would promptly hand over full responsibility for security to the legitimate, elected Iraqi authorities."

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As much as K and I love to criticize the country that we are currently living in, I do think this recent attack by the US government is not fair. And it certainly is not a good way to behave with your allies, especially in a time when there are so many people criticizing the US for its foreign policy and pretty much everything it has perpetrated since 9/11. This is not going to win the US any new friends.

Picture this: The Top Dog, the most popular, strongest kid in the schoolyard (who also happens to be the richest) has been leading a life of comfort due to his relative invincibility. This kid is pretty well-liked by most of the other kids and has a few "minions" kowtowing to his rule even though they are older than he is. One day, a kid from another far-away school comes into the schoolyard. Nobody really notices him as he casually flits around amongst the other kids, but suddenly, he has kicked the Top Dog in the shin and punched him in the nose with all his might. The strongest kid gets knocked to the ground, unconscious, and the foreign kid runs off, no one able to stop him. When the Top Dog regains consciousness, his loyal followers are there to help him up and bring him to the school nurse who bandages his broken nose.

They make a plan to get revenge in the name of peace and civility in all schoolyards across the land. The plan gets underway with the help of all the kids loyal to the Top Dog; except for a few that think there is a better way. They never actually find the kid that did it, but they beat up a lot of other kids in the process (some of which were bad, too). As their campaign continues, more people start to doubt the merits of the struggle, particularly because they've sustained a lot of injuries and hurt a lot of kids who maybe didn't deserve it. Gradually, there are less kids in the Top Dog's gang, except for a couple of long-time friends.

The campaign continues, but then even the long-time friends start to voice their concerns and doubts. The Top Dog doesn't like this, so he starts pushing one of his friends around a bit, maybe poking him in the stomach or giving him a "dead-leg". Then he starts calling him names and saying that he was useless anyway; he couldn't even get the 6-year-olds in the city playground under control. Not wanting to seem like a cry-baby, this once-loyal friend starts to stand his ground (however passively). So the Top Dog does a lot of posturing and strutting around to show how powerful and just he is. Little does he realize that most of the other kids in the schoolyard have long-ago started to think he just looks stupid and just seems to be a big, ignorant bully.

Fortunately for him, he's still the strongest kid there and still relatively popular, but he really has to be careful because the other kids won't give him many more chances. And there are rumors that there are a couple other kids at other schools that might be stronger than him or more cunning. What will happen next has a lot to do with how this teenager chooses to behave from now on. Can he put his ego aside? Can he wise up and start listening to the advice of the older kids with more experience?

The American Way

The American way George Saunders
Saturday May 19, 2007

Guardian

Readers of this column may suspect that I am one of those anti-America Americans. I'm not. I love my country, and feel there is much the British could learn from us Americans, namely me. For example, you could learn about the American ethic called Positive Thinking. When I was in your country last year, for the first time ever, I learned a lot about the British. The main thing I learned is that you people do not understand the concept of Positive Thinking. You're always intelligently discussing and considering and pondering and all of that, wasting valuable Action Time. Allow me to instruct you.

Say someone drives a steel spike through your head. Granted: a bad break. But why whine about it? All the screaming and weeping in the world is not going to cause that spike to work its way out. Why not say something positive, like, "Thanks so much for placing that super decorative accoutrement into my cranial region!" The spike is still through your head, but you're not depressing the people around you.

Or say someone steals your parking spot. What an American will do is respond positively, by cheerfully muttering, "Look on the bright side, maybe an hour from now a piano will plummet from that skyscraper and destroy that car from on high."

Or say someone, as a joke, for your birthday, uses a samurai sword to sever your torso from your lower half. What a positive approach to smile and exclaim, "I'm betting there are plenty of things in this universe that hurt a lot more!" Then get yourself stitched up and carry on with your day. There are good deeds to be done, things to be accomplished!

One must smile through adversity. For example, not long ago, I was late for work and trying to get on the subway. This was not altogether easy, because the spike through my head is slightly wider than the width of the train door, and when I turned sideways, the stitches in my waist gave way and my legs fell off.

I was momentarily flummoxed, but then my American brain, from its position on the floor near the snack machine, remembered the all-purpose Positive Thinking mantra. "It's all good!" my mouth exclaimed, as my torso pulled away on the train, waving to me with its foot.

I could see the salutary effect my positive attitude had on my fellow passengers. "It is all good!" they replied as one, except for some foreigner, possibly a Brit, who began to weep at the sight of me, and rather negatively called emergency assistance, bringing everyone down.

At that moment I became aware that something large was hurtling down from on high, headed for my exact position: a grand piano! "Wow," I thought, "it's going to be a super day."