Obama's Cabinet

Despite the election being over, the news still is heavily focusing on the now president-elect Barack Obama. The headline grabbers these days are his cabinet positions and what his philosophy will be for filling them and further, taking their advice. My hope is that he's really taken Abraham Lincoln's approach to building his cabinet by looking for diversity in opinions to form a stronger team - oft quoted these days after the fabulous book by Doris Kearns Goodwin - a Team of Rivals. Of course, the trick is that Barack has to have the fibre to not be overwhelmed and controlled by any of their viewpoints while simultaneously providing enough structure and compromise to allow progress on discussion of issues. I really need to read his autobiographies but from what I know of him, I'd bet on him over anyone else in the current landscape to lead such a group of people, which of course we'll need to get the world out of the mess GW has plunged us in. I'm glad the American people feel the same.

His first choice, about a week ago, was Rahm Emanuel for Chief of Staff. I'm not nearly educated enough of the political candidates beforehand to know who he is but from descriptions of his personality and his history of working in the House, I think he is an excellent choice to complement Barack. From his descriptions of being strong-willed, strong-headed and combative, Rahm seems like someone who will really keep Obama's intiatives on track within the government. Obama has the natural ability to listen; convince you he's listening; provide solid reasoning and persuade you towards his opinion - much like Abe Lincoln. On the other hand, Emanuel will be there to crack the whip to actually get things done expediently and if the plan to meet these objectives go awry.

Emanuel reminds me of the Secretary of War during Lincoln's presidency - Edwin Stanton. Remember that the American Civil War was raging, making this no enviable position during that time. Within Team of Rivals, Stanton has nerves of steel and never shows remorse for the hard choices he has to make yet until the door is closed: fighting back tears, he's overwhelmed by the resposbility of being steadfast in sending young men to their death. Now Rahm does not have the same responsibility but the juxtaposition of his and Obama's personality is incredibly similar to Lincoln and Stanton. In the latter case, Lincoln would often pardon men who had deserted and were scheduled for execution when their mothers or wives would come begging at the White House - where Lincoln would receive all who wished an audience; Stanton steely refused every single request. Hopefully, Emanuel will give Obama the same steely resolve often needed to persevere during tough times and luckily, we have Obama's wisdom to temper the Machiavellian view that naturally is required, something the soon-to-be past administration lacked sorely. 

Clandestine meetings between Clinton and Obama have many suspecting that she's being offered the Secretary of State (SoS) position within the cabinet, a job currently described as the US' head diplomat. The rumours are unsubstantiated less that they met alone for a few hours in Chicago. It's plausible and highly likely that there was cabinet discussion but let's run with the assumptions of SoS. All the pundits are claiming an even divide between those praising and decrying the idea from her 'advisors'. The argument against is that she gives up the powerbase of her NY Senate seat and loses the ability to champion her agenda on the floor. 

The argument is largely unfounded considering that she still has one of the more important roles within the cabinet, she would gain more foreign experience (maybe actually dodge snipers) while increasing her national coverage. Let's be honest here, Hillary Clinton does not need more exposure but she would need to stay relevant for the next eight years if she wants to go for another bid at the presidency. She's more likely to do that by representing part of the White House than she is being on the Senate floor. Furthermore, she could create more buzz on the Senate floor by sabotaging some of Obama's initiatives but that would be completely counterproductive since it sabotages the Democrats' efforts when they have the only responsibility as they control everything at present (save the Supreme Court). I wouldn't be surprised that she could easily be vilified or even scapegoated should that occur.

Now I'm no expert: I don't study political science outside of hobby; I don't read every detail of the process and the people; I could be incredibly naive about the situation but really, even those who do are often so blinded by their biases that they can't logically discuss any political problem. What it comes down to here is not whether or not it will be a good career move for Hillary. This should be considered an obligation to your country when you're the best person for the job and you're asked to perform it. It's selfish to consider how your career aspirations will pan out if it comes at the price of three hundred million others or more. It's selfish not to accept such a position when the US has come perilously close to running a draft. It is selfish and cynical to refuse given how challenging the times currently are if you're the best person to help everyone out of the situation. Politicians talk about service but the ultimate servants are those who sacrifice self for others. Those who practice altruism.

I believe that Hillary is better my veiled accusations. She is a public servant and I strongly support her efforts for universal healthcare. Her campaign failed because she  has a sense of entitlement leading to underestimate a young man from Illinois. Her campaign failed because she could not manage and lead a successful campaign machine. Her campaign failed because she sacrificed some of her beliefs in order to win, much like the once great John McCain. Everyone makes mistakes and everyone can learn from them, Hillary is no different. The question that should be asked is if she is the best for the position. Barack might think so and I give Hillary enough credit to figure out if she agrees.

Should Hillary decline, I hope Bill Richardson is next on the list. It's likely between him and Kerry and Bill is the better orator. Further, we still can't underestimate the impact race does have in this. Consider that Bill Richardson is Latino but, like Obama, has a North American cultural presentation (i.e. can come off as being white). While I'd strongly like to believe most foreign relations are no longer governed by race, it can have a positive effect. If not race, which I'll say is speculative, Bill Richardson could strongly improve relations with the large portion of the globe that speak Spanish. Grasping a bit a straws but it even rounds out Obama's international representation: Obama with african, asian and american/western roots; Biden (assuming he tries to emulate some of the power Cheney displayed) with grassroots american; Emanuel with Israeli; and then Richardson with South American. If Obama can find advisors from Pakistan and maybe Saudi Arabia, he'd be set. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty shallow but one can hope it might carry some symbolism even a fraction of Obama himself.

Fun times. Here's hoping for Lincoln 2.0 - with less assassination.

London

Napoli, Capri and the Amalfi Coast

Roma

Tuscany: Florence, Pisa, Siena

Verona and Bologna

Venice

Munich, Starnberg, Salzberg, Dachau and Bertchesgaden

Budapest

Vienna and Wachau Valley

Prague

Berlin

Black Forest

Paris

Barcelona and Figueres

The train from Paris to Barcelona was largely uneventful. I was exhausted from travelling all day so I didn't really bother trying to talk to anyone. Apparently it was a mistake as the next morning, I met this Canadian who was telling me about ten to twenty peeps were in the bar car partying until they got kicked out. At midnight when the car otherwise closes at 2am. They continued partying on the hallways until a condutor ushered them back into the bar car after they explained they got kicked out. I was going to meet them again at a park after we all got settled into our respective hostels/friend's couches. However, instead of meeting up with them, Garreth showed me around Barcelona a bit. Nice of him since I did show up a day earlier than I should have and I think I pulled him out of bed at around noon... maybe 2. I actually don't know how long I would've been sitting outside of his appartment before he decided to get up since he didn't bother answering the door... one of his new german roommates was coming back from wherever and let me in.

We saw a whole bunch of Gaudi's stuff... I'll have to check the names later but overall it was just amazing. Of course, the masterpiece itself was La Sagrada Familia - a massive, 18 towered church that is due to be completed in 2026, 100 years after the death of its designer: Antoni Gaudi. While churches in the past have often taken hundred of years, it’s simply astonishing that something in modern time will take that long to create given the technological wonders we have all around us. You might ask why is this taking so long to build then... well, not a single facet of the stone building is flat. Every piece is handcarved as Gaudi believed that if something doesn't need to be flat, why should it be?

Later that evening we went to a bar where the basement housed the Italians while the mainfloor housed the Spaniards and watched the Eurocup game between... who else? This was really my first major experience with the prevalence of smoking everywhere in Europe. It’s really about the only thing I've disliked about Europe... the smoking. While in most closed areas it's now legally banned, it's only half enforced. Once I get to talking about Berlin, I'll add some interesting anecdotes, though.

The game itself was uneventful. Actually, that's being nice - it was boring as shit. Watching paint dry would be more amusing cause you could probably at least get high off the paint fumes. The cancer rate would be about the same with the smoke in the air though. No score through golden goal times and finished with a shootout. There weren't even many chances in the game. I guess that was kinda expected as Italy is incredibly defensive but Spain is supposed to be an offensive powerhouse... or something like that. But at least the Spainiards were happy to have won since they haven't beaten Italy in something like 50 years in major international competition.

Aside from that, it was kinda sad since even though we were entering elmination rounds, there wasn't much celebrating going on. Barcelona is in Catalonia which is like Quebec in Canada to an extreme - they want to succeed so badly that they can't be bothered to cheer for the Spanish national team. Same with the languages of mandating that Catalonian be placed on all signs before Spanish. Even entering the semi-finals, front page coverage of local papers centered on one of the star Barça players instead of the fact that they were playing Russia, whom they beat in qualifiers 3-0, to enter the finals in the first time in decades or so. So there was maybe five minutes of partying... and this theme would come back to haunt me by Paris.

Next day: (So I’ve put this off long enough that I’m now forgetting the order of events. I’m going to try rebuilding my memories from photos but either way, the order isn’t critical.)

Come to think of it, I can’t recall anymore. I think I must have done something considering it was Sunday and Garreth wasn’t working.  Monday was the craziness of La festivale de Sant Joan. I’ll just forgo chrono order and detail interesting events. The lasting memories are the only ones that really matter.

Festivale de Sant Joan: We set off fairly late by NA standards but about the right time for Europe (~12?). With mixed drinks in hand, we headed down through winding streets, past Plaça de George Orwell – the first plaza with public security cameras... yeah.  – amidst smoke and endless firecrackers lit off by gradeschoolers. Garreth aptly described the experience when he deadpanned, “Hey so Charlie, remember the time you were in Barcelona when some kid blew your face off with fireworks?”

We walked down a few beaches, past the overpopulated tourist ones with the promise of a concert further along.  It was actually the first time I had come down to the beach, perfect time to visit mind you: middle of the night. It was completely packed with partiers, drunkards and families. Walls and bushes had been turned into urinals, left right and centre. Definitely was looking forward to swimming there in the days to come.

Eventually, we ran into some of Garreth’s friends and we came to the realization that the concert was not to materialize. Either it never existed or had moved down the beach already. I had to kill an hour or so while personal stuffs were dealt with but soon after, we found a jumping place on the beach to enjoy the rest of the night.

I’m going to make a point not to talk about more personal matters through the trip but I do have to chronical that it’s incredibly amusing to flirt with a girl when you can’t speak the same language. Even more so when your friend’s girlfriend is helping to translate for your benefit. EVEN more amusing when her friend is also translating to help things along :)

One reoccurring theme I was finding through parts of Europe was that people just don’t buy that I’m Canadian. There is racism involved but I don’t think I ever really came across an instance where it was asked in any malicious way so I had no problem when I further qualified that I have a Chinese heritage; of course, after making sure they knew I identified with being Canadian and teasing them about it.

My second all-nighter, spent dancing, drinking and watching fireworks on the beach in Barcelona. Oh yeah, and some people couldn’t wait to jump in the ocean already. Yikes.

Parc Guell etc: Making a larger effort to explore after recovering from Sant Joan,  I set off mid morning and checked out the Pablo Picasso Museum – except that it was closed. So I continued and trekked up the hills that flank Barcelona in search of Gaudi’s city: Parc Guell. I got lost along the way but got some great views of the city and the entire Sagrada Familia from afar. Eventually, I did stumble across it.

Parc Guell was an effort by Gaudi to create his ‘ideal’ city. The task proved too daunting and he left it mostly unfinished but there were still a handful of crazy sites. The best descriptors might be that it did indeed look like a land filled with gingerbread houses – plus a few more imposing stone structures. Swarming with tourists and a handful of buskers, while wandering the plazas, I kept thinking how fun it would’ve been to have someone to break out some Tango with. The locals could also make great backdrops for some wild fashion photography or maybe contrast with some etherealness in model.

Afterwards, I walked down intending to catch the last bit of light hitting La Sagrada Familia. I had the time constraint of meeting up with Garreth as he got home from work and sadly the sun didn’t go down till after I left. I had better light by the time I got to Casa Batlló but I missed my chance to really capture his masterpiece.

Figueres:

I’m pretty sure on the Thursday I made the effort to trek out two hours north to Figueres on the advice of Garreth to check out Teatre-Museu Dalí. I met a couple of Candians on the way who had a few hours to kill before their ryan air flight outta Girona so I convinced them to tag along. After a bargain lunch (the best time to drop euros on dining out for value) with some really refreshing gazpacho, we headed into the red-castle guarded by eggs that is Dali’s Theatre. I honestly can’t describe in words how awesomely psychedelic it is. There’s definitely something in the water to produce such vision from these artists.

Speaking of that, just a short blurb on Picasso: I stopped into his museum/art gallery the next day or so. It was not nearly as cool as either Dali’s or Gaudi’s works but still damn impressive. I definitely learned a lot about this one piece, Las Meninas - quite a famous work for its exploration of perspective. I’m not sure I really get it inasmuch as how much this one piece has been studied. To clarify, Picasso did not paint the original Las Meninas; that was done by Valazquez but has been interpreted by countless artists. Picasso is arguably the most influential to explore the piece with a cubist’s mindset: exploring “colour, form, rhythm and movement.”

Time for another break.

Amsterdam to Paris

I think I've described this part adequately way before. I'll check it again later.

Reboot

Alright, so I'm terrible at updating this thing. Something about taking precious time out of europe and typically paying for it at an internet cafe doesn't appeal to me. That said, I'm going to go about this in a different manner... I'm going to actually outline all the various places I've been in Europe and then try to fill the blanks as it were. So, for those reading (which amounts to maybe two of my friends I've actually told I'm doing this), it may get more disorganized for a while... but here we go.

Interlude

There's a lot I have to post about detailing my trip from Barcelona, back to Paris since I missed so much before and now being in Black Forest in Germany. Next time I have reliable internet access, I'll post more... Here's some tidbits though:

-La Sagrada Familia is fucking awesome.
-Dali, Gaudi and Picasso all prominent artists around Barcelona and are all amazing. There must be something in the water
-Festival of St. Joan\Jean was awesome
-I'm meeting like 4-5 people on average a day
-Living on Las Ramblas was damn sweet even though the couch wasn't adult friendly.
-Paris is too god damn big
-5 hours at the Louvre and still didn't really see everything
-Versailles is also huge... though mainly the garden.
-La Tour Eiffel was pretty cool... nice light show and it's quite big.
-Celebrating Canada Day in Paris was fun but didn't meet an abundance of Canadians. The people on I did meet that night were almost all fun and entertaining people
-Rodin's gate to hell is soooo sweet, totally beats thinking man
-Black Forest is exactly like temperate BC. It's even fucking raining, yet I'm still trying to camp outside. I partially slept under a bridge last night!


I'm probably going to Berlin tomorrow. Pushing up my trip dates a bit... which means I might be able to squeeze something else in.... or just spend more time in Munich with family.

Delft to Paris

The last few days of my trip have been pretty hectic. Very little of what I planned to do happened.

My time in Amsterdam was good though. I visited the Anne Frank house and also the Van Gogh museum. I decided to skip out on Riksmuseum because despite being able to catch Rembrant´s Nightwatch, 2/3s of the library was closed and they still charged full admission. The only thing I didn´t really get to see was the red light zone while it was busy. I did catch it in the early morning (6-7am) but there were only two whores about. I saw a few more in a brothel that was isolated from the rest of the zone though. While I fully expected whores, porno theatres and the like, I was still surprised to see various advertisements with explicit photos.

I sat down for a beer and lunch with a large group of random dutchies. Really nice people but I think I was intruding a bit more than usual as these were a bunch of nursing/psychology students that were having spending some time with their mentors and celebrating a classmate´s birthday. They were still really nice and fun... one bought me a beer and I had a pretty indepth conversation with another guy - I can´t recall his name right now but I have his email and will contact him later and thank all of them for their hospitality.

Later in the evening, I talked to Rose and bolted to Delft, which is an hour south of Amsterdam. On the way, I met this Norwegian exchange student who was studying event management. She was quite nice and I found out she actually does some DJíng on the side by the stage name of Aglais. I´ll have to check out some of her stuff in the future.

Delft hosts the most impressive university campus I´ve seen from a "Oh my god, look at that gargantuan building" kinda way. The best way I could describe this one engineering building (before photos) is if you took all the buildings on the UBC campus and put them all into one, 10 story building. Rose´s residence was also ridiculously impressive... it looked like it belonged more on the yaletown waterfront than as a student residence. The architecture was tres chic with the grey oval building overhanging a large canal. She also lucked out and got the top floor with an amazing view of the sunset. Of course, still being a residence, it was falling quickly into disrepair.

The party at Rose´s for her b-day was a lot of fun. About half of the attendees were Iranian so it was nice to see how that culture celebrates. I also had some good laughs with some dutchies - they were going to be heading to China in a few months so they were exploiting some of my experiences. What I probably enjoyed most about the evening was how friendly and open everyone was. It was too bad that at house parties, dancing rarely happens but Rose, myself and a couple others put in a valiant effort.

I didn´t get much sleep that night and I had to get up at 6:30 to get ready to catch an 8am train to Brussels. The plan was to arrive around 10am, run around, eat some moules et frites, down some belgian beer and chocolates and hop on a train to Paris by about 3pm. Now, I really should´ve made a point to understand how the labelling for trains worked but I didn´t so instead of being in Brussels by 10am, I ended up in Eindhoven before realizing I was heading in the wrong direction. If you look at a map and look for Delft, Brussels and Eindhoven, you´ll get a sense for how far out of my way I was getting. Luckily, I was able to get myself to Brussels to catch my reserved Paris train otherwise I would´ve been really fucked. At least along the way to Paris, I talked to this pretty interesting American businessman who owns his own agriculture consulting business. I tried to get an insider´s view on the corn-ethanol fiasco.

In Paris, my day of a comedy of errors continued: I tried to book a reservation on the night train for the next day but it was completely booked. I had to settle for that night´s train to Barcelona which only gave me like 3-4 hours in Paris. I walked through some of the streets, technically saw Notre Dame and la tour Eiffel and sat down for an unimpressive french meal. While I did get some fresh oyesters and a really refreshing ice cream sorbet thing, the main course was pretty disapointing. Some cream over bland fish and bitter veggies. At least the mushrooms were good in it. I got a complemetary post card that I might send off to one of you lucky readers.

Alright, I think that´s enough for one post. I´ll talk about the train to Barcelona and the city itself next time. A little preview: la sagrada familia is fucking awesome with an emphasis on awe. And photos will still come at some point... maybe when I have more patience with laptops or get to a desktop... or at least a mouse.

Day 1: Amsterdam

So, I´m currently in the library in Amsterdam and abusing their free internet. Unfortunately, I can´t post any pictures as I don´t have access to the computer itself. Also, the punctuation on the keyboards is all fucked up. Other than the basics of periods, commas and apostrophes, everything listed on the keyboard doesn´t correspond to the right punctuating mark. Anyway, the flight and everything up to now has been pretty smooth sailing and the next big test will be what I do for getting down to Barcelona.

But let me start a little more chronologically. From the plane, I had a conversation with a lovely woman named Judith. She and her husband were just heading back to Holland from a two-week vacation in BC. They were in Vancouver and the Okanagan mainly. She was telling me a bit about Holland, her family and even helped me a bit with some pronounciations of Dutch. Worse comes to worse, I´ve made a friend that I can call or even randomly drop by her house if something bad happens here.

On the brief train ride from the airport to AMS centraal station, I met up with a few students from Georgia. They had also just graduated from university and were just starting a one month trip around Europe. In retrospect, I totally should have gotten a photo with them and me in it just to say address Morgan´s challenge of finding a girl for me and him. The two girls were pretty cute... for the record, the names were Kelsey, Jenny and Cameron I believe. Hopefully, I´ll run into them later as amsterdam is somewhat small... Sadly, I had to leave them since I needed to validate my rail pass and book a train from here to Paris. I´ll actually try to stop by for a few hours in Brussels and get a beer and maybe some moules et frites.

Waiting for the rail pass... which took something like 1.5 hours!... I grabbed some groceries to sate me for a day or so. Sandwich material and some bananas for ~7 euro. Much better than the 5 euro or so prices for a single fastfood meal. I´ll probably go to an actual restaurant tomorrow and then to a club after. Also while waiting, I talked to this girl from Australia. She had just gotten out of highschool and was making a point to travel the world before heading to uni to study musical theatre. I didn´t get her name before heading off to the counter to deal with my rail pass but her most memorable feature were her ridiculously worn in boots. They weren´t made for the 10 weeks of travelling she had done to this point... they were clearly quite fashionable at some point but now had mucho character in the holes forming in the leather.

Anyway, since then, I found a hostel pretty easily for 25. Not a bad location and seems pretty clean although there´s construction going on presently. I´ll probably try to crash in the train station and catch an early one friday evening. Unless Rose is amiable to me crashing on her couch. Rose is a friend I briefly met last summer who was working with Morgan and was on exchange from here. I just messaged her and miraculously, she does love in Amsterdam! Hopefully we´ll catch up some later tonight.

Wandering around Amsterdam has been pretty cool. We flew in to rain but since then, it´s cleared up quite nicely. Pictures will come at some point. The city centre is really well designed. I was talking to Ben a few days ago about the North American trend towards creating walkable-urbanism as opposed to the sprawling suburbia our city planning has followed for the last century. Amsterdam is the epitome of walkable urbanism. Admittedly, many of the cities in europe were constructed long before vehicles were made so it´s more a byproduct of centuries of necessity but regardless it´s really nice to be able to see almost everything without needing to even hop on a bus. I´ll probably rent a bike tomorrow but I think I´ve already walked around quite a bit of the city.

Anyway, I´ll leave the post here for now. Next, one more day in AMS, then a few hours in Brussels and a night in Paris - the city.

Off to Europe!

Alright so I've never quite found a grove/purpose for this blog. For now, I'm going to attempt to make this a travel journal. Right now, I'm sitting in the fizz penthouse, waiting to go for coffee and lunch with friends on campus before heading off the YVR to catch a flight to amsterdam. I'm quite excited and anxious, way more so than graduation. I am going to be traveling largely alone too.

Anyway, I'm off. Will try to update as much as possible and maybe at some point advertise this to friends...