I'm glad I have my head screwed reasonably well on my shoulders, because otherwise I might have become tonight one of these people who are spooked into believing the irrational.
Uncharacteristically, I had my laptop on my dining table, doing miscellaneous stuff while waiting for dinner to be ready. My friend Mark, from the northern latitudes (he doesn't really like to be identified much more precisely than this), comes in on LiveMessenger, as he does almost every night, with some variant of "sup buddy?" I told him I was ready to eat dinner, he replied that he and his partner were too, and I wrote "cool". Then he wrote this sentence, which I reproduce verbatim because it is important for the rest of our story:
ya got a nice bottle of wine
Now, there are two ways to understand this sentence: "yes, we've got a nice bottle of wine!" or "have you got a nice bottle of wine?" because, at least on such an informal medium, "ya" can pass equally, I think, for an abbreviation of "yes" or of "you," and who cares about precisely placing commas in instant messages?
I understood the sentence the second way, which didn't seem far-fetched since, after all, I did have a bottle of wine -- which a friend offered me a few days ago -- and I looked at the label and typed:
Malbec 2006 from Argentina
,,, and what came back was:
um how'd you know
I'm scared
At first, it didn't make any sense, and it took me a little while to figure out what had happened: they had the same wine in front of them, and Mark, who had not meant to ask me what I was drinking, but just to tell me that they were having some wine with their dinner, thought I had guessed what they were drinking!
I was silent for a while, first because it took me a while to figure out what the heck had just happened, and then after that because I was playing games with him, letting him spin his brain around this little mystery. He "nudged" me (in LiveMessenger, a "nudge" is a command that makes the message window shake while your computer buzzes, as if you were given a shock) because he really couldn't take it -- not knowing how I had guessed correctly. At that point, I must admit that I embellished in a somewhat underhanded way: I didn't explain that I had misunderstood his statement, instead I said that I was just using the wine I was drinking as a wild-ass guess for the one they were having -- a half-truth at best.
End of the anecdote. What does one make of it? Well first, Malbec is now very much en vogue right now, so it's not too surprising that they would also be drinking it. Perhaps no less than one chance in 10? Secondly, there are not that many vintages in active circulation in supermarkets, I would guess mostly three: 2005, 2006 and 2007. So that leaves us with one chance in 30, if I oversimplify. So it's not so far-fetched that we would accidentally be drinking the same wine from the same year (for the record, these were at least not the same vintner or brand: mine was Domaine Jean Bousquet, from Tupungato Valley, Mendoza; theirs was Trivento Amado Sur, a blend with some syrah and bonarda, a grape I had never heard about).
But my point is this: if you take the average person with no knowledge of probabilities, and somewhat influenceable into finding a supernatural explanation more convincing than a statistical one, that person could be very easily convinced at this point that I am some sort of medium with clairvoyant powers. We know that people talk about "the laws of series" when three plane crashes happen the same week in unrelated contexts; or that many amateur gamblers believe that if the roulette has come out on black four times in a row, it is more likely than the next throw will come up red; etc. So surely, my wild but successful guess would have been interpreted by many of these people as a sign that a higher power was at work. The same people, of course, do not notice when plane crashes do not occur, or are very equally spaced, which is just as improbable as three in the same week; or when the roulette goes "black, red, black, red" which has the same probability as four times black in a row.
If I wanted to take the time, and antagonize some of my friends, I could be convinced to drift into how this kind of superstition is probably the source of most religions. But it's getting late and this is the kind of theory I need to explain when I have not had a glass of... Malbec 2006 from Argentina.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Monday, August 25, 2008
An Oversimplified Model of Recent World History
I just read some news item that said that tourists who went to Beijing for the Olympics were "dazzled and daunted" by the event, and that this was an unprecedented exercise in increasing the maturity of a country in such a short time span. Last night, the NBC commentators marveled during their retransmission of the closing ceremonies (bits of pageantry shown during the infrequent gaps left between commercials and the incessant replays of the achievements of almost only U.S. athletes) that Beijing had spent about $40 billion and mobilized up to one million volunteers for the games, and that one was unlikely to see an effort of this size any time soon, "or perhaps ever."
The description of the advances made in Beijing for these games may well be true. But what the media, and U.S. media in particular, do not seem to grasp, is that we're talking about the durable emergence of China as a pre-eminent economic, political and social power, not about a temporary flash of brilliance. And for that matter, I can look in my crystal ball and tell you exactly when the Olympics will cost more and mobilize more people than the 2008 games did: this will happen the next time the games are hosted by China, and I am pretty sure that this will happen again some time in the next 30 years (OK, make that 32), because China is in the front seat for good now.
So here's my oversimplified geo-politico-historical model: the 18th century was French (the Enlightenment, French spoken in the palaces of Europe, the Revolution, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen). The 19th century was British (Waterloo, Queen Victoria, the building of the Empire, international maritime commerce). The 20th century was American (the U.S. conclusively intervenes in two world conflicts, rules the economy, develops the atom bomb, puts a man on the moon, and ends up as the sole superpower in the last decade of the century). And the 21st century will belong to China: 1.3 billion people, a 9% annual growth rate in GDP, the world's largest manufacturer and soon the world's largest consumer.
Americans still think that they are God's chosen people: this hubris will only delay the inevitable realization of China's preeminence. The U.S. still has the best universities in the world... but students are increasingly dropping scientific subjects in order to choose careers in Finance, Business, and the law. Can you build an economy solely on that basis? No, you can't. The modern world isn't just virtual: someone needs to grow our food, make our clothes, build our homes and our cars. Increasingly, all these things come from elsewhere. And that elsewhere more and more takes the form of this little label that reads "Made in China." OK, food is a little different, because the cost and duration of transportation already make it expensive and/or inconvenient, and will make it increasingly so, to import foods from afar (we still cherish our Chilean strawberries in winter, but for how long?). Crude oil at $120/bbl is actually increasing the interest in local/regional food production. But will it cause a resurgence of manufacturing in the U.S. (and other Western countries)? Only when the cycle completes and our countries' economies sag so low that we will be the "new poor," and our ill-educated work forces, aided by a dollar worth 50 euro-cents or less, will make it cheaper for an American consumer to buy goods made in Mississippi than made in China (you can name the equivalent "bottom of the barrel" regions in your own countries).
The two questions that remain in my mind, because I believe the above scenario to be almost ineluctable, are: what accidents can happen in the meantime to delay or modify it? and what happens after that? Is this is a one-way street, or will the "decline of the American empire" and of other Western countries result in some sort of compensating pendulum swing, where China will find itself, by the dawn of the 22nd century, in a similar situation that the U.S. is finding itself now, unable to prolong its fading grandeur, and sobered-up countries with significant natural resources (the US, Brazil, Nigeria, Canada, etc.) will restore a different balance?
It will help China extend its domination if the Chinese government at the time does not repeat the errors of the most recent U.S. politicians, which caused the sudden and profound moral bankruptcy of this country on the international scene. Assuming that China grows out of the current climate of quasi-dictatorship and human rights violations, let's fast forward. If anything similar to the U.S. 2000-2008 political catastrophe happens in China in 50 or a hundred years, will the Chinese people have the political education, the will, and the ability to change things before it damages their country's standing in a similar way to what Bush & Co. have just done to the U.S.? Of course, today, it is clear that they probably wouldn't be able to. But as the country continues its rapid progress, a time will come when they will probably have that power. So the last question is whether the Chinese people in a few decades will have the knowledge needed to make the right decisions (as opposed to, say, Americans who can't locate Iraq on a globe, or still believe that there were WMDs in Iraq because Fox "News" tells them so). The future of the world may well depend on this more than on anything else.
The description of the advances made in Beijing for these games may well be true. But what the media, and U.S. media in particular, do not seem to grasp, is that we're talking about the durable emergence of China as a pre-eminent economic, political and social power, not about a temporary flash of brilliance. And for that matter, I can look in my crystal ball and tell you exactly when the Olympics will cost more and mobilize more people than the 2008 games did: this will happen the next time the games are hosted by China, and I am pretty sure that this will happen again some time in the next 30 years (OK, make that 32), because China is in the front seat for good now.
So here's my oversimplified geo-politico-historical model: the 18th century was French (the Enlightenment, French spoken in the palaces of Europe, the Revolution, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen). The 19th century was British (Waterloo, Queen Victoria, the building of the Empire, international maritime commerce). The 20th century was American (the U.S. conclusively intervenes in two world conflicts, rules the economy, develops the atom bomb, puts a man on the moon, and ends up as the sole superpower in the last decade of the century). And the 21st century will belong to China: 1.3 billion people, a 9% annual growth rate in GDP, the world's largest manufacturer and soon the world's largest consumer.
Americans still think that they are God's chosen people: this hubris will only delay the inevitable realization of China's preeminence. The U.S. still has the best universities in the world... but students are increasingly dropping scientific subjects in order to choose careers in Finance, Business, and the law. Can you build an economy solely on that basis? No, you can't. The modern world isn't just virtual: someone needs to grow our food, make our clothes, build our homes and our cars. Increasingly, all these things come from elsewhere. And that elsewhere more and more takes the form of this little label that reads "Made in China." OK, food is a little different, because the cost and duration of transportation already make it expensive and/or inconvenient, and will make it increasingly so, to import foods from afar (we still cherish our Chilean strawberries in winter, but for how long?). Crude oil at $120/bbl is actually increasing the interest in local/regional food production. But will it cause a resurgence of manufacturing in the U.S. (and other Western countries)? Only when the cycle completes and our countries' economies sag so low that we will be the "new poor," and our ill-educated work forces, aided by a dollar worth 50 euro-cents or less, will make it cheaper for an American consumer to buy goods made in Mississippi than made in China (you can name the equivalent "bottom of the barrel" regions in your own countries).
The two questions that remain in my mind, because I believe the above scenario to be almost ineluctable, are: what accidents can happen in the meantime to delay or modify it? and what happens after that? Is this is a one-way street, or will the "decline of the American empire" and of other Western countries result in some sort of compensating pendulum swing, where China will find itself, by the dawn of the 22nd century, in a similar situation that the U.S. is finding itself now, unable to prolong its fading grandeur, and sobered-up countries with significant natural resources (the US, Brazil, Nigeria, Canada, etc.) will restore a different balance?
It will help China extend its domination if the Chinese government at the time does not repeat the errors of the most recent U.S. politicians, which caused the sudden and profound moral bankruptcy of this country on the international scene. Assuming that China grows out of the current climate of quasi-dictatorship and human rights violations, let's fast forward. If anything similar to the U.S. 2000-2008 political catastrophe happens in China in 50 or a hundred years, will the Chinese people have the political education, the will, and the ability to change things before it damages their country's standing in a similar way to what Bush & Co. have just done to the U.S.? Of course, today, it is clear that they probably wouldn't be able to. But as the country continues its rapid progress, a time will come when they will probably have that power. So the last question is whether the Chinese people in a few decades will have the knowledge needed to make the right decisions (as opposed to, say, Americans who can't locate Iraq on a globe, or still believe that there were WMDs in Iraq because Fox "News" tells them so). The future of the world may well depend on this more than on anything else.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Friends, Friends Everywhere! -- take 2
My blogging was paralyzed for almost three weeks, not because I had too few things to mention, but because there were too many. Every time I thought of writing, then either I was having dinner with someone, or I was looking forward to the next dinner and thinking, "I'll wait another day, then there will be more to write about."
I had two trips almost back to back: the Stanford Pride Board held its annual face-to-face meeting (the rest are teleconferences) at Stanford on June 21-22, and I added some personal visits, so I was gone June 19-24. Then I had a business trip to Paris on June 29-July 8. So at the risk of sounding like a vapid star's journal for People magazine, here's what happened (there is a moral to all this, at the end, if you can wait that long):
It sounds like after this, I need to take it easy for a little while. Fred, don't worry: I told you we'd have dinner this week, and I'll be ready to treat you like a friend too. For some reason, I'm not actually getting tired of having good times with good people...
I had two trips almost back to back: the Stanford Pride Board held its annual face-to-face meeting (the rest are teleconferences) at Stanford on June 21-22, and I added some personal visits, so I was gone June 19-24. Then I had a business trip to Paris on June 29-July 8. So at the risk of sounding like a vapid star's journal for People magazine, here's what happened (there is a moral to all this, at the end, if you can wait that long):
- Thursday, June 21: arrived in the Bay Area, and had dinner with my colleague and friend Julien L. (there will be another Julien later) at Bambino's in the City. What do you mean, "which city?" We talked about social networking, among other things -- a common passion of ours. We're lucky that something we're passionate about is part of our jobs.
- Friday, June 20: I had lunch with B. at Café Brioche in Palo Alto. He is one of my "friends" from Facebook, with whom I originally connected because he was one of the first people to accept my invitation to join the Stanford Pride group after I created it. I've always been intrigued by his whimsical status messages, and I often ask him what they mean. I guess one thing leads to another, and we had decided to meet in person. I'll summarize by saying that I hope I can remove the quote marks around "friends" in the future, because the discussion confirmed that he is a really nice and thoughtful guy worth knowing.
- Friday evening, June 20: Dinner at "Home" in the City with a subset of the Stanford Pride Board. Nice, but I arrived last, and was at the end of a very long table that did not make conversations very easy.
- Saturday, June 21: First day of the Stanford Pride Board meeting. We recently elected 13 new Board members, 12 of whom (I think) were present. What energy and diversity in this group! What's funny is that some of them tend to act like my longevity on this Board is something amazing, and then I'm chuckling and thinking, "how would I want to leave something that puts me in touch with such great people?" And still it's hard work: we met from 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., then we had dinner together from about 7 until 9.
- Sunday morning, June 22: end of the Stanford Pride meeting. I now have an Assistant Treasurer. Woo-hoo! And he is actually eager to pitch in, and seems very easy to work with. This is going to test my proverbial deficiency in delegation capabilities, but I'm working on it.
- Sunday afternoon, June 22: I don't know anyone else than my friend Carol with whom I can spend 9 hours solid, doing very little, both of us talking effortlessly about any number of things of varied importance, never worrying how to occupy the time or restart the conversation, never feeling like I should be on my guard or have to prove anything. At the end, we're always just surprised that so much time has passed and that it felt so good. This is just amazing. Totally drama-less, and boy, do we need this from time to time, both she and I! We always comment on this to each other, too: this is our little "mutual admiration society" topic.
- Monday afternoon, June 23: I visited with S. and N., who are back from their trip to India, Thailand, New Zealand, and Australia, at the Emeryville Marina, where they currently camp on their sailboat. It's probably unrealistic to expect that they would make plans to settle down for any period of time, but this is taking an especially interesting turn with their idea to trade their current boat for a larger and much more comfortable one and live on it. That could make for some interesting visits. I'm not sure I'd want to live that way, but I'll sure come and visit!
- Monday evening, June 23: B. (that's B no. 2, not B. from June 20) and I had dinner at Maverick, in the Mission. Very nice restaurant, tiny but friendly. The price was what could be expected for a small nice restaurant in San Francisco, about $60 per head with wine. B. is from Stanford, is a geek (the smart kind, not just the well educated kind, that's a huge difference), is a skier (infinitely better than me), which is how I know him after two successive winter ski week-ends, is super-nice, and 100% unpretentious (otherwise, I would obviously never had had a chance to have dinner with him). And we had a chance to talk about our favorite acrobat... an inside joke that said acrobat, and a couple other people, will understand.
- Sunday evening, June 29: After sleeping all afternoon to recover from the flight to Paris, I decided to go to Josselin for crêpes, and took the subway to the Vavin station. I hesitated in the station: I could get out on Boulevard du Montparnasse facing west, and then turn left to walk up the rue du Montparnasse, or I could, slightly less obviously, take the opposite steps going east, turn the corner, go up rue Delambre to the Edgar-Quinet crossroads, and then walk down rue du Montparnasse. For some reason, the latter option appealed to me in spite of its lesser logic (drumroll, please). This staircase leads right in front of the terrace at the Dôme. I had probably taken five steps on the sidewalk when I heard my name, pronounced with a slight tone of interrogation. Here was, having coffee with a friend at said terrace, my ex-colleague, friend, and "comrade" (alumnus from the same engineering school) Jean-Christophe, whom I had probably not seen in ten or fifteen years! To make things even more eerie, I had just e-mailed him two days earlier announcing my trip and asking if he had time to meet. This is the kind of encounter that makes you say "I am not superstitious, but..." The evening did end with crêpes, but the three of us together instead of by myself, and at the Saint-Malo because Josselin was packed.
- Monday evening, June 30: Here's where Julien No. 2 comes into play. And he is also the third Facebook friend I met for the first time in this saga. Same Engineering school (many, many years apart) and he had missed a dinner of the gay alum club last time I was in Paris. He had given me a not unreasonably reserved "oh well, yes, why not?" answer when I had proposed to have dinner during this trip. I'm not sure what he thinks now, but I had a nice time, conversation seemed to flow easily over a great many topics, etc. I took him to l'Amazonial, which may be a little cliché for gays in Paris, but the place is good enough that it has become much more mixed over the years ("gay is the new black," some people say), plus it was the perfect weather to sit outside. Is there such a thing as making too many friends? Is it like the stock market, where when you issue more shares, it dilutes their value? I hope not, because I'd prefer not to stop given the quality of the people I meet.
- Tuesday, July 1, lunch time: Ben managed to make time (well, 20 minutes late, but he did manage) to have lunch with me. He is one of the most demonstratively affectionate straight men I know. That's a compliment, by the way.
- Wednesday, July 2: Went to dinner at my friends' P. and A. near Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Their boys make me think of the Olympic motto "citius, altius, fortius," except that in their case it would have to be something like "smarter, more mature, and more handsome" each year. P. was in engineering school with me, same year, but we really had no contact then. Our friendship developed later. We have fairly different political opinions, but we've always been able to have reasonable conversations, as intelligent people arguably should, Daumier's sketches notwithstanding. Their American friend L. also came, and the five of us talked about a lot of things, including American and French politics, switching constantly between French and English. That was easy for P., A.,L. and me, but I was pleased to see the boys follow us easily in this flexible exchange.
- Thursday, July 3: Back to Saint-Germain for the official business dinner of the week, at Le Petit Zinc. Charming Art Nouveau décor, especially the wrought-iron-and-glass canopy above the entrance, reminiscent of the original métro stations around 1900. But it wasn't the dinner that leaves me the best memory, it is the after-dinner drinks just down the street, in a jazz café with the Three Musketeers of IT innovation (yes, I know, that makes me d'Artagnan -- this was calculated): Julien no.1, David, and Laurent. I'm not sure we talked much about work, but it doesn't matter.
- Friday afternoon, July 4: This was the fourth and last instance, in just two weeks, of meeting a heretofore unmet Facebook "friend." This time, B. (no. 3) went to both Stanford and Polytechnique, and I had just recently noticed that he was in both schools' gay alum clubs. Having contacted him about this coincidence, I found out that he was travelling to Paris the same week I was. So we had coffee in the gardens of the Palais Royal, the original plan of meeting at the Café Marly having been thwarted by the heat and the café's attitude, relegating the non-diners to outside tables that are directly on the stone courtyard, under the sun, and that none of the arrogant waiters ever bother to visit.
- Friday afternoon, July 4, two hours later (this looks like a title screen from "Law & Order," doesn't it? Boom-boom!): soft drinks with A., an ex-colleague and perhaps new friend. We gave each other a kiss when we met, and shook hands when we parted -- I hope this doesn't mean anything other than the fact that we weren't keeping track of our protocol. He looks like he's floating on a little cloud because of a very positive turn in his private life. It's nice to see happy people.
- Saturday and Sunday, July 5-6: I had been so sad to tell J.-N. two weeks earlier that I might not be able to go to his wedding ceremony, and then when this business trip got scheduled, I was so happy to be reverse myself. And it was a really, really nice event. Three things will remain in my memory: the fabulously embroidered dress that his wife changed into in the middle of the reception; the rare sense of complicity and mutual love between the groom and his younger brother; and the fact that without anyone saying anything special, at some point, I just started crying with happiness realizing that the year-old kid I had bounced on my knee once when visiting his parents had just finally won three years of battles with consular and religious authorities to marry the love of his life, against all "reasonable" advice, and end their forced separation by winning the right to have her at his side permanently.
- Sunday, July 6: I messed up my return to Paris a bit -- I should have dropped the car at the entrance to the city, or even in Saint-Denis, and taken the subway in order to be on time to meet Jorge. But I insisted on driving all the way, so I arrived over an hour late. This limited our visit, but it was still nice to catch up, even briefly, before he left for a business trip to East Africa.
- Monday, July 7: I hadn't seen M. and R. for several years, and was a bit ashamed when M. told me, not too long ago, "ah, I see in your blog that you've been in Paris several times, how come we never hear from you?" Whoops. So instead of making excuses, I made time, which is better. We had dinner at the Pub Renault on the Champs-Elysées (classy... but somewhat logical since M. works for Renault). Another evening of good conversation aided by decent wine.
It sounds like after this, I need to take it easy for a little while. Fred, don't worry: I told you we'd have dinner this week, and I'll be ready to treat you like a friend too. For some reason, I'm not actually getting tired of having good times with good people...
Monday, May 26, 2008
A Moment of Screaming, Please
As I started my almost weekly drive from Austin to Houston this afternoon, the classical radio station (KMFA) was finishing Dvorak's Symphony No. 9, From the New World. After that, the announcer came on and said that on the occasion of Memorial Day, the station would join its listeners in a minute of silence to honor the servicemen and -women who had died. Silence dutifully followed.
I don't know about you, but while I am tremendously saddened by the lost of those young lives, and I am as ready as the next person to honor their memory, the last thing that comes to mind as a reaction to the current war, which has so far cost more than 4,000 such lives, is silence. In fact, what I want to do when I think of that war is scream. I want to scream to Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell and Rumsfeld (wherever the last two are now hiding in deserved disgrace): I know you didn't fire the bullets or arm the IEDs that killed these people, but you manufactured the conflict in which they were killed. You are thus complicit in their deaths. And the memory of these poor people is not well served by silence, it is better served by an outcry -- hopefully an outcry that will continue until November 4, Election Day, so that you are not succeeded by more of the same.
On the same drive a week earlier, I heard a reading from the book "War Wounds: a Father and Son Return to Vietnam" by Tom Bissell. One quote struck me, so I sent a text message to my own email address in order to remember to look it up, and I now have it as one of my email signatures, ready to be used for the right audience:
"War, when necessary, is unspeakable. When unnecessary, it is unforgivable."
I don't know about you, but while I am tremendously saddened by the lost of those young lives, and I am as ready as the next person to honor their memory, the last thing that comes to mind as a reaction to the current war, which has so far cost more than 4,000 such lives, is silence. In fact, what I want to do when I think of that war is scream. I want to scream to Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell and Rumsfeld (wherever the last two are now hiding in deserved disgrace): I know you didn't fire the bullets or arm the IEDs that killed these people, but you manufactured the conflict in which they were killed. You are thus complicit in their deaths. And the memory of these poor people is not well served by silence, it is better served by an outcry -- hopefully an outcry that will continue until November 4, Election Day, so that you are not succeeded by more of the same.
On the same drive a week earlier, I heard a reading from the book "War Wounds: a Father and Son Return to Vietnam" by Tom Bissell. One quote struck me, so I sent a text message to my own email address in order to remember to look it up, and I now have it as one of my email signatures, ready to be used for the right audience:
"War, when necessary, is unspeakable. When unnecessary, it is unforgivable."
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Love the Sorcerer, and the Witch Mezzo
I went to the Houston Symphony on Thursday evening, for a concert that had a Spanish theme throughout: De Falla's El Amor Brujo (which was translated in the program as "Love the Magician," although I think that "Love the Sorcerer" better conveys the ambiguous and sometimes malevolent tone of the piece); Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez; De Falla's Nights in the Gardens of Spain; and Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol. Altogether a long and rich concert, one that I would still recommend to people who read this early enough to be able to catch the Sunday matinee performance (tomorrow).
The only sour note (so to speak) came from the first piece, strictly because of the singer. I know that photos in programs are always dated, but this was so extreme that it makes Elizabeth II look positively age-sincere on UK stamps. I'm talking about someone looking 30 in the program, and being 60 in reality. She did look like a witch, which is actually quite appropriate for this piece, but was clearly not intentional. Her voice did not carry well (and I was in the middle of the fourth row). She sings opera, and that's perhaps why she kept taking dramatic poses and making exaggerated faces to convey the emotions of the gypsy girl, but it just looked absolutely ridiculous when just standing by herself in front of an orchestra. And her red-and-black gown must have been badly tailored at home (or else she needs to get a refund), because the left strap kept falling off. Believe me, any "wardrobe malfunction" would not have been very pretty to witness in her case!
While this was a shame, the next piece obliterated this bad experience quite nicely. The solo guitarist, Eliot Fisk, was amazing... and the audience recognized this so well that he played two encores: a transcription for the guitar of Paganini's Caprice n° 24, and a piece by Francisco Tárrega (it might have been Recuerdos de la Alhambra, but I'm not sure).
After the intermission (I told you it was a long concert) Shai Wosner was the pianist in De Falla's Noches en los jardines de España, which I found a little long and discursive, less packed with tense emotion as the rest of that composer's œuvre. And finally, as befits this sometimes very loud and brassy orchestra, Rimsky-Korsakov provided the sonorous (some would say "noisy") finale.
The only sour note (so to speak) came from the first piece, strictly because of the singer. I know that photos in programs are always dated, but this was so extreme that it makes Elizabeth II look positively age-sincere on UK stamps. I'm talking about someone looking 30 in the program, and being 60 in reality. She did look like a witch, which is actually quite appropriate for this piece, but was clearly not intentional. Her voice did not carry well (and I was in the middle of the fourth row). She sings opera, and that's perhaps why she kept taking dramatic poses and making exaggerated faces to convey the emotions of the gypsy girl, but it just looked absolutely ridiculous when just standing by herself in front of an orchestra. And her red-and-black gown must have been badly tailored at home (or else she needs to get a refund), because the left strap kept falling off. Believe me, any "wardrobe malfunction" would not have been very pretty to witness in her case!
While this was a shame, the next piece obliterated this bad experience quite nicely. The solo guitarist, Eliot Fisk, was amazing... and the audience recognized this so well that he played two encores: a transcription for the guitar of Paganini's Caprice n° 24, and a piece by Francisco Tárrega (it might have been Recuerdos de la Alhambra, but I'm not sure).
After the intermission (I told you it was a long concert) Shai Wosner was the pianist in De Falla's Noches en los jardines de España, which I found a little long and discursive, less packed with tense emotion as the rest of that composer's œuvre. And finally, as befits this sometimes very loud and brassy orchestra, Rimsky-Korsakov provided the sonorous (some would say "noisy") finale.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Friends, Friends Everywhere! (and Restaurants, Too)
Okay, it’s a corny title, perhaps not more than usual; but it was indeed raining friends in Paris last week.
As my overseas trips go, this was one of the shortest ones. I arrived at midday on Monday, and left around the same time on Saturday. Had I not been in Europe three weeks earlier already, I would have been the first to find this uncivilized.
These 120 hours included four fairly long and intense days of work, but I managed to cram quite a social agenda within that time, and I even got a decent amount of sleep, in an unpretentious but nice hotel room very close to the Eiffel Tower, at the bargain rate for Paris of 105 euros a night.
Monday was my recuperation day after the overnight flight, and I just went to a brasserie to eat by myself. On Tuesday, I had plans to meet Jean-Noël. When he called me around 7 p.m. from a town north of Paris where he had been for the day, we settled on 9:15 p.m. at a Tibetan restaurant in Montmartre, Gang Seng, to which he had previously introduced me. He ended up arriving at almost 10, but we still managed to spend a great two hours catching up on each other’s life and work.
On Wednesday, I had plans to meet my ex-colleague Emmanuel, whom I hadn’t seen in probably five years. He selected Yamamoto, a Japanese restaurant tucked away in a side street near the Opéra (note to tourists: for a real Parisian, there is only one Opéra in Paris), in an area where I found out that there are now dozens of them (Japanese restaurants, not operas). The amazing thing about meeting him after all this time is that he is still exactly the same: a permanent smile on his face, the nicest guy in the world, GQ-handsome, totally hyperactive, and not looking a day older than five years ago. And we fell back into the same friendly and easy banter we were used to when we went out to dinner in Islington then, as if we had seen each other a week earlier. It just warmed my heart that there are people like that, not just in the world in general, but in my world.
Thursday was an unplanned, but equally successful evening. I was actually not sure whether I was going to want to see anyone, because my project for the week still required work. I was getting nervous that there might still be too many holes in the resulting "white paper" by Friday afternoon, when it was due. But by 7 p.m.-ish, I was also getting tired of the day. I had told another ex-colleague that I was in Paris and had hoped for a last-minute call from him, but nothing had come. I was reasonably content with the idea of eating late by myself at Josselin in Montparnasse, but on a hunch I called Mohamed (see my prior "You Write Too Much" post). It turned out that he was expecting his friend Isabel, a medical student from Colombia whom I had seen a couple of times at parties in Boston last year (she was part of a group gravitating around our contingent of summer interns from France). She was due to return that evening from seeing one of those ex-interns, Ben, in Poitiers, and therefore was coming back on the TGV... at Montparnasse station! So we immediately made plans to meet at Josselin at 9:45, and had a wonderful time. This being Isabel’s first time in Paris, it was a great opportunity to give her one of the experiences that are not particularly mentioned in tourist guidebooks. Mo was crazy as usual (he doesn’t speak Spanish, but he did recognize "loco" when I was making fun of him talking to Isabel). Giorgio recognized me and couldn't let us go without buying us after-dinner drinks, so Isabel got to taste her first Calvados. They took me back to my hotel just before midnight, so I told them to turn the corner by the Ecole Militaire after dropping me off, so they would have a chance to see the tower’s sparkling light show at the top of the hour.
So there remained Friday. I had exchanged e-mails with my friend Jorge (the accidental model for Givenchy’s "Irresistible" eau de toilette for men, but this is another story) earlier in the week, and knew that he was coming back from Dubai in the morning, and was leaving for London in the evening to see his girlfriend, who lives there. So it wasn’t entirely clear that between his mad schedule and the demands of my own project, we could find the time to meet for lunch — but Jorge called mid-morning and offered to come to our office so it would take me less time. We only had an hour and a half, but made the most of it. This was another one of these easy, relaxed conversations that can only take place when you're good friends and you're not trying to put up appearances, you don't have anything to prove, you can just be yourself and the talking and the listening just alternate spontaneously.
That may be what was missing from my dinner meeting that same night, in an eastern area of Paris I am a total stranger to, with members of the gay alumni group from Ecole Polytechnique. Only three people came in addition to me, which was disappointing. They were all very nice, although different from my usual crowd in a way I could not really define. I certainly felt like we were strangers observing each other. The conversation revolved a lot around the food and the wine, and was helped by the ebullient personality and familiar behavior of the assistant manager, Camille, quite a character whom the others knew well. When we discussed American politics for a while, especially the Democratic primaries, one of my companions soon remarked, "what a serious topic we’re discussing tonight!" I think he was relieved when the more superficial banter resumed. It was certainly a pleasant evening in good company in an excellent restaurant, but nothing close to the four previous get-togethers of the week. I may certainly have more dinners with that group in the future, and meet more of them, and may get more comfortable with that crowd over time. But for now, it served a really useful purpose: it allowed me to benchmark my relationships and friendships, and appreciate the difference.
Merci Jean-Noël, Emmanuel, Mohamed, and Jorge (in order of appearance). Gracias a tí también, Isabel, although I certainly know you less. I am happy that I just got to see all of you, I love you... and I can't wait to do this again.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Blaming People for Saying the Truth
The Democrats' race for the presidential nomination continues, and is growing more vicious. One hopes that the Pennsylvania primary will mark the end of this internecine battle, but that was said before — in February and in March, several times, to no avail.
That the standard bearer for the party is chosen through a protracted series of contests that keep them in the limelight for weeks is not a bad thing per se. On the contrary, one might argue that many Republican voters have been disenfranchised by the early consecration of John McCain — and I'd be surprised if many of them felt motivated to vote in the remaining state primaries, given how little meaning they have left.
However, extending the ideological contest between Clinton and Obama would be fine it it served to shed light on their policy proposals, and if it wasn't destructive to the survivor's chances in November. Unfortunately, on both counts, the trend is exactly in the wrong direction.
Witness the latest clash about Obama's remarks to the effect that some people, feeling left out by shrinking federal (non-military) spending and disproportionally hurt by the recession, "cling to their guns and their religion" and their anti-immigrant sentiments to make sense of their lives. Since he said that, both Clinton and the Republicans have attacked him, the media have been all over his case ("elitist" being the milder adjective employed to describe him), and he has himself backpedaled — all in spite of one simple, all too easily ignored factoid: he is right!
The populist mood in the country (and the inability to discuss religion in factual terms) is such that making the statement he did is toxic. Clinton is now wrapping herself in a very ill-fitting cloak for her: someone who is "close to real America" — and by implication, is so unconditionally embracing it that the idea of critiquing how people form their judgments is considered tantamount to treason.
Yet it is true that some of the most vociferous opponents of gun control, the most pious proponents of school prayer or of the dismantling of barriers between church and state, and the most xenophobic (and, let's say it, racist) people in the U.S. are Democrats, not Republicans. Especially in southern states or in poor rural areas. This is not unlike the xenophobic current that existed in the Communist party in France in the 1980s and 1990s, based on the same fear that "they are taking our jobs," which led to this revolving door phenomenon in which people disappeared from the extreme left to reappear on the extreme right and vote for Jean-Marie Le Pen, thus proving that the political continuum is not a straight line, it is a circle!
I was, and I still am, positive about a Clinton presidency because of her ability to tap into a large talent pool of advisers and potential cabinet members. I was, and still remain, concerned that in a tight election, the lingering "race factor" could throw the election to McCain in some southern states if Obama is the candidate. But Clinton's tactical move last week — joining the critics rather than supporting Obama by acknowledging at minimum that his remarks, however undiplomatic, raise a real issue — do not reflect well on her character. If she wins because she cannot have the honesty to support an "inconvenient truth," then there will be some sadness mixed in that victory. But if Obama wins because he retracted what he knows to be correct, then it is equally sad.
That the standard bearer for the party is chosen through a protracted series of contests that keep them in the limelight for weeks is not a bad thing per se. On the contrary, one might argue that many Republican voters have been disenfranchised by the early consecration of John McCain — and I'd be surprised if many of them felt motivated to vote in the remaining state primaries, given how little meaning they have left.
However, extending the ideological contest between Clinton and Obama would be fine it it served to shed light on their policy proposals, and if it wasn't destructive to the survivor's chances in November. Unfortunately, on both counts, the trend is exactly in the wrong direction.
Witness the latest clash about Obama's remarks to the effect that some people, feeling left out by shrinking federal (non-military) spending and disproportionally hurt by the recession, "cling to their guns and their religion" and their anti-immigrant sentiments to make sense of their lives. Since he said that, both Clinton and the Republicans have attacked him, the media have been all over his case ("elitist" being the milder adjective employed to describe him), and he has himself backpedaled — all in spite of one simple, all too easily ignored factoid: he is right!
The populist mood in the country (and the inability to discuss religion in factual terms) is such that making the statement he did is toxic. Clinton is now wrapping herself in a very ill-fitting cloak for her: someone who is "close to real America" — and by implication, is so unconditionally embracing it that the idea of critiquing how people form their judgments is considered tantamount to treason.
Yet it is true that some of the most vociferous opponents of gun control, the most pious proponents of school prayer or of the dismantling of barriers between church and state, and the most xenophobic (and, let's say it, racist) people in the U.S. are Democrats, not Republicans. Especially in southern states or in poor rural areas. This is not unlike the xenophobic current that existed in the Communist party in France in the 1980s and 1990s, based on the same fear that "they are taking our jobs," which led to this revolving door phenomenon in which people disappeared from the extreme left to reappear on the extreme right and vote for Jean-Marie Le Pen, thus proving that the political continuum is not a straight line, it is a circle!
I was, and I still am, positive about a Clinton presidency because of her ability to tap into a large talent pool of advisers and potential cabinet members. I was, and still remain, concerned that in a tight election, the lingering "race factor" could throw the election to McCain in some southern states if Obama is the candidate. But Clinton's tactical move last week — joining the critics rather than supporting Obama by acknowledging at minimum that his remarks, however undiplomatic, raise a real issue — do not reflect well on her character. If she wins because she cannot have the honesty to support an "inconvenient truth," then there will be some sadness mixed in that victory. But if Obama wins because he retracted what he knows to be correct, then it is equally sad.
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