ronin’s blog

June 3rd, this now historic date in US history, has dragged me back to the blogging keyboard to write about a subject I thought I was done with for quite some time. Even now, after many months getting used to the notion, I can scarcely absorb the significance of the fact that a black man has clinched the Democratic nomination for president of the United States, nary 40 years after desegregation.

While a keen follower of politics, my energy was sapped after the ALP's victory last year. Without Howard around, who was I supposed to hate? Rudd has been a super-competent technocrat, who seemingly inspires through actions rather than words (and God knows if you've heard him speak, words are not his main talent with the notable exception of The Apology). There is not much for me to rail against in the Australian political sphere.

Meanwhile, here in the US, CNN et al managed to dull my interest with their absurd analyses of the candidates -- shallow and sensationalist, typified by their hysteria over a mis-spoken word here, an embarrassing acquiantance there. Certainly the media's anointing of Obama as their chosen candidate from even the early days in the campaign made me a little annoyed that the media tail was trying to wag the primary dog. Then again, when the broad brushstrokes of the frontrunners' policies painted almost indistinguishable pictures (pro-universal health care, pro-environment, anti-free trade, anti-Iraq war), I'm not sure if I could resist the temptation to report on minutiae to distract from the rather dull number crunching that comprise caucuses and primaries.

Hillary will look back at this campaign, and surely should wonder whether if, had she stuck to her knitting -- promoting good policy that had broad bipartisan appeal -- could she have clinched the nomination instead of Obama. Her pandering played right into the hands of Obama's main theme of 'change', and the very politics that the Clintons were so good at was the exact opposite of what was needed for this particular battle.

So now we'll just have to wait and see what Hillary does; mathematically she's sunk, but it would seem highly unlikely that she'll bow out silently. Then again, nor can I see the Obama campaign offering her the vice presidency either; that would simply be counterproductive not to say contradictory.

We live in interesting times!

Just came back from a Jens Lekman concert at Neumo's, but first I need to tell you about the weird warm up act -- the Honeydrips. Note the plural. In actuality, just one guy. And a MacBook Pro with iTunes. Which was his band, and his backing vocals. He did have a guitar which he picked up, but never actually played. He was okay, he had a sort of New Order-type sound at the beginning, then it was kind of all over the place... I think I was distracted, watching him intently to see if he was actually going to pluck some strings on that damn guitar.

Jens though was awesome. The main draw of his songs (aside from their 50's - 60's infectious pop vibe) is the sweet lyrics, the story that he tells in each song. Even more so that, during the set, he would occasionally provide even more back story to fill in the gaps -- e.g. Postcard to Nina, in which he describes how a lesbian friend convinces him to beard for her when visiting her family in Berlin. The audience was clapping along, even whistling... Jens displayed an understated showmanship that you appreciated as something a little out of the ordinary; through his story-telling you definitely felt more connected to the guy on stage than you might otherwise.

Oh, another point in his favour: Wikipedia claims he moved to Melbourne in early 2008 :).

Barack Obama gave an excellent speech today on the race issue in the fight for the Presidential nomination. I started reading the transcript, and although it ran to seven pages felt compelled to read it all. It was a thoughtful, honest, and -- yes -- inspiring speech that addressed in very frank terms the racial divide that still permeates this country. What is most impressive is that he did so without condescension, without flinching from difficult subject matter, and without attempting to simplify what is a very complex issue.

The speech reminded me a lot of Kevin Rudd's address to Parliament earlier this year apologising to the Stolen Generation, in the sense that it tried to be bigger than the pettiness and cynicism that typifies the current state of the debate, in order to bring the country forward with solutions rather than go through an exercise of apportioning blame and recriminations. Unfortunately, there are still those who can only see the fact that Obama has refused demands to leave his church (for those who haven't kept up with the latest mini-scandal, Obama's former pastor is all over YouTube with footage of him damning America and calling it for example the USKKKA).

Visit Barack Obama's website yourself to check out the speech.

A few new photo galleries now up on Picasaweb:

1. More photos of the Grand Canyon: http://picasaweb.google.com/alecsiu/GrandCanyonII
2. Hoover Dam: http://picasaweb.google.com/alecsiu/HooverDam
3. Las Vegas: http://picasaweb.google.com/alecsiu/LasVegas

It took me a little while to sort them all out using Picasa, but they're now there 3 weeks later :).

Hoover Dam was a mighty impressive piece of engineering, especially when you consider the conditions and speed with which it was built -- searing temperatures in summer, with little in the way of safety equipment, and not much in the way of rest and relaxation. It was a logical stop en route to the Grand Canyon, 1 hour from Vegas and sitting on the border of Nevada and Arizona.

Vegas, the first stop of the trip, is a strange kind of city. It seems to be built entirely on gambling and tourism, and the industries that support it. The original downtown, which is where we stayed, is a shell of its former self. There are still quite a few casinos in that part of town, but the buzz (and hence the tourists) has surely drifted to the Strip, where all the super-casinos that are made famous on TV are situated either side of a 10-lane monster of a road.

You have the Luxor, the hotel shaped like a pyramid clad in glass on all sides, with a giant sphinx reposing in its forecourt. You have Paris, complete with Arc de Triomphe and Eiffel Tower. New York, New York, with a replica of the New York skyline (I wonder if they had the Twin Towers originally). The Venetian, with its set of canals along which you can take a gondola ride... And the list goes on and on... We stopped at most of them, to oooh and aaah and gawk at the extravagance and kitsch. Some casinos don't really have a 'hook' as such, like the MGM Grand, or Mandalay Bay. I'm sure they have some kind of 'theme', but eventually all casinos start looking the same from the inside.

Las Vegas is also not a cheap city. If you use the Starbucks Latte index (far more important to me than the Big Mac index), Vegas is up there with NYC -- we're talking $3.25 (+ tax) for a tall latte on the Strip, and certainly not even a good one. I admit though that we didn't exactly attempt to be frugal.

Food-wise Vegas won't leave you hungry if you're prepared to spend. We tucked into the all-you-can-eat buffets that Las Vegas casinos are famous for, first at the Luxor (good but not great), and secondly at Paris, reputedly one of the better ones. You definitely need to walk in with an empty stomach because there is a hard-to-ignore temptation to sample every morsel from every station -- salads, pasta, carvery, "Asian", seafood, desserts... And you end up waddling out but definitely with enough calories to last you the remainder of the day.

We also paid homage to Emeril (who I'm not really a fan of, but hey his joint was reasonably priced, didn't need a reservation and was in the same casino as where we were going to see a Cirque Du Soleil show), by eating at ummm "Emeril's"? I can't even remember the place, but I had a nice grilled salmon dish with what was essentially a fancy version of barbecue sauce! Just goes to show, fancy food is all in the presentation!

The Cirque du Soleil show we saw, Ka, wasn't bad. $75 a pop for a 'martial arts' extravaganza, although the only real martial arts style acrobatics were at the beginning. It was still impressive though, with an amazing set that rotated in three dimensions and high-wire tricks played out on platforms stretching out over the audience area. I didn't quite understand the storyline, mind you, but I suppose it doesn't really matter :). You have to admire Cirque du Soleil though -- it's its own mini-industry: they have half a dozen shows to choose from, each playing at different casinos and at varying prices ($75 is at the cheap end!) and from what I could tell, our late show at 9.30pm was as good as full. If you do the math, CDS must make a handsome profit indeed!

All in all, a great trip considering we only had 4 days -- it's amazing what you can fit in when you try. Now the question remains of where to go to next :).

Oh-oh I'm behind already in my blog updates... more Las Vegas/Grand Canyon photos to come but not this time...

Just came back from skiing with Hugo and Atul, leaving behind Tommer, Beau, Kieran and Wu to enjoy more of their snowboarding up at Snoqualmie. We stuck to Central (there's also West, East and Alpental), which has quite a few beginner and intermediate runs (which suits me just fine). Lesson for me: stick to greens and easy blues for now! I bet my legs will be sore in the morning but it was good to get out there for probably the last time this season before...

I start work with my new team in Windows Mobile on Monday. I can't really say what I'm working on (I've always wanted to say that), but I think it's going to be exciting coming almost full circle from when I first got out of uni working for Ericsson in Melbourne, to finally being able to work with the mobile devices I always dreamt about. The best part is that the office will be moving to a new building in South Lake Union in May, which will cut down my commute dramatically!

Okay time to go, I'm about to head out to a Missy Higgins gig at the Tractor Tavern... It's funny, I've probably seen more Aussie acts here in Seattle than I ever did back home (at least pro rata); off the top of my head: Ben Lee, Bernard Fanning, Cat Empire, Tim Finn, JBT... Now Missy Higgins, and probably The Waifs soon too!

Ok a brief post since I'm about to head to bed... Last night I touched down in Seattle after a four-day weekend in Vegas and Grand Canyon (notice my afficionado status by omitting 'the'). Deets in a later post, but suffice to say there was plenty of fodder for photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/alecsiu/GrandCanyon. Also thank you to Windows Live Photo Gallery for your excellent photo stitching feature!

I'm a bit late to the party, but I've just watched on YouTube Kevin Rudd's apology to the stolen generations. I think it's the first time I've been inspired by our politicians for a long time, that someone has shown true leadership for the nation and moved us forward in indigenous relations, an area that Australia has really been lacking. It corrects the contradiction that we promote as very Australian the notion of a "fair go", but we weren't big enough as a nation to acknowledge that Aborigines receive anything but, and that such a simple symbolic gesture as saying "sorry" seemed too difficult... until now :).

Kudos to Kevin Rudd, under whose Prime Ministership it seems like we've become a lot more forward-looking and optimistic (in spite of our economic woes). Let's hope that there will be substance to the symbolism in the coming three years!

Wow it's been awhile since I've posted so the ten-second summary of what's been going on:

• Saw Tim Finn live at the Triple Door with Milly and her boyfriend Sean; great gig even though we were probably the youngest people there by at least 10 years! Triple Door seems like a great venue though -- it's a dinner theatre but aimed more at music shows. And the food (think pan-Asian with a Thai emphasis) was actually pretty good.
• Welcomed Lost back to the small screen at Phil's place, even though ABC misleadingly advertised it as a 2-hour episode when the first hour was just recap!
• Been busy at work getting to code complete this week (even though much of the code had been done, and now it was just a matter of sorting out deployment issues).
• And just now came back from a fantastic late late lunch with Hyejin at Tamarind, a Vietnamese restaurant in the International District that you would never know existed because it's set back from the street. The decor was very upscale, but the prices characteristically were not. We had huge bun cha on a platter, some of their special Tamarind Salad Rolls (think rice paper rolls with walnut and thin sticks of rolled-up deep-fried rice paper sheets as well as the usual assortment of lettuce and rice noodle) and another platter of eggy cake thingy whose name I've forgotten but was also delicious. Did I mention this all cost $15/per person after tax and tip???
  

And in other news... politics-wise I haven't posted lately both from the point of view of not having the time, and not having the motivation (especially after watching the pathetic coverage on CNN and so forth, where it's easier just to show talking heads than anything particularly meaningful about the campaign).

I guess the Democratic race is now down to two, Hillary vs. Barack, and so either way we're going to have some history being made there. The media has decided on the narrative already -- black vs. white, or black vs. female. In some ways I feel sorry for Clinton, who is eminently qualified and has been patient earning her stripes in the Senate, and was always the assumed nominee. Now Obama has fired up the base as a symbol rather than a candidate which may be enough to get him through.

As for the Republicans, it looks like it is now McCain's to lose -- a very John Howard-esque Lazarus with a triple bypass. America is not ready for a CEO as President of USA Inc. They would rather stick with the war hero even if his policies may not align with a significant proportion of the Republican base -- something the base reconciles by acknowledging that it is only McCain who could beat Clinton or Obama when the real election comes and wider America gets to vote.

Now it's onto Super Tuesday (or Woozy Tuesday as I've also seen it referred to as). The results should tell us with a high degree of certainty who the nominees will be... then the real mud-slinging can begin! Hooray for politics American-style!

Apparently, some people seem to think Hillary Clinton's win in yesterday's New Hampshire represents a 'stunning victory'. This is just another example of the media's simplification of politics -- from what I can gather, a 3% margin over Obama does not represent a stunning victory unless it's a comparison with her position in polling prior to the primary!

In another overlooked point, Hillary currently has more delegates than any of the other contenders so far. Admittedly, we are very early into the race so it's hard to say whether that's of any significance, but that caveat applies equally to the raw number of primary victories.

I guess these kinds of simplications make for good headlines though...

Interesting article on Salon.com about the FairTax plan as supported by Mike Huckabee. What I can't get over in this instance is the brazenness with which proponents use the '23%' figure when (by the convention with which all other tax rates are quoted) this figure should read as 30%!

The devil in this plan is clearly in the detail, let's hope we have a real debate about this should this ever come within coo-ee of passing.