Far East Cynic

Fly Navy! The best always have!

Of a not so normal weekend.

Now lest anyone think that I am going soft in my old age-I still remain down on the institution of marriage as a whole. I think it is a useless institution that were it not for no better way to raise children,  would have been banished from our lexicon a long time ago. Or as Nick Faldo pointed out: "We were happily married for eight months. Unfortunately, we were married for four and a half years."  

However, at a wedding, such thoughts are always banished and you want to always believe the best:

Imagine my shock when I found out it was not the Bible he was holding-but the Book of Mormon!

True story. The person conducting the service was an old friend of the grooms family and Mormon by trade, but that is not their professed religious faith. He’s empowered to perform marriage. However, my daughter is, as I long suspected, even more suspicious of organized religion than I am.

Nonetheless-they made a very good image of a happy couple:

I’m too young for this to be happening!

The "people" dynamics of this particular wedding were indeed challenging. I  had this dark twisted thought of someone trying to make a dark sitcom out of it:

Bride’s parents? Divorced and not speaking to each other.

Groom’s parents? Divorced and not speaking to each other.

Both sides bringing new significant others to be present at their side at the wedding. ( Except for my ex!-damn the luck-she’s the one who needs to get married off!).

Lots of family present-all with grudges of their own.

Mix, heat, and serve. Hilarity is sure to ensue!

Fortunately, no TV talent agents were present and everyone remembered cardinal rule number 1 of a wedding-the day is all about the bride and the groom. And under no circumstances will anyone else do anything to ruin their happiness on that day. The rule was never published-but it was clear it was well understood by all present.

Which, brought us to the highlight of the evening for me-when my daughter asked my father to dance with her:

Too many flash bulbs going off!

But it was a great moment and -truth be told-seeing that meant more than my dance with her. And my dance with her-which was the second dance of the night, after the traditional dance with her husband meant a lot to me. The walls are still not torn down-but for that evening at least-the smile on her face was genuine. And-if my ex is to be believed-it was her idea.

Speaking of the ex-I was civil and polite at all times. I even complimented her on her dress. I had resolved to do that no matter what transpired-but again, we all seemed to recognize and respect wedding rule number 1. My daughter talked to everyone-and I even talked to my former brother in laws. ( Who, I always liked by the way- I always thought they were pretty good guys. It was their oldest sister I had issues with only). My ex’s Mom was probably the closest to being uncivil and I fully expected that. It is what it is.

But nothing could ruin the evening that night!

A most different bridal cake!

For the S.O. it was a whirlwind-as she got meet a lot of my family, plus a whole lot of other people’s family. She looked beautiful at the wedding though:

Posing with my father!

And the S.O. got to meet my son for the first time and his girlfriend:

Don’t laugh-these may be the people showing up to give you CPR some day! They are both paramedics.

Sigh.

However, as the S.O. reminded me several times-it was just a moment in time. "Its just wedding", she said, "tomorrow its all different." Wise woman she is -and I knew deep down she was right.

But for that evening at least, I was happy for my little girl:

Whose not so little anymore. A grown up woman to be sure.

I tried to find a picture of her  as a little girl to scan-but my scanner still does not work. Trust me, in the day, she was the cutest little girl I can ever remember.

But then again-she’s my daughter. And I’ll love her no matter what.

Enough with nostalgia. Today as Scarlett said-is yet another day.

My daughter made a very beautiful bride. Her new husband is a fine man, and I think they will do well together.

And for a room full of emotional land mines ,as existed at the reception yesterday-my daughter navigated it all with the skill of a diplomat at a Middle East peace conference.

I’m so proud of her.

Pix to follow.

The irony and the truth of this statement is just lost on them:

IMHO, it is this sharply divisive party politicking, this need to adhere to party lines at all times and regardless of common sense or even common courtesy that makes US politics a laughing stock in the eyes of the outside world. It’s things like this that give ammunition to places like China and Singapore and Hong Kong, so that when you say they ought to be democracies, they can respond with, "What, you mean like the United States?" and laugh and walk away.

H/T to Spike!

 Because of the stroke she suffered when she read this:

They may have had no comment-but you can bet greater wingnuttia has. Let the whining begin.

“The salient fact of American politics is that there are fifty to seventy million voters each of who will volunteer to live, with his family, in a cardboard box under an overpass, and cook sparrows on an old curtain rod, if someone would only guarantee that the black, gay, Hispanic, liberal, whatever, in the next box over doesn’t even have a curtain rod, or a sparrow to put on it.”

Been trying to get back into a regular posting groove. Still can’t quite get there. For a whole host of reasons.

Number 1-My daughter is getting married this weekend. So I will be gone the entire weekend and will probably not be posting at all. Maybe, depending on how the wedding / reception/ having to see my ex-wife and her family for the first time in many years goes. If my nerves survive that OK-maybe I will have the where with all to get to the keyboard. More probably, I will get through the wedding and the reception and then come back to the room and let a bottle of wine whirl me down to oblivion.

However on the plus side-I’ve getting to see my daughter again and I get to see her get married. Everything else is just something to deal with.

My father and sister will be there too-so its going to be a pretty full weekend. The S.O. gets to meet them all. This ought to be just ducky!

Reason #2- After being overseas last week, I’m more than a little depressed being back here in Shopping Mall again. E@L and Indy  fully understand why. ( More can be revealed later perhaps). Nonetheless-having to go back to the hum drum tedious existence that is life in suburban America is dragging my spirits down. It doesn’t help that the project we are on right now is incredibly busy. 

Reason #3: I just don’t know what to make of the news right now. Afghanistan? I’m not sure I understand how 40,000 more troops gets us any closer to a non-existent "victory". Two questions remain unanswered as Mr Kristol and his friends bag the drum for war without end. 1) When the do the Afghans get to accept a chunk of the blame for their inability to get their act together?  and 2) How do we leave?   McChrystal does not seem very adept at answering those two questions.

Our mission in Afghanistan supposedly has something to do with countering international terrorism. McChrystal confesses he sees no sign of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. National Security Adviser James Jones says al-Qaeda now has fewer than 100 fighters according to the “maximum estimate.”  Afghanistan was f*cked up for the last hundred years and its going to stay screwed up for some time to come. Why do we have to stick around and watch?

I do realize that politically-there is no way we can leave, but I’m in agreement with Mr. Will. We really ought to be looking whatever option gets us out of central Asia and the sooner the better.

Health care?  What’s to say? The politics of obstructionism seem to be working. I really don’t know what to make of that either. Except what it says about the supposed compassion of a significant portion of America is not very good.

To write persuasively there has to be passion for the subjects. I have none. What passion I had has been well and suitably drained by seeing what should have been versus what is.

Time for a beer! During which I will close my eyes, draw a cold frosty drink from the bottle-and imagine in my brain the view that should be:

 Every man has his dream of paradise!

Screwed again.

I’m always either too late or too early. In this case it looks like the latter:

This just in: the Kindle 2 is falling from $299 to $259 and they will be selling an international version with built-in AT&T SIM card for $279 on October 19. Quoth the suits:

“Kindle has revolutionized the way we purchase and read books, by making it mobile, easy and intuitive,” said Randall Stephenson, chairman and chief executive officer of AT&T. “We are excited to work with Amazon to help readers access books even faster and from significantly more places than ever before, including more than 100 countries and territories around the world through AT&T’s global wireless coverage.”

Fat lot of good that does me now-I wondered why the damn thing did not work overseas………………..

Then you can tell us who this is:

The glasses are like-totally doing it for me!

H/T to Asia Sirens!

Update!-You can read about her in English here.  She’s got a Facebook page.

Lovely borrowed from

here.

Greetings from Chicago as I sit in the lounge waiting to return to Shopping Mall USA.

I’ve been watching the rantfest over at Phibian’s place with some interest. Because I was wondering how long it would take for someone to lay the blame for Chicago not being selected for the Olympics at the feet of Barak Obama because he went to Denmark.   A word or two is  thrown  in about how incompetent all of the White House staffers are and how they should never have let him go-like the package was the White House’s to control.

First, I would like to point out to much  of Phib’s commenters is that the leaders of every nation attended. Did they all lose prestige, too? Is the “diminishment” of Spain’s head of state also good news for Republicans?

Second, if Chicago had won the bid, what prestige would the Presidency gain?  Would it  persuade even one douche tea-bagger, to change his opinion of the President? Frankly -it seems to me that there was no harm to the President whatsover in going.

Finally-most people also do not seem to notice that he also went to  talk to Gen McChrystal, who came to lobby for drawing us even deeper into a war for a population that cannot or will not help itself.

It comes down to this: George Bush did not do this for New York-so it must be part of some Obama conspiracy. 

The truth is a little different:

The news of the day appears to have been dominated by Chicago and the Obamas, but there are three other excellent bids to consider. And apologies if you want me to reveal who is going to win – the honest answer is that I, along with everyone, remain very much in the dark."

Not everything is about us. An vote against Chicago for a city outside the US isn’t necessarily an anti-American vote. Maybe some where that way, but these votes are done in blocks-so for some reason, folks pulled Madrid throught the first two rounds. The Rio backers had always said they thought Madrid was their strongest competion and it looks like they were right.

Chicago had-in many ways-lot stacked against it. Lets start with the fact that the 2012 games are in London. Putting the 2016 games in the USA is virtually a repeat of putting them in Europe-and let’s face it  Brazil has been aced out twice before-so the sympathy card of no games in South America must have been strong. Furthermore-when you actually look at the play by play of the event-US border security was very much on the mind of the IOC-to Chicago’s detriement. That’s not saying the US is doing anything wrong-but the IOC is a multi-national body, and many of its members are not on the Visa waiver program. (See the Times of London’s live coverage here). Furthermore-as the Chicago paper points out-the USOC is not well beloved within the IOC . So the vote was probably more anti-USOC than anti-American per se.

The International Olympic Committee fancies itself a force in global affairs. As in the case of breaking Olympic ground by giving the 2008 Olympics to China, the world’s most populous country, Friday’s vote was a chance for the IOC to say that by giving the first Olympics to South America it will have aided the development of Brazil, the most populous country on the continent.

Chicago was the only candidate without a significant regional constituency. And it was working to overcome years of IOC members’ ill feeling toward the U.S. Olympic Committee, which intensified in the past year.

NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol, whose company paid $5.7 billion for Olympic TV rights from 2000 through 2012, placed the blame squarely on the USOC.

"This was the IOC membership saying to the USOC there will be no more domestic Olympics until you join the Olympic movement," Ebersol told me early Saturday morning, after he had talked with many leading members. "Chicago never had a chance, it turns out."

Chicago failed — miserably, it would seem at a cursory glance — for some of the same reasons New York lost in the second of five rounds of voting for the 2012 Summer Games. It also failed out of a naivete that having what may have been the best bid was good enough.

"We (North Americans) kind of think if you’ve got the best bid, the world will recognize that, and these decisions are made solely on the merits of the bid. Well, not solely," said veteran IOC member Richard Pound of Canada.

That’s not all for the President to control-the US government does not directly control or finance national sporting bodies. Simply, Chicago played and got to the finals. Sometimes good teams just get beat. Which is what I believe happened here.

And so it is with this little overseas sojurn of mine. I’ve enjoyed being back on the oversease circuit more than I can possible share-especially since every day here has beat the stuffing out ten days back in Shopping Mall USA. But the bills don’t pay themselves-and I’ve got bills to pay.

Will be out of comms till Monday. Have a great  weekend! I know I will not be in good humor till I’m done with a long series of flights and airplane changes.

Need to rummage through my things for that bottle of asprin now……………….

The Straits Times this morning had a article that that was suprsing to say the least. Opening with the leader :60 and a class act. 

The article then goes on to become a puff piece for the PRC and praises its evolution since 1949.

What is particularly troubling is what appears to me to be the rehabilitation of Mao Tse Tung-instead of telling the truth, namely that he and his commie cronies set China back almost a half century, they are portraying him as a heroic leader. There is nothing heroic about him-ever. He was just an opportunist who got lucky.

Now I do understand that when it comes to things Chinese-the Straits Times can hardly be consider objective-but still. They owe their readership better analysis than this.

They do have nice pictures of the ceremony though. Won’t see a unit like this in the US military: