Sharing the Continent

Morning coffee in Oakland.  I’ve been up for hours.  I emerge when I hear friend’s shuffling.  “Do you want . . .”  “Yes.”  “Milk?”  “Please.”  I’ve a bit of trash I through into the waste bin that I needn’t take over the Pacific.  We laughed about some of the things we’d talked about the night before.  Trump!  What else do people talk about these days.  From Obama’s soaring oratory to the tweets of Trump.  He should start using more misogynist abbreviations to denounce people.  “That guy?  Vag!”  “That proposal?  Vag!”  As always with that particular showman, mockery is slathered with irony as it is never particularly difficult to imagine him actually crossing that line or doing far worse and recovering. 

This time I’m not driving to the airport.  I’ll just take an Uber.  The folks in the Bay complain about the traffic and it is notable.  But I just went across the Bay Bridge at 8:00AM and it wasn’t so bad. 2:00AM’s faster.  I’ll grant you. Beijing’s worse.  I’ll bet you.   Morning meeting coffee in Peet’s I have so much luggage I have kept my meetings down to only the most essential.  These Uber drivers couldn’t be more polite. 

Munchies for the plane?  The cover page of The Economist caught my eye.  Education and technology:  I consider how little I’ve read comparatively about news from elsewhere.  Most of my time is sucked up into the Trump train ride towards the first term washed out bridge.  Are we there yet?  Is it in sight?  The Economist forces you to consider the world, region by region and I always come out of the endeavor feeling balanced. The headline article though is surprisingly weak, deriding concepts like “learning styles” as if they were nonsense. I’m disappointed.

I sit down in a quiet area and call my family one by one.  I call them to say “good bye.”  I’m in San Francisco.  They are in the U.S. east coast.  The cost and the means of connecting is no different then what I could do from China.  But here, somehow it seems closer.  It seems like you’re somewhere sharing the national jurisdiction.  Your sharing the continent.  You’re still sort of home.  Perhaps it’s the time zones. 

My plane was delayed, but now its boarding.  I take a closer look and they’ve already announced last call.  Which means there is still time to get some food for this this ride.  I may as well get a salad for the first few hours before they get around to serving us.  I’m hungry.  I reckon I have time, but as the guy in front of me begins an amiable conversation I start to fret and wonder.  I make some conversation with the proprietary as I pay.  The conversation is flat. I ask if there are forks inside and a napkin.  This doesn’t sit well with him.  "Yes.  There are."  I leave in a hurry and drop a fork on the ground.  Should I get a new one or put up with a fork that had touched the ground?  I can hear another announcement for my plane’s last call.  I pick it up and rush out of the airport salad shop. 

Wednesday, 7/26/17