That Queer Expatriate

It’s been awhile since I’ve gone all meta on you, so I hope you’ll excuse me when I start talking about social media and “friends”.

First off, I’m in the process of updating my iPhone to the newest Firmware that appears to have been released last night. It’s 246.4 MB of software goodness which will allow my iPhone to suggest walking paths when I use the maps feature (more useful to me than driving directions), download the latest podcasts directly to the iPhone, and, hopefully, extend battery life.

I won’t bet on the last one

So far I’ve limited my Aps downloads to free ones—my favorite so far is Twitterific, which lets me keep track of Tweets on Twitter without having to go onto the web, or get endless SMSs. I have had to take the radical step, at least as far as Twitter is concerned, of unsubscribing from some people—I find people who update more than 7 or 8 times a day are hard to keep up with. I also have to confess that I think too many people using Twitter confuse weak and strong ties.

Actually the strong/weak tie confusion is something that seems inherent to social media. There are too many people who equate leaving a comment on a blog, sharing a link, or “friending” somebody on myspace as an indicator that we’re now best buds. Hint: We’re not best buds after one comment, sharing a link, or friending somebody. It takes time and effort.

It mystifies me when somebody follows 300 people on Twitter—so I can’t say I was surprised when such a person stopped following me. If you follow 300 people on Twitter, the rate of updates must be something like 5 a minutes. I’m sorry, I might not have much of a life, but I at least I have a life—if you can follow 300 people on Twitter in a meaningful way, you don’t have a life. As it is, I follow 21 people and corporations, a number that could grow by 5 or 10 (provided they are infrequent and interesting tweeters) before I start to feel a bit overwhelmed.

I have similar amazement with Flickr—I can’t keep up with the 34 Flickr Groups I belong to or the 26 people I’ve labeled contacts as well. I’m always a bit amused and/or stunned when one of the mega-social butterflies adds me as their 1,234^th contact—or, better yet, somebody I’ve never emailed, chatted with, or otherwise interacted with, marks me as a friend. (I have 124 people who call me contacts, and I have had to block 7 people—one of whom labeled me a friend and then asked me for my “stats” and provided a link to his profile on “Silverdaddies.”)

Over on myspace, which I don’t think I’ve logged-in for about three weeks, I get requests to “friend” bands I’ve never heard of—bands whose pages I have never visited. Why would I “friend” them? Instead I get great pleasure in “spamming” the requests, although I suspect I’m in a minority when it comes to this type of response.

There are a few people with whom I’ve become friends over the virtual media, but its always taken me more than one or two emails before I start to feel that way. It takes time.

Honestly, when I label somebody a “friend”, I mean that they are my friend.

It’s starting to sink in that tomorrow night I must pack my suitcase yet again.

This time it’s a holiday trip—off to see the folks for Thanksgiving. This will be my first Thanksgiving in America in a very, very long time. I can’t actually be sure when I was last in the States for Thanksgiving. Before moving to Germany, I used to vacation in Europe during this week. Honestly, although I am looking forward to the trip, I have to say that flying four consecutive Sundays in a row is a bit exhausting—and I’m only half way through the adventure.

December will be great—a month without travel. I’ve been buying up DVDs to watch on the long winter nights, along with supplies of tea bags, hot chocolate, and other warm movie snacks.

Sent as a part of the Join The Impact Project Postcard. Airmail postcards from Germany to the US cost 1€.

My postcard to Obama

President-elect Barack Obama
Presidential Transition Office
Kluczynski Federal Building
230 S. Dearborn St., 38th Floor
Chicago, IL 60604
United States of America

Dear President-Elect Obama

Please repeal D.O.M.A.! All Americans should have the right to marry. Thanks in advance for advocating for the civil rights of your LGBT citizens.

Sincerely,

Adam Lederer
Weimar, Germany
Votes in Indiana

I’m back in Weimar, and I really wish the ICE trains would get fixed. ICs are uncomfortable (especially aged Swiss ICs) and late (30 minutes today).

My east-bound trip over the pond last night was highly unusual. Despite leaving on-time, we arrived a few minutes late because we took an extremely northerly route that involved crossing over Greenland and over then northern parts of Iceland. The only previous times that I’ve been over Greenland, it was westbound, and we passed south of Iceland. Apparently the weather further south was pretty bad causing much turbulence.

Anyhow, usually when I fly, I don’t make use of the movie system onboard—I have a book or magazine to read and that is all I need to be content.

This month I’ve been watching movies. Westbound I watched both Little Miss Sunshine and Miss Congeniality. The former was better than I remembered, and the later was… as bad as I remembered. Eastbound I watched a charming movie, Gachi Boy: Wrestling with a Memory, a Japanese film about a young man who loses his memory, but decides to become a professional wrestler anyway. It’s quite sweet and, I feel, well put together. Possibly the best film I’ve seen in the last week (and I’ve seen six).

Probably the best thing I did this week was give gifts to the flight attendants onboard all my flights—boxes of Merci Chocolates. It certainly made a positive impression, casting me as hero—even as I slept through most of two flights.

This has been an incredibly great trip—productive on the one hand, fun on the other.

Unfortunately it has to come to an end and I am heading back to Weimar today—getting home Monday morning. Home is, of course, a wonderful place and I although I slept in excellent beds at two different Hiltons, there is nothing quite like my own bed. I am eagerly anticipating sleeping under its covers.

There’s been a lot to blog about, but I am behind and given that I am returning home, I might never get around to writing out everything I want to write, so here are some bullet point highlights. Each point is worthy of a blog entry in and of itself, but because I didn’t have unlimited time—my apologies

• Pittsburgh was fantastic, and I had a nice time at the Carnegie Museum of Art. Their special exhibit, “Life on Mars” fully engaged me for three hours, including a powerful documentary on language as a tool for oppression and racial hatred. By the time I finished wandering the special exhibit, I was mentally exhausted and unable to really absorb the rest of the art museum, and I barely glanced at the natural history museum that shares space with the art museum.
• The Andy Warhol Museum was quite interesting—it’s hard for me to see all of his work as art, but it is all interesting. The top floor of the museum had a special exhibit on 1958 that focused on “As Seen on TV” products like the pocket fisherman and the veg-o-matic. TV advertising from the 1970s is engaging and I was ready to buy.
• Breakfast with the Amiexpat was really enjoyable. We travel out to somewhere in suburban Virginia in the vicinity of Dulles Airport. Breakfast was great and the restaurant’s décor was egg-cellent—Moist, even.
• The Washington Capitals played the New Jersey Devils at home on November 18^th. They also played them, at home, on October 18^th. There’s an amusing (and expensive) story there.
• I was able to reconnect with an old friend from my University of Wyoming days—somebody I haven’t seen in over a decade. We hung out Saturday morning, wandering briefly through Air & Space. It was really great meeting her fiancé and learning about what’s been going on in her life.
• Starbucks is evil, but gosh darn it—I adore the Pumpkin Spice Latte at least once a year. I also tried the Gingerbread Latte, which was most awesome.
• McCain-Palin T-Shirts can be had cheap. Obama merchandise is expensive—but I did break down and buy one Obama T-Shirt—it’s Warhol-esque, so it happens to fit both Pittsburgh and Washington—a two for one souvenir.
• Finally, my Sony Cybershot DSC-T100 camera officially has epilepsy. It has occasionally had this problem in the past—thus screwing up a day of phototaking on trips, but in the past, I merely had to give it a night’s rest and it was fine the next day.  Didn’t work this trip—and thus I have few decent photos to share. At the camera store the clerk was impressed, remarking “you can’t just feel the vibration, you can hear it!” He thought I wanted to repair it—instead I dropped $150 on a new Nikon Coolpix S52—The optical zoom is only 3x instead of 5x, slightly better Megapixels, and so far epilepsy-free. It’s growing in popularity on Flickr, too!

I might expand on some of these points later, but I wouldn’t bet on it. They shall probably remain tantalizing points of what might have been.

The Washington Monument and Pride

For the past week, save one incident, I have had the most incredible luck imaginable.

Last Saturday I lucked into Berlin’s mp3 Experiment, Pittsburgh was a far more interesting city than I could have anticipated, and I was in Washington DC for today’s march against California proposition 8, coordinated by Join the Impact. It was exciting to be a part of protests and marches occurring in all 50 United States, plus Washington DC, at the same time.

It’s a bit difficult for me to explain how I feel about all of this—and I have to confess that on November 4^th, I really wished that I could have actually been at home, in the States, to enjoy the Obama victory—to join the spontaneous street joy that erupted in Washington outside the White House. To watch the students of Pittsburgh pour onto the streets to celebrate the victory—something I was told that has only happened for athletic championships in the past, never politics.

There are times that being an expatriate is emotionally difficult.

As I note right at the top of this page, I am an expatriate, not an ex-patriot. I am forced to watch developments on issues close to my heart from afar without a realistic opportunity to be personally involved.

Today busted my drought in political activities: being a part of the crowd was a great experience and emotionally fulfilling. Along the 2 mile march, I talked to an older lesbian couple from the DC area, and they, like me were amazed at the length of our march. When I was passing the Washington Monument on its west side, I looked back I could see just south-east of the monument and I couldn’t see the end of the people in the march.

Midway through the march, we were hit with a massive downpour and, although I had an umbrella, my legs got drenched and my shirt got fairly damp. Said Items are now draped on various objects in my room, hopefully to dry before I pack them into my suitcase (I fly tomorrow).

Although I am about to leave my nation of citizenship, heading back to my nation of residence, I feel proud to have participated in the protest.

There is no place for hate.

My favorite question of the day!

Saturday, November 15, at 1:30p EST / 12:30p CST / 11:30a MST / 10:30a PST, you can Join The Impact, a national protest against California Prop 8 and other anti-gay marriage initiatives.

I’ll be joining the one in DC—but there are protests all across America. You can find a local protest by checking out the Protest listings. There are even some protests outside the USA, including London, Portugal, and Australia.

Dear Mr. Lederer:

Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I appreciate your kind words of support regarding my service in the United States Senate. It is a tremendous honor to represent our state in the Senate, and I have greatly enjoyed this opportunity to serve.

I take my responsibilities as a Senator very seriously and will continue to work to represent Indiana and our nation to the best of my ability.

Thank you, again, for contacting me.

Sincerely,

Richard G. Lugar
United States Senator

RGL/cgc

Yesterday I’d agreed to meet somebody on the CMU campus at noon—so I decided that I would walk to campus, explore it, and then find his office.

I had a handy map from my hotel and I followed the streets thinking that I would end up on campus by walking down a street named Boundary, hanging a right on Schenely Park, then bending left onto Frew Avenue and end up on the campus.

Naturally the hotel supplied map omitted some rather important information (although it was hinted at): There is a deep valley between me and campus and Boundary Street runs through the valley whilst Schenely Park is on a bridge above the valley. Yeah, they cross, just separated by about 50 vertical feet—I should have looked at the area on Google Maps before wandering off. I ended up walking under both Schenely Park and under Forbes Avenue, before walking into a parking garage and taking an elevator up to campus and promptly getting lost.

The CMU campus gives the impression that it’s big and filled with students, but it actually has about 10,000 students, making it the size of, roughly speaking, the University of Wyoming, when I attended. There is one big different: just under half of the students are graduate students. I was about knocked over with a feather when I found this out considering that it is an incredibly densely packed campus with lots of buildings, hallways, and construction.

I have to confess that after the University of Wyoming and Indiana University, I had assumed that all college campuses were beautiful places with incredible architecture and pretty open spaces. I guess I knew there were exceptions (Colorado State University), and some less nice campuses, but these were general truths. The wheels started coming off of that stereotype after visiting Purdue (seriously, not physically attractive), and it has completely vanished in light of walking through the University of Pittsburgh (basically an urban-dense campus) and across CMU. It turns out that not all college campuses are physically attractive.

CMU is built over a valley and up the side of a steep hill, resulting buildings with multiple ground floors (Germans would go bonkers trying to label the levels). I walked into one building on the fourth floor and because I didn’t know where to go or what to do, I left through the door I entered. Later I realized that had I gone up to the fifth floor, I could have gone out the other side of the building. Had I taken the elevator to the first floor I would have been at the ground level for a third side of the building.

I spent 30 minutes trying to find the office, and I am now convinced that in order to earn a CMU Bachelor’s degree one must show campus knowledge—the ability to navigate through 5 buildings without getting lost and without ever going outside (I hear its possible), while for an MA, one must master 10 buildings and for PhDs, the entire campus must be at your finger tips, including not just the buildings still under construction, but also the buildings where fundraising is just starting.

We met, had lunch, and I had an incredibly enjoyable afternoon at the Carnegie Museum of Art, which had only three distinct levels and one ground floor.

More on that later.