Why Non-​​Americans Often Hate America

June 28, 2007 | Laughing Knees | 12 Comments 

I am so an­gry I can barely find words to ex­press what I want to say here.

To­mor­row my Brazil­ian wife has to go to the Amer­i­can Em­bassy in Tokyo to be sub­jected to an “in­ter­view” (sub­sti­tute that with “in­ter­ro­ga­tion”) to de­ter­mine whether or not she will be el­i­gi­ble to tran­sit in Hous­ton, on her way to her home coun­try of Brazil. She has to get a visa for tran­sit! Not to stop and spend any time in the States, just to tran­sit! And get this, she has to pay a non-​​returnable “fee” (read “ex­tor­tion”) of Â¥18,000 (about $180.00) for the priv­i­lege. On top of that, she has to be fin­ger­printed while in tran­sit. And fur­ther­more, she has to do the in­ter­view in Eng­lish, even though she doesn’t speak Eng­lish very well.

There is no other coun­try which does this. Tran­sit for God’s sake! I wish the world would hit back and force only Amer­i­cans to be sub­jected to such “in­ter­views” every sin­gle time they cross a bor­der, to be fin­ger­printed with in­deli­ble ink on every fin­ger at every port of call, to be forced to un­dergo the “in­ter­view” in every lan­guage but Eng­lish, and to pay $200.00 every time they even fly over an­other coun­try not their own.

What makes me hop­ping mad is that this is be­ing done to my wife, one of the gen­tlest, kind­est, most unas­sum­ing peo­ple I’ve ever met. The whole New York tragedy and Iraq war in­san­ity was some­thing that made so lit­tle sense to her that just watch­ing it on TV was like watch­ing a con­ver­sa­tion be­tween lu­natics. She’s so scared tonight that she can’t sleep. And since she’s alone in Tokyo, I can’t even com­fort her. I can­not for­give peo­ple who scare those whom I care about. There is no rea­son what­so­ever that my wife should have to feel any kind of fear about go­ing home. And since sev­eral of her Brazil­ian friends have been plucked out of lines in the Amer­i­can air­ports and strip searched, she’s wor­ried about be­ing sub­jected to indignities.

God damn it! How I wish that Amer­i­cans would get their come-​​uppance for how they’ve treated the rest of the world for the past five years!

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Summer Peaks

June 25, 2007 | Laughing Knees | 5 Comments 

It’s that sea­son again when I can start up into the heights and go for long walks. This sum­mer I’m plan­ning to go to the Alps to walk the Walker’s Haute Route (these pc­i­tures must have been from an ear­lier part of the sea­son) from Cha­monix and Mont Blanc to Zer­matt and the Mat­ter­horn. It’s not a tech­ni­cal route, so I don’t have to worry about glac­ier cross­ings and un­pre­dictable ter­rain, but since I’ve been hav­ing ex­cru­ti­at­ing cramps in my legs due to di­a­betic prob­lems, I’m re­ally won­der­ing if I’ll be able to be in shape in time for the walk. I’ve been run­ning and walk­ing ten kilo­me­ters ever day to and from work and do­ing cal­is­then­ics at home (in­clud­ing foll­wing the Billy’s Boot Camp DVD) and iin ear­lier years this would have got­ten me in great shape bby now, but the cramps are pretty de­bil­i­tat­ing. Very, very frus­trat­ing. I will be go­ing to see a new doc­tor on Thurs­day. Hope­fully she will be able to help me with the prepa­ra­tion in­stead of telling me that it the trip is not pos­si­ble. Right now this trip means a lot to me in terms of find­ing some con­fi­dence in my­self. And be­sides I just need to get out of Japan!!

I will start in Zurich, Switzer­land, where I will stay for one night be­fore head­ing west to­ward Cha­monix in France. Along the way I will stop in a town or two to see a lit­tle bit of Switzerland’s low­lands, be­fore head­ing up into the hills. In Cha­monix I will take a day or two to ac­cli­ma­tize and make sure my con­di­tion is all right. If it is I will start off on the two week walk, car­ry­ing min­i­mal weight, with an ul­tra­light back­pack and gear (shouldn’t be more than 5 ki­los at most). I want to walk the trail slowly, with stops along the way to sa­vor what I came so far to see and to write and take pho­tos. I may even go on side trips to neigh­bor­ing vil­lages and towns in Switzer­land and Italy. Af­ter the walk I will head into Italy and spend a few days there, hope­fully vis­it­ing some ar­chi­tec­tural sites. If my legs are hav­ing trou­ble I will walk along an eas­ier trail and take my time with writ­ing and draw­ing. Ei­ther way I think I will have a mem­o­rable trip.

I’m sorry about the state of my blog lately. For some rea­son I can longer ac­cess it from home and can only do it from work, where I don’t have much time to write. Have to work out the kinks.

I’ll post more about the sum­mer trav­els and will try to get some pho­tos of the seashore near my house that I re­cently discovered.

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