Seven Days Later: Happenings, reflections, misc.

It's my one week anniversary of being back in the United States. Here's what's happening:

-going out to Japanese food in Dupont Circle with V = incredibly comforting. Horde of Japanese tourists/ex-pats engaged in some sort of congratulatory ceremony with applause and flowers = endearing.

-party-hopping on Friday and Saturday night. Party #1 is international, bubbling, and diverse. I spend most of the time chatting up World Bank staff and a public sector consultant from L.A. V meets a lobbyist who represents fraternities: apparently the last three American Presidents were brothers. Trying to curry favor with the Washington insiders, I approach and note that some of my best friends have been in frats. He thinks I am saying lobbyist and asks which firm. Ensuing chaos.

-Chili Cook-off at the Raven at Mount Pleasant. No lobbyists here, but I do meet an incredibly friendly CNN producer who tells me I should consider a career in public speaking. Exchange pleasantries with a familiar hill staffer (Senate side) about the productiveness of the recent lame duck session and talk to a guy I know in Commerce about an upcoming trip to one of the Stans. Sample some chili. Encounter another New Yorker-in-exile.

-Birthday party at an uber-minimalist bar somewhere downtown. I spend thirty minutes talking to a skeptical bureaucrat about the philosophical/psychological underpinnings of boredom. Apparently Heidegger wrote 100 pages on the subject.

-Co-worker's black-light party in Adams Morgan. We are the oldest people in the room, possibly by three-five years. I talk to an affable but improperly attired med student of Southern origin and a hilarious financial consultant who lives with his parents in Westchester. There is a guy screaming unintelligibly at the top of his lungs. We stay for roughly thirty minutes. Extremely entertaining.

Am still jet-lagged and dehydrated, although the culture-shock is wearing off. Uh-oh.