Super Tuesday with Spaniards

I'm behind with this news, but my brother visited us over the weekend. He was in England for a business trip (something to do with microscopes and ion beams) during the week and took the Eurostar over to Paris on Saturday.

Of course my brother never wants to do normal tourist stuff, so we went shopping to check out the tail end of the winter sales. Being completely adjusted to euros, I had some pretty good success, but Grant was always mentally converting to USD and didn't buy much.

We were waiting for a metro to rue Rivoli when I received a phone call from my friend Vincent, who recently moved back to France. He was on rue Rivoli himself and we made plans to meet for dinner with Dave. I was so happy to hear from Vincent, to get a phone call from a friend, and to be able to make last minute dinner plans. This is why I love living in a city.

On Sunday Grant and I met Wally at the Frog & Rosbif for English brunch. For once, Wally let me off of hook and speak English for the sake of my brother. However, he was right back at it with e-mails in French the following week. Relentless.

After brunch, we had a little time to kill before Grant's interview with Eleanor Beardsley, so we rented a few Velib bikes and rode to Bastille. This was after a few false starts when Grant's first bike had a broken chain and his second couldn't change gears. It seems the winter hasn't been kind to the Velibs.

Anyway, we had another bit of difficulty finding parking spots for the bikes. Velibs are fun, but finding an available dock can be stressful, especially if you're late. Finally we found one slot and Grant loped off to the subway to meet Eleanor while I circled until I found another spot.

The next morning I poked Grant awake long enough to say goodbye and David drove me to the airport. I spent Monday through Wednesday in the Valencia office again, spending every spare minute staring out the window at the cloudless sky. No octopus this time, but I did have a rice and calamari dish that looked like it had been strained through an oil spill before being shipped to the company canteen. My camera battery died, but here's a photo I found on flickr.

So it was in Valencia where I spent my Super Tuesday, idly checking CNN.com every few hours for an update. I know that this year's primaries are an especially big deal, but I'm paying closer attention than I would have back home in the US because, as I've mentioned before, I'm often called upon to give an American point of view on politics.

The training session was done for the day when two engineering managers strolled into the conference room where I'd set up camp and began to excitedly ask me about the elections. They were just fascinated with the progress. Because, as I've been told many times, the United States presidential election affects the whole world.

Each of them had educated, well thought-out opinions on each of the candidates and asked me for mine. Are political opinions taboo in the office place in the states? I don't even remember. Anyway, I tried my best to sound intelligent in my answer, which was a more finely tuned version of the same speech I gave the last time I was grilled on politics in Valencia. This seemed to satisfy them.

"If I was an American," Antonio said dreamily, "I think I would vote for Obama". Obama seems to be a favorite in Europe. I got the distinct impression that he was jealous that I could vote.

Must remember to look into absentee ballot at US embassy. My colleagues are already disappointed that I didn't vote in the primary (I didn't even know I could vote in the primary...) - if I don't vote for the general election they'll kill me.