Hopefully Things Don't Get Shambolic

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past few weeks, you're aware that London is not only home to me this week, but also to the leaders from around the globe, including President Barack Obama. The reason for that is the G-20 Summit, a meeting that will focus on the current state of international financial markets and the future of the world economy.

This is the first time so many world leaders have convened in the UK since the first general assembly of the United Nations in 1946, and the Foreign Office has spared no expense. An estimated £20 million has been spent by Great Britain alone for summit preparations.

Some other interesting tidbits to this story so far:

• France is playing hardball, threatening to walkout of the summit if their demands for stricter financial regulation are not met. According to a BBC story posted earlier today, France is seeking a stronger global financial regulator than the US and the UK, and leaving the summit would be a huge blow to Obama and Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
• Chris Knight, a professor of anthropology at the University of East London for 20 years, was suspended last week for suggesting violence against the police and bankers. The university announced today that it would close its doors until the summit is over and cancel its alternative G-20 summit event.
• According to the Evening Standard, hundreds, possibly thousands, of protesters are planning to storm City banks tomorrow in a series of coordinated demonstrations. Another set of four marches, said to signify the four Horsemen of the apocalypse, are planned to converge on Trafalgar Square from the US Embassy tomorrow.

Should be interesting to see what happens in London tomorrow and at the conference this week. I'll update as things develop. I promise a blog entry about Dublin is coming (along with a few others), so brace yourselves.

Obama-mania ... London style

Walking into the pub yesterday, the somewhat familiar scene still felt a bit surreal to me. Crowded with the usual lot, sharing pints and chips after a long day at work, Chris and I plowed our way through and, without so much as a glance towards one another, made a beeline for the empty table next to the television. Typical Americans, right? Actually, in this case, I guess the answer is yes.

After ordering a couple pints and some chips (hey, when in Rome ... right?), we turned up the volume and sat completely transfixed by the images flashing in front of our faces. Others were glancing occasionally at the headlines scrolling across the bottom of the screen --- 'Sen. Kennedy collapses at Inaugural Lunch', 'Aretha Franklin to sing national anthem', 'More than 1M come to witness first Black president inaugurated' --- but only Chris and I were solely focused on the Obama-mania back home.

It was a far cry from the parties and cheering I remember from my election night experiences in Ithaca, NY last November. There were no fireworks, no cowbells or other instruments, no sports-like cheering, no shirts or hats with the President-elect's face or name. Instead, the Brits around us were watching, semi-attentively, and commenting calmly about what it all meant.

Most seemed pleased to see Bush go and Obama come in.
"Finally! America has an intelligent president," one man said.
"Hopefully he'll be able to fix the mess Bush left for him," his friend replied.

People began to pay more attention when the President-elect stood up to be sworn in as the first African-American President of the United States, but there was still a distracted buzz of chatter from some patrons.

Quite an opposite experience from those in Ithaca, but still, an interesting way to spend the inauguration. It wasn't a top priority for everyone here to watch, but it was still very much an important day for them, and for the world.

On a side note, it was an momentous enough occasion for Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum to add a figure of the new president and to offer free admission (with a passport).

The photo above is from mine & Chris' trip earlier yesterday to the museum