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Barack Obama is elected in the United States, but who manages to get her photo on the front page (above the fold, no less) of TWO newspapers in Singapore?

President Barack Obama

I'm still in awe. I witnessed history today as Barack Obama was elected president of the United States.

Its Wednesday in Singapore but still Tuesday night in the USA. Deanna went to the American Club this morning to watch the election results. They were hosting an elections party. Both sides were there together, Democrats and Republicans, watching the results unfold slowly as each state closed their polls and CNN revealed their projections.

I was working and trying to keep from being distracted by the elections.

But the internet always distracts. Throughout the morning, I clicked back and forth to CNN.com to see what was going on.

By mid-morning, the eastern states had all been predicted. McCain hit the end of his road when CNN announced Pennsylvania for Obama. McCain could not win without Pennsylvania.

At this point, it was officially still an open election, but the reporters were all waiting until the west coast polls closed to make the call.

The networks called it simultaneously the moment the west cost polls closed. Obama clinched the presidency.

It is the most important and most anticipated election of my generation. But it was unreal. The victory didn't sink in. Not until CNN streamed McCain's concession speech did I realize that Obama had really won. And then I couldn't work any longer.

I took a taxi to the American Club, and I arrived in time to catch Obama's victory speech. I was standing in the back. I couldn't find Deanna in the crowd. I watched from the back.

When I found Deanna, I hugged her. And we cried.

Lisbon, Portugal

Lisbon was our last stop in Europe, before returning home to Singapore.

We were here for a week, but we were not here for fun. Deanna had to attend a business conference during the day, and I spent most of the day in my hotel room working remotely from my laptop.

I don't have any good pictures of the hotel room because it was too stylish to photograph.

Like a ninja. Our hotel room was completely black. So much black that there was no reflected light. So much black that even in the bright of day, with the blinds open and the room lights on, you couldn't see yourself well enough to shave in the bathroom mirror.

Not just the guest rooms, Deanna said the conference rooms were also all black.

See, this hotel was a self-described "style hotel." And to prove it, they made sure that their style superseded your function. They celebrated the geometric flat surface of the bathroom walls and doors by refusing to install hooks or towel racks. And to make sure you keep your towels to yourself, they made the doors go all the way to the ceiling so you couldn't even drape your towel over the door.

They suffered no power outlets or handles or knobs or any other clumsy devices that might interrupt the perfect flatness of the perfectly black walls.

Even our room number was banned from the door. You had to look along the floor to find your room. Walking to your room was a featureless corridor of black. Like a morgue. Or Princess Leia's prison cell on the Death Star.

Other useful things for which the stylish have no need: irons and ironing boards. I don't know about you, but when I travel for business, one of the first things I do when I arrive is unpack my business shirts and give them a quick touch up with the iron. Feel free to call the cleaning service.

One plus: they had good wireless internet access (extra charge), and I was able to work without too much trouble once I also discovered how to access the concealed power outlets.

It was a strange hotel, but it was was comfortable and it made a good jumping-off point to see Lisbon because it was just a short walk to the local metro station.

In addition to seeing Lisbon, I made one day trip out to Sintra, which was about an hour's train ride east.

I had never heard of Sintra before. But when we were back in Barcelona, the clerk at the hotel said that Sintra was the most beautiful place in Portugal, and we had to see it. So I did.

But mostly I went there to see the castles.

Everybody loves castles, don't they? Especially boys like me who grew up playing Dungeons & Dragons and medieval war games. But its not just us Ren-Faire geeks and gamer boys. You will find tourists of all persuasions out to see the castles.

Its not just the castle itself that draws you, but everything that a castle implies: swords and shields, knights in armor, moats and siege engines. Everything that castles were built to withstand, all of the manual and mechanical devices of medieval warfare that became obsolete with the introduction of gunpowder.

For some reason, it seems more romantic, more honorable to fight wars with swords instead of guns. And castles represent this romantic ideal. As the great sage, Kool Moe Dee, teaches:

Guns, we don't like to use them
Unless, our enemies choose them
We prefer to fight you on like a man
And beat you down with our hands

Sant Sadurni d'Anoia, Spain

We took a day trip from Barcelona to go wine tasting in Spain's Cava region. It felt good to be in a wine-growing region. It reminded us of back home in California.

Cava, we learned, is Spanish sparkling wine, produced mainly in the Penedès region in Catalonia, Spain. This region is an easy day trip from Barcelona, just inland and south west. It was a relaxing tour bus ride through the Spanish countryside.

From the bus, we saw the massive rock formation that makes up the jagged Montserrat mountain. We didn't get to visit Montserrat, but I'm curious, because it is supposed to be one of the possible locations of the Holy Grail from the legends of Kind Authur.

We did see the village of Sant Sadurní d'Anoia and the surrounding area, which produces nearly 95% of Spain's total Cava output. This is where the most famous (or most prolific) Spanish Cava is produced by the winery Freixenet.

Even though I've become big fan of Champagne and Prosecco and other sparkling wines, we didn't go for the Cava this time. For this trip, we went after the Spanish reds. After drinking our share of the local reds, we each bought a couple of bottles to take home -- but not too many bottles, mind you, because Singapore has very strict limits and very high import duties on wine and spirits.

Then we both took a well-earned nap on the bus on the way back to Barcelona.

Barcelona, Spain

We originally planned to take the train from London to France and then on to Spain. But we were surprised to learn that the Eurail train is more expensive than flying. We already had the experience of taking the Eurostar channel tunnel train on a previous trip from London and Paris, so we decided to skip the trains this time and just fly straight to Barcelona.

One of the cool things about Barcelona is how compact it can be. Nearly everything we wanted to see was in the "Old Town" area on either side of La Rambla or in the Gothic Quarter. Our hotel was on the edge of the Gothic Quarter (on the center right of the map), just a few blocks from La Rambla.

I'm not the only one to say this: if you do only one thing in Barcelona, you must walk La Rambla, from the bottom at the harbor, to the top at Placa de Catalyuna. It is the one thing that everyone recommends.

As you walk this pedestrian mall, you'll pass cafes, bars, restaurants. You'll see hawkers selling birds and turtles; tourist shops selling typical baubles and trinkets. Its similar to Pacific Avenue in our hometown, Santa Cruz, only more so.

One of the fun things to find along La Rambla is every sort of common slacker made up as a human statue tacitly asking for small change. They’ll spend hours standing around semi-patiently dressed as random pop-culture references doing little tricks for tourists.

Here are some of the ones we photographed. My favorite one is the first guy in this series, who made subtle little faces appropriate for his task:



Given the diversity and creativity of Barcelona's street talent, I suggest we send our own Pink Umbrella Man of Santa Cruz out to Barcelona to take some fashion lessons.

As I mentioned above, we stayed at the edge of the Gothic Quarter, which was almost as much fun as La Rambla. The Gothic Quarter is a dense maze of old medieval buildings, with thin streets winding seemingly randomly through them.

From our hotel, we were just a few steps away from Barcelona's cathedral, La Seu, protected from the main street by old Roman battlements.

The cathedral is dedicated to Santa Eulalia, who was killed by the Romans in some horrible way for being unapologetically Christian, and who now serves as the patron saint for the local sailors.

At some point in every trip to Europe, you get tired of seeing yet another cathedral. And at Barcelona is where this started to happen to me. But what made this cathedral worthwhile was the cloister of geese protecting the church gardens. The geese also represent the virginity of Santa Eulalia. Apparently, there are 13 geese to represent the age of Eulalia when she was killed.

Barcelona has a fabulous street scene, day or night. And its not limited to just La Rambla. The medieval streets themselves are so fun to wander, it draws out the locals and tourists alike to join in the fun. We spent several afternoons and evenings just walking around watching people and looking for places to hang out or eat or drink.



Of course no visit to Barcelona is complete without visiting the various creations by Antoni Gaudí throughout the city.

The most obvious Gaudí attraction is the Sagrada Família, one of the most famous churches in the world. It is still unfinished, after more than a century of construction. Sure, its yet another cathedral, but unlike any other cathedral in the world. Actually, its not technically a Cathedral, but a temple; its full name is the Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família./

I don't know what the difference is between temple, cathedral, abbey, or church.

Continuing on our Gaudí tour, we went to the rounded, organic apartment building La Pedrera. Unfortunately, we couldn't get inside because we came to late. We did manage to spend an afternoon in the Alice-in-Wonderlandish Park Güell, which Gaudí designed and lived with his family in the early 1900s.



In addition to seeing the works of Gaudí, we also made it to the Salvador Dalí museum and the Pablo Picasso Museum. And we got out of the city to the Spanish countryside for a bit of wine tasting.

I first wanted to go to Barcelona after I graduated from college and was living in an apartment in Santa Cruz. My housemate, Dag, and I used to go to a local dive bar, called the "One Double-Oh Seven," named after its address of 1007 Soquel Avenue, Santa Cruz. The bar was walking distance from our apartment, so Dag and I could play pool not worry about driving.

The thing about playing pool in bars is you only get to play as long as you are winning. If there are people waiting, whoever is next in line takes the place of player that looses the match. The new player pays for the game.

If you keep winning, you can play all night and never have to pay for your own games. But if you're with the bar with friends, you probably want to play together as long as you can. If one of you looses early, then you have to wait until your friend's name moves up from the bottom of the chalkboard waiting list until you can play together again.

If you sink the 8-ball in typical bar pool, you loose. Game over. The next challenger struts over to take your place and start a new game. If you had a good game, that's okay. But if you just started a game and accidentally sink the 8-ball in the first few rounds, then it spoils your fun to walk away early. You can't hide the sunk 8-ball, because all the challengers are watching your game, waiting for their chance to play. They all know when you loose.

That's why we invented a pool game we called "Barcelona-7." In Barcelona-7, you play by normal bar rules unless you sink the 8-ball early. When that happens, if a challenger approaches the table, you tell him "we're playing Barcelona-7."

Nobody ever asked what that meant. I think because they didn't want to admit there was something they don't know about pool. What it really meant was we were going to keep playing. And for the rest of the game we treated the 7-ball like it was the 8-ball. It is helpful that bar pool rules tend to vary from bar to bar, so its rare that anyone is 100% sure of the local house rules anyway.

I think we came up the name Barcelona-7, because we happened to be practicing putting "English" on the ball for making trick shots. Some drunk guys were tying to be clever and were joking about putting some "Spanish" on the ball. Which is when we improvidently sunk the 8-ball and wanted to keep playing. "Spanish" of course triggered "Barcelona-7," which sounded just slightly exotic and convincing enough to justify keeping the table.

That story has no real connection to the actual city of Barcelona, other than sharing the description "slightly exotic."