Dinner Party on the Yacht and International Diplomacy...

Last night was a busy night. After a good, full day of work, I went out to the marina for a dinner party on the yacht with Anita and several of her friends.

I had to get a ride over to the marina with Dr. Jeff Sellar of the Monash University materials engineering department. He was quite a character. A few years ago he worked in Philadelphia in the materials science and engineering department at Penn as a visiting scientist. So, we spent a fair amount of time talking about Pennsylvania. I enjoyed our conversation on the car ride over and we stopped off at the biggest wine shop I'd ever seen.

Dinner on the yacht was great! We had sushi, sashimi, pork, and other snacks/sides for dinner. It was a very good spread of food and Anita did a great job of planning all of it and then setting it all up. It was fun to meet the others who were there at the party. I met Dr. Brad Ladewig, a membrane researcher at Monash. He remembered me from ICOM (to my surprise). Unfortunately, I don't remember him from the conference - but I met a lot of people on that trip... So we talked about membranes for a while. He works on gas separation membranes and is also interested in doing some work with anionic membranes for fuel cells.

The sunset from the yacht was stunning. It was so peaceful to be out in the marina for the evening. The wind (and thus the water) was calm and so you could really soak in the experience and just enjoy some fantastic scenery and good company. We had been concerned (earlier in the day) that the weather wouldn't be so good but, the weather cleared up well and the sky looked great! All in all, it was a really fun party and I was glad that I was invited to join in. We stayed on the yacht until about 11:30 or so when we finally decided to pack everything up and start making our way home.

As we were leaving, two of Anita's friends invited us over to their house for more drinks. Anita decided that she wanted to go (and since she was my ride, I went too). Their house was something to see in that it was very classic Victorian style. The husband is actually an artist, so much of his work decorates the house and everything had a very homey and personal feel to it. We talked for a while and had good conversation about a number of different things and everything was enjoyable until the conversation turned to world affairs...

We were discussing the situation in Haiti and I commented about it being such a tragedy. I quickly found an adversary (he is not named in this blog), who piped up and told me (not necessarily in these words) that I was full of crap because clearly (in his opinion) the only reason that the U.S. is responding in Haiti is because they want to conquer the country and add it to the 'American Empire'. I was understandably taken back that someone would make an accusation like that. It took a fair amount of effort to stay calm, look him directly in the eye and say "I could not possibly disagree with you more." After a few more heated comments back and forth about his thoughts on 'American Imperialism', I managed to learn that he thinks that the U.S. was wrong to rush into Haiti with aid and troops to try to maintain order. He thought they should have waited for the U.N. to direct the effort. I disagree. I think that in a disaster situation, anyone who can help should help as soon as possible. The U.N. is not known for acting quickly and the U.S. was close and able to help out. I fail to see how helping people out is a bad thing. The provocative 'discussion' evolved (for about an hour) through several other topics and issues that I will omit here for the sake of brevity.

Adding to the intrigue of the conversation was the fact that Anita grew up in Chattanooga, TN and went to undergraduate and graduate school at Duke - her extended family still live in the U.S. So when my adversary finally got to the point where he flat out said (with a bit more colorful language) that he hates Americans, Anita and I were both playing defense for Americans. All in all, I think we did a good job of standing up for the U.S.

It was a very different situation than I have ever been in before. I believe I was necessarily firm, though civilized. I was surprised that someone would be so bold and disrespectful - especially to a friend of a friend.

I understand that there will always be people who will dislike America and Americans and that this will be true regardless of who the American president is or what Americans due to make a positive impact on the world. So, I certainly agree that everyone is entitled to their own opinions. But it seems that most people have a decent sense about when it is appropriate to express certain opinions and when it is better to just keep your opinions to yourself. It's one thing to have a discussion or a debate about issues, but insults and attacks are un-called for. In any case, it made the visit much less pleasant. I would have walked out if I would have been able to get home.

After what ended up being a rather late night, Anita said, this morning, that she thinks he was just trying to see how I would react and that he didn't 'really mean' what he said. I'm not sure that I completely agree but, I can imagine how I would feel if I was in her place... One way or another, it was a good exercise in patience and restraint and seems to make for a good story.

So, that made for an interesting evening on Tuesday. Today was a slow day since I was running a bit short on sleep. After dinner, I went for a walk for about an hour and a half through the city. It was fun to just walk around and absorb the city culture while sipping on a cup of coffee - and the weather could not have been better. I may try to get over to the Australian Open tomorrow (depending on how experiments go). We'll have to see what happens. Anyhow, I think it's time to unwind for the evening and call it a night early to make-up for last night...