Stanley Beach etc.

J, G and their friends are all crazy about this musician, Hawksley Workman, but of course I’ve never heard of him. That doesn’t mean anything since I am hopelessly out of touch with popular music… much to my own dismay.

I gave them a framed print of my etching “True Love Frogs”, and they believe I made it just for them. They consider being called “frogs” a good thing. It seemed like they genuinely liked it, but I have noticed that they also have incredibly good manners.

Last night, we went to the Stanley Beach House for dinner on the other end of the island far from the anything you would call urban but just short distance from it all. That fact is kind of remarkable. It’s just a little beach village that takes less than an hour to reach from Central on public transportation. We ate to the tune of waves crashing rather than cars honking and construction.

I don’t remember the exact flow of the conversation, but Guillaume said was that one thing that keeps their relationship exciting is that they do a lot of things separately. Juliette balked – to her, they spend far too much time apart.

We also discussed French and American politics. Juliette has found it frustrating to keep in touch with French national politics bc she has “quite left-wing” views, and all the French people she knows here swing the other way. She prefers to get her information, or at least some of it, from people, but that hasn’t worked in HK. Guillaume asked me about a Republican candidate that I had never heard of, but who he says is likely to get the nomination.

The restaurant owner was Swiss-French. I told him I understood what he said as long as he didn’t say it to me. He said that reminded him of his girlfriend. (He also kissed my hand when we left, which I didn’t like at all.) He ranted at length about everything wrong with the world including:
1) 95% of an economist’s job is to explain why their earlier predictions were wrong. The remaining 5% is to make the next prediction which will in the end be wrong.
2) The minister of agriculture should work in the countryside in order to reduce his travel time and expenses bc he works on agriculture. (I tried to explain why this didn’t make sense, but he wasn’t much for listening.)
3) Democracy can only work in affluent countries, and only the affluent should vote. Juliette, of course, objected at this. I could see his point, but only from the perspective of our infinite California initiatives. I tried to explain this. J and G might have been interested – there was no way to tell as there were no pauses. The other thing that concerned me about this line of thought is the frequent confusion between capitalism and democracy. The 2 are not the same, but I often feel like when we are talking about democracy, we slip into talking about capitalism instead.
4) He went on for quite some time about integrity being binary -- you either have it or you don't. I, of course, strongly disagree.
I am sure there was more, but those are the ones that stuck with me. They told him to be careful with his transportation observations since he was in the presence of an expert. Later, he asked what kind of transportation. “Human,” I explained to which he suggested I meant inter-regional (not using those words – I have forgotten his words). “No, urban,” I further explained.
“Oh,” he replied the light bulb finally having gone on. “You mean mass transit.” I agreed in order to end the conversation more quickly.
“He seems lonely,” Juliette later suggested.