Bring on the Fireworks

There are several reasons for celebration today.

On the familial side, my brother Adam turned 40 today (using decimal numbers). This round number is definitely worth a blog entry.

The official fireworks tonight were in honor of Guy Fawkes night, and like last year we had them in the Somerville quad. As I wrote last year, it's absolutely incredible to have fireworks in one's own backyard like this.

There were apparently also fireworks right after McCain's concession, but I was fast asleep and it didn't wake me up. After some conversations today, it became evident that the parties last night were in large part because of the expected outcome. The consensus over here is best summed up by a comment from one of my colleagues (which I am paraphrasing slightly because I can't remember the exact wording) during those conversations: "This election was a big victory for worldwide democracy." The general reaction here was one of elation, and that was from people from all sorts of cultural and world origins.

The one thing that seems to have gone wrong is the Prop 8 business in California, though I guess it's not officially sunk yet. (Hello, People? Others should be able to boink whomever they want and get the same legal benefits because it doesn't hinder your life in any way! Let them be!.)

Guy Fawkes Night

Today was my first Guy Fawkes night. We had a fireworks display in the Somerville College quad, so I was closer to the fireworks display than I believe I have ever been. It was actually pretty spectacular.

Sadly, we didn't burn an effigy. We can't have a bonfire in the quad, so the effigy-burning will have to wait for another year... I want to burn an effigy. :)

By the way, it's worth remarking that the Brits seem to play fast and lose with some holidays (like this one). Namely, there were various fireworks displays on different days during the past week. For example, I was in London on Saturday and I saw fireworks at various points while I was taking the train back to Oxford.

I also had one of my patented awesome/"awesome" moments this evening. I was asked by one of my British colleagues if we had anything like this in the U.S. I mentioned that we had July 4th, which is Independence day [pause] --- "when we declared our independence from you guys."