Elections and Walking

Since I've been back almost three weeks, the focus of the world's
attention has been on a couple of elections and transitions, whilst my
attention was more on a little baby.

Thankfully Obama was re-elected and we can hope that he'll maybe get a
little bit done this time. At least he won't have to start campaigning
again in two years (there will be a funny little Democratic primary
first so Obama can actually focus on running the country). I can't
imagine what his life was like in those last few months and I still
strongly believe that the fact so much time and money was spent on the
election was not a good thing. Yes, there should be debate and the
public should get to know the candidates, but a month or two is
plenty, like most democracies and there is no need to spend so much
money. Having said that, I imagine that without the campaigns the
media, journalists, public relations professionals, and a whole other
slew of industries could not survive without the extra income. I quite
like the British way with a cap on fundraising and a cap on the amount
of time allowed to campaign, as well as some sense of equality in
national advertising for the leading parties.

Then there was the Chinese transition, which was actually more
exciting than one would have expected, with the chaos of the Bo Xilai
scandal earlier in the year, the cutting of the equivalent of the
cabinet from 9 positions to 7, the insane amount of (apparent)
infighting in deciding who got those positions, and the genuine lack
of ability to predict those 7. In the end a few of them were
predictable but a couple of people did lose out. No women again, of
course. China continues to have abysmally low representation of women
in politics where it matters, at senior levels or at grass-roots
levels. We once looked up how many women were ministers, and it was
something like 3 out of 30. Yikes. And we'd better not ask how many
women are on Boards of Chinese companies, particularly the powerful
State-owned ones (where many of the positions are actually political
appointees).

It's clearly going to be tough for those in charge. On a macro-level
China is just getting worse (environmental degradation, inequality,
the need for clean energy, the lack of trust in anything, and on an
on). On a micro-level there are still plenty of amazing people and
organizations doing great things but struggling against a system that
is just not responding to the challenges at hand. A system that loves
status quo as much as the Western systems and a system where
entrenched business and political interests act strongly to keep the
status quo. Authoritarian regime or democracy, there is not that much
different in many ways, and America does have a lot in common with
China in this way as well as many other ways.

Beyond politics I returned to join some play-dates with babies and
some 1-year birthday parties. The parties are somewhat strange at this
age since 1-year olds still can't really play with others (they are
not able to socialize yet) and just play on their own next to others,
or else treat other humans like any other interesting object. Then
there are normally a bunch of older kids actually playing, and there
are the adults who don't really know anyone's names but are quite keen
to drink or eat or play with their own kids. In some cases the women
will all know each other and the men will be at the back, but it
depends. In other cases, the women don't know each other either, since
most of the time its the nannies taking the kids out to play!

And of course the insane consumption that defines our lives begins
with birthday parties. We buy the birthday kid a present; they give
party bags (a concept i had totally forgotten existed) or gifts to the
kids who came; lots of decorations and balloons go up for a few hours
(and then in the rubbish), and our kids who were so happy playing with
an empty plastic bottle or a ball begin to be inundated with things
that flash, beep, or move. Despite Hannah having a number of such
things her favorite activity is walking around and playing in the
playground and her favorite toys are a xylophone, a metal pot with a
spoon and a football. Although she does also enjoying watching her
parents' laptop screens!

Hannah had been pulling herself up and cruising around for a while,
and walking a lot whilst holding one of our hands, but a couple of
days after I came back we had some success withdrawing our hand and
Hannah continued walking on her own. This was especially effective if
she tried to walk towards one of us and we just kept moving backwards!
But for what seemed like a very long time but was only really 10 days,
Hannah was pretty steadfast about not wanting to willingly let go and
walk on her own. Until a few days ago and then she began to get the
hang of it and now, once she has pulled herself up (she still can't
stand up on her own) she'll immediately let go and walk off. Sometimes
she even tried to run, though normally ends up on her bum. In fact her
bum still gets a lot of action, but she's very solid on her feet now
(even if it does not look like it due to the litlte waddle in her
step) and has walked a hundred metres or more each time.

So it's getting more exciting and more dangerous. The little girl is
incredibly inquisitive and marches after anything of interest to her,
especially dogs, no matter if that dog is standing in a dry river bed
20 metres away or next to a bush 5 metres away. So we have to keep a
close eye on her and may soon give her a little present: a backpack
with a leash on the end so we can keep her somewhat close! In other
developments Hannah clearly recognizes her name now (at least when her
parents say it) and has developed her first form of intentional,
expressive and understandable communication: a wave of both hands to
say "no" commonly used when she does not want to eat or drink anymore
(though she is still a good eater). She's also mastered the wave
goodbye too. It's a start. And she's very different from the little
baby she once was. We met a friend last weekend with a 6-week old and
it seems so long ago that Hannah was anything like that. As Andrea
likes to joke, in just a few weeks Hannah will be sleeping with
College boys and smoking.... we have to hope not!