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JAN 20 2009 in the 21st century so far i've seen 3 major historical events: the attack on 9/11, the red sox winning the world series in 2004, and now the first black president of the united states. i woke up early this morning to watch as much inauguration coverage as possible. bruce invited me over to his place so i could see it with him and susan but i didn't want them to see me if i got overly emotional. my roommate watched some with me before he left for work. i wasn't as tearful as i was on election night. back in november, there was still a sense of, will obama win? but now that he's actually won, the inauguration was just a formality. these ceremonies can be made better if the elected officials were allowed to write their own vows. "i, barack hussein obama, promise to keep it real and kick it from time to time." obama's speech didn't give me the goosebumps i've experienced from past speeches, but it was good enough. i'm still amazed that he's the new president now. with a strange sounding name like that, how could he have ever won? it's almost like for this election cycle at least, voters transcended what they might do and did what they ought to do. americans did the right thing for a change. maybe our reasons weren't all that altruistic given the numerous crises facing the country, but the end result was more than the sum of all the parts. it also took a perfect candidate, someone who bridged both white and black voters, with a personal history that touches every part of the globe. i see obama and i seriously start to think, is this guy a bona-fide superhero? sent to earth or back through time to save us all? no pressure, barack! now that obama is the president, he's playing for real now. here's where it counts, and his actions can either help us or hurt us. i wonder if the next 4 years will feel like forever to him or will they pass by in the blink of an eye? after the inauguration, there was the lunch with congress. senator kennedy had another seizure and was rushed to the hospital. i wonder if this will put pressure on governor paterson to nominate caroline kennedy as the freshman senator from NY, so that there will still be a kennedy in the senate should something happen to ted kennedy. i watched as barack and michelle got out of their limo twice en-route to the white house in order to walk and wave to the people lining both sides of the avenue. once they arrived at the white house, the parade started. because they were so behind schedule, it soon grew dark. dark and cold (temperature was something like 15 degrees). i felt bad for the marchers, but i felt worse for the president, who had to stand behind bullet-proof glass and wave and smile at the 100+ groups for what seemed like hours. it seemed more endurance challenge than something that was actually fun. my favorite part was when obama saw his old hawaiian school marching band and threw them a "hang loose" gesture. i left the house in the afternoon to go with my father to the supermarket to get some groceries. i gave him my broken wii, which my aunt might bring with her to taiwan so it can get fixed and modified. an installer from the museum called again (it's becoming a daily routine), this time asking me to change the dimensions of an interactive. the problem is dimensions are set early on in the process, which affects both the graphics, the videos, and of course the programming. he thought it was a simple fix; i told him it'd take a few days at least and to call the project manager with his request. in the evening i watched a few inaugural ball coverage on television. people were crying during barack and michelle's first dance, and that got me a little emotional as well.
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