Housekeeping

Hanoi Train Street (Trần Phú), cutting through the city's Vieux Quartier, is neither on the wrong nor the right side of the tracks, but both sides, and lined with cafés where trainspotting locals and tourists gather, often to take pictures of the trains passing at a perilous distance between the rows of tables, and of each other (this picture, from Vespa Adventures, is a lot better than mine). Apparently closed down in 2023 by concerned officials after a near-accident, it is now back in operation.

I really should have said something sooner, but I've been pretty busy with this Vietnam vacation, more packed with planned touristy activities than I'm accustomed to, not that I'm apologizing for that (in fact I'm kind of liking that aspect a lot, especially in Hanoi, a wild city it would have taken us years we don't have to be able to negotiate for ourselves),  but I haven't had a couple of hours together when I could put my thoughts to the current situation since New Year's Eve. We'll be reducing the pace considerably starting tomorrow, and heading for familiar Singapore in a couple of days, and I hope to be posting more substantially again soon.

Mamdani

 

My photo, not the shop I've been going to since COVID inflation made haircuts equally unaffordable everywhere, but mine is also called "Excellence". My shop has Arab barbers, but I go there not just because they're Arabs but also because they straight-razor shave the back of my neck and give me a great hot towel.

Happy New Year! The New York City news, of the inauguration of my borough president Mark Levine as city comptroller, Jumaane Williams as public advocate (a New York institution in which he has served since 2019, preceded by Attorney General Letitia James and former mayor Bill de Blasio), and our new mayor Zohran Mamdani, really feels like a beginning of something in a way New Year festivities rarely do (I don't know but I think January 1 is a pretty unusual date for holding inaugurations; Spanberger's gubernatorial, in Virginia, is going to be January 17 and Sherrill's in New Jersey on January 20).

The ceremonial itself, and the speeches, were pretty inspiring, as far as I'm concerned. I really liked Levine pointing out that each of the three of them swore on a different holy book, and Williams getting emotional, and then asking all of us to take an oath together:

— that no one let go of anyone’s hands, because if we’re all connected, we can’t lose anyone. So we hold on to the hand of our neighbor, and we reach out with our other hand to grasp someone who may fall through cracks, and we bring them along. I want everyone, if they’re comfortable, take a hand of the person next to you, or the arm, and just repeat after me. We can all be the voice of the people.

CROWD: We can all be the voice of the people....

Echoing Mamdani's tribute to the collectivity of democracy in his November victory speech: