Obama-rama

I know it's nearly week old news by this point, but I still feel obliged to provide a bit of insight into how the whole inauguration thing went down on this side of the pond. To sum things up in one word, it's safe to say that the inauguration was BIG.

Last Tuesday, from the moment I arrived at work, there was much chatter and excitement about Obama and the day's events. Some efforts were made to arrange watching the events unfold here at work, but despite having several new flatscreen televisions, no one could figure out how to make them actually show tv with sound. So I didn't get to watch anything live, but if I had, I would have had plenty of options. There was two hours of live coverage on BBC 1 as well as extended coverage on BBC News and Sky News (a Rupert Murdoch situation, so you can envision what went on there). People in many other workplaces (coverage from from 4:30 to 5:30 local time) managed to sneak away to watch. I also received word of a number of gathering of Americans taking place around town. There was front page coverage in all the newspapers and it was the leading story in the news for days. Half of what I saw on BBC news at the gym last Thursday was all stuff taking place in the US.

Needless to say, I find this very intriguing. First of all, people here aren't directly impacted by the US president in the same way as Americans. Even Americans living here aren't impacted in the same way as people in the US (unless of course he drastically cuts the amount of money you can live abroad without having to pay US taxes...). Secondly, I find it somewhat interesting that people are so intrigued by the process of a president being inaugurated. There seems to be a small bit of jealousy, but that only seems normal in a land where they have an unelected monarchy and the prime minister isn't directly elected either.

To summarize sentiments, the people over here seem quite pleased with our choice. It will be interesting to see if overall sentiment towards Americans changes over the next few months!