12 November, 2000
6 November – The Saudi men who hijacked a Saudi Airlines flight last month have been given political asylum in Iraq. They are also going to be rewarded for choosing Iraq as their destination! Refer to my 15 October journal for my opinion on it.
7 November – Today is Election Day in the USA. Interestingly enough, at 8h15 Central European Time (my time), CNN World said that the first ballots had already been cast. There is a small town in New Hampshire, which has 60 registered voters, that has a tradition of voting at midnight on Election Day. I guess every town needs some kind of gimmick to put them on the map.
I returned home from work at 21h and turned on CNN for their election coverage. All they had was a Bush supporter, a Gore supporter, and a Nader supporter (Phil Donahue) yelling at eachother. It was very out of character for Phil and surprised me. CNN World had their "Election Special" then entire day, it appears. I watched it for two minutes and then switched to BBC World to see what was going on in the world. I assume that by the time I wake up in the morning, they will have announced who won the election.
The queen on Denmark passed away. She was born in Stockholm and married into the royal family when she was 25.
8 November – Today
the results of the presidential election began coming in.
9 November – "The Campaign from Hell" drags
on. Maybe it should now be called "The Election from
Hell." Personally, I just want the whole thing to be over. I
was tired of hearing about the campaigns, slanders, etc that lead
up to the campaign and was looking forward to not hearing
anything else about it after 8 Nov. I’m glad that my tax
dollars aren’t paying for this. I also find something else to
be interesting. If I remember correctly, Jeb Bush, who is the
Governor of Florida and also W’s brother, promised W that he
would deliver the state of Florida (meaning that he was sure that
Florida’s electoral votes would go to the Republicans). Now
all this is happening....does that sound fishy to anyone else?
11 November – Happy
Independence Day! Today, 11
November, is Independence Day in Poland. It commemorates 11
November 1918, when Poland was put back on the map again after
122 years (the actual country of Poland dates back as far as
966). In 1795, Poland was partitioned
between the Russian Empire, which received half of the Polish
territory, Prussia (now Germany) and Austria, which both received
a quarter. Poland had disappeared from the map of Europe. (I'm skipping a bit here)
After the downfall of the
Russian Empire in March 1917, the provisional government of
Russia recognized Poland's right to self-govern and a provisional
Polish government was formed. In September 1917, the Germans,
then in complete control of the country, created a council that
served as the governmental authority of the newly formed Polish
kingdom. With the collapse of the Central Powers (Germany,
Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire (now Turkey), and Bulgaria)
in the fall of 1918, the Poles quickly began the process for
declaring independence. On 18 November, Poland proclaimed itself
to be an independent republic and Józef Pilsudski became the
temporary head of state. On 21 November of the same year, he was
permanently sworn into that position. -------------- Today I went for a walk with my
friend Tom (Tomasz in Polish). We walked out to where his family
used to have houses and a small farm. It is still considered to
be in our town, but takes 1-˝ hours to walk there because we had
to walk part way around the biggest lake in town. We went through
the woods, by some other lakes, up some hills, and finally on a
dirt road. It was a nice walk and I’m glad that he took me
there. I met Tom three weeks ago. He
is 25 years old and is an English teacher in a (public) junior
high school. He also works a couple days per week at "The
British School," the other private English school in town.
That makes us rivals. However, we’ve chosen to be friends,
hang out and also share teaching tips. He also joins Mary and I
on our Friday night ritual of going out for pizza. The good thing about the
election problems this year is that instead of CNN world,
sometimes they switch us over to the USA and we get CNN live from
Atlanta. Usually it is beamed in from London and sometimes from
Berlin. Tonight’s Jay Leno shows
were from 4 & 7 November. 12 November – The
movie "The Muppets Take Manhattan" was on this morning.
I’ve seen all of the muppet movies several times and the
original (The Muppet Movie) is still one of my favorites. I think (and hope) that all the
hype over the USA election is dying down. On CNN World’s 15h
news broadcast it wasn’t mentioned until 15h24 (after the
stories about the death of Rabin’s wife, the Austrian
funicular accident and the election in India where one of
Gandhi’s legacies is being challenged). A lion of the species "he
Cape Lion," from South Africa, which was thought to have
been extinct since the 1800’s, may have been discovered in
Siberia. It’s distinguished by it’s size (it can grow
to be 10 feet long) and it’s main, which extends to middle
of back. As a note referring back to the
journal of 15 October, I was able to eat three of the hard boiled
eggs that I made. I wasn’t able to eat the rest and ended up
throwing them out. I guess this makes me officially a non-egg
eater. The Jay Leno show tonight was
from 8 November. Regis Philbin was a guest on
the Conan O’Brien show, which was from 8 November. He was
mainly plugging his new book, "Who Wants To Be Me." he
also played a joke on Conan that included Gellman. It was good to
see him. As I’ve previously mentioned, when I lived in the
USA, I had watched the "Live! With Regis and Kathie
Lee" show for many years. 40 days until Christmas break
and 263 days until summer break.
-------------- The History of Polish Independence
(abridged version)
