Let us not get into how my life keeps conspiring complicatedly against this blog — instead, here’s something simple! We spotted this car near my house in Palo Alto two days ago, and again this morning at a railway crossing in nearby Atherton. It’s, er, very festive?

It wasn’t a close race, in the end, but none of the Obama supporters I know felt comfortable until it was finally, definitely confirmed.

And how! Dripping with symbolism and references to the past, I thought the victory speech was amazing (did he sound more like Martin Luther King, or more like John Kennedy?). It was delivered with a skill of oration that few other world leaders could ever match, and was dignified far beyond the weakness of McCain’s concession speech.

I was particularly interested in how the Internet played out in the victory! Within minutes of the “Obama’s won” announcement (led by CNN pretty much on the dot of west coast polls closing), my Facebook news feed was filling with celebratory status messages, nevermind expected channels like Twitter and the blogosphere. Everybody I know of used the Web to keep up with results. And the Obama campaign sent a thankful e-mail to everyone on their list ten minutes before his speech!

Amidst all of this, my housemates were entertaining to watch! It was one thing to see people holding signs at traffic lights and train stations saying “vote Obama” or “yes on proposition 8” (see below), but it was quite another to see otherwise sensible people go insane with cheering and dancing and other expressions of having their faith restored, simply because a different party won an election!

(Although I was in Sydney and Melbourne during the last rounds of the campaign — both of which showed me an awesome time, yay for walking the bridge at 1am! — it didn’t seem to matter that I missed them. As far as I can tell, the biggest factors were losing trust in the Republicans because of the financial crisis, and never having gained trust in Sarah Palin.)

But California, oh, what were you thinking? Counting is incomplete but it looks like the vote is for a ban on gay marriage?! (The county map is telling: “no” votes centre entirely on the Bay Area …)

• I find it a little surprising to see Colin Powell endorse Barack Obama — although not that surprising, because the man demonstrated long ago that he has sense. For that reason I think I’d have preferred to see him run as a candidate …
• Less seriously, I sometimes wish McCain would lay off appending “my friend” to everything! And let’s not start about “Joe the Plumber”.
• I’ve spent the weekend learning a bit of the history behind this political system in Boston — and hanging out in the grounds of Harvard, which really don’t belie that it’s the richest university in the world. The flight over was scenic! (small recompense after this mob put me through the worst check-in I’ve ever experienced)
• Meanwhile, it’s good to see the WA Government promising to review mental health services — this is a long way short of the change that’s needed, but maybe just maybe it’ll lead to something worthwhile.
• And if the hung parliament and minority government in WA seemed overly odd, it shouldn’t; the ACT has one of their own now!

In the American election cycle, it is customary for politically active people to put a sign on their house’s front lawn (or their apartment’s front window). But I was a little surprised when, not long ago, my housemates decided that one wasn’t enough …

• Blog, woe! I honestly didn’t mean so much neglect, although in my defence the Real World has been throwing me a fair few curve-balls lately.
• As a result of said curve-balls, I have a chance to travel! Thus I’m in Washington DC and just left the neighbourhood bar where I was watching the last presidential debate (oh, and pretending to be an American). This was particularly entertaining for the jeers that spread through the room when the candidates spoke about the school system here! Both candidates did a decent job, although Obama didn’t really address the terribly unbalanced federal budget and McCain struck me as more than a tad hypocritical. My favourite quote from the locals: “I don’t care about the parties, I’m voting for DC statehood!”
• A few weeks ago, I jumped on the tram to Santa Clara for the PHP developers’ event ZendCon, which was awesome! I scored a book because no one else knew about JAWS (tsk, tsk), and spent too much time at Yahoo’s party writing a solver for their Sudoku puzzle with Shaddy of learning.net! (Here’s a few thousand solutions). My favourite sessions were Jay Pipes on databases (”never assume anything about the MySQL optimiser“) and Terry Chay’s uncon session with its gratuitous excrement references
• The economic crisis that started in America and suddenly gripped the world had me quite startled! I mean, it was obvious that it was coming, but I’d have never predicted when or how bad (and the red arrows on my meagre NYSE portfolio demonstrate as much!). I am surprised by the measures that have been taken by governments (particularly the Americans!) in the hope of prompting a recovery — and yet John McCain still speaks of small-government conservatism! So much for laissez-faire.
• Last week, Victoria formally decriminalised abortion! This is pretty cool.
• And finally, the Western Australian government has held together, hooray! although I’m yet to see them actually do anything, other than make threats like cutting the budget a la John Howard’s first term.

Spotted inside Borders at Union Square in San Francisco.