President Obama's Inauguration Speech [1/20/09] [Part II]

I was doing my tasks as Personal Assistant, (a part-time gig) when Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th President of the US. The weather was in the higher 20s in NYC, but I noticed that it could have been colder in DC that day. I could have opted to join and be among the crowds in DC. A friend lives and works in DC, and she has her apartment but she was flying early morning the next day after the inauguration. It would have been far from convenient, so I chose to stay home and do my gigs as a freelancer. That day, I was asked to search for a website at the start of work, so that we could watch the proceedings in Washington,DC, which I found easily through the sites of ABC and CNN. However, when everyone in the house went downstairs to gather for the event towards noontime, the streaming down from internet was failing.

We soon were in near panic, as we wanted to be there, be in the very moment while all these proceedings were taking place. But we could not view much from the small size of the laptop screen as shown on ABC's channel online, so we insisted on CNN's web presence. I also logged into my Facebook account at the same time, so that I could see the others who were were joining us that time. My boss was already telling us to join the others who were in the Chinese restaurant next door, as they're surely watching the event on TV, and she understood how important it was for us to be able to watch on TV something that's happening for the first time. It took us sometime before we finally got online after several trials, for some unclear technical reasons (or perhaps the volume of traffic was getting so heavy to be handled by the highways online, as they say) and to finally get to watch the very moment when Obama was taking his oath. It was marred somewhat by some twitch on the wordings of the oath as heard from the reading of the Supreme Court Chief Justice, that also off-balanced Obama. The CNN channel online was at least 5 seconds late, as we were listening as well to two radios that were turned on for the audio of the proceedings; it was instantly turning into a documentary movie that's being annotated, with the images one after the other were being unfolded before our frantic eyes, with the vocals being heard first before the visuals. The cameras tried to capture the moment at all angles.

There at the ground floor of a century-old townhouse in Greenwich Village, the 5 of us were gathered (and huddled to share something of the glorious behind this event). My boss, her husband who's also my patient during my gigs as a caregiver (I noticed he could barely move himself during all these proceedings), the caregiver for that shift, the housekeeper, plus myself. Two were blacks, myself being Asian, the two others Caucasian. We were becoming impatient with the technology as we were having problems with the connections as we were watching the proceedings online via CNN, while were listening to what's being shown late by a few seconds. But we were honored by becoming part of history that took place that time, as we saw thousands of people gathered in Washington D.C. This is good story to retell in the passage of time, among the historical moments that we've witnessed and participated in in our lifetime.

The caregiver uttered to me in a loud voice: "You'll be the next President!," tone serious and gleeful. And my boss said "He has to be born here in the US so he can be President of the US." I was busy on the look-out on the connection to the internet as it could fail anytime while we were watching the events, but I noted down in my mind the verbal exchanges. The mood was ecstatic. My boss mentioned about the decision of the younger Bush to pursue the war in Iraq, which the elder Bush must have not considered as a good idea to pursue (apparently), and which to the opinion of her ailing husband (who was then still able to talk than what's happening now in his current state) was such a monumental mistake. Everybody in the room have been elated the Bush presidency is over. The two black women with us were congratulating each other warmly. I could see how proud they looked. This event could very well signal other significant wave of changes in some other places, which to my mind may include (some of which may happen in God's appointed time): having a woman premier in Japan, an openly gay President for Iran, India's Head of State who's descended from the lower rungs of its caste system, China's Head of State coming from Tibet, etc. But who would really be able to tell if these things will ever happen? Such developments may just simply happen anytime soon, as borders are being uprooted one by one before our very eyes.

I was happy to have seen someone got elected with whom I have shaken hands with during the last 30 days of the campaign period in Nevada. He's rather surefooted in bearing, and in control of himself, even amidst crowds ready to plunge towards his directions, and he's having the time of his life, given all the troubles of the campaign. Come to think of it, if he's not been black, I doubt if many of the voters would have had difficulties in weighing his credentials versus those of the other candidate. It was hands down easy to see that he's got the better credentials, but there were other things that was working against him (lack of substantial experience, image of arrogance particularly intellectual, being too politically savvy to be taken seriously for all his efforts to project change as his main selling point to voters, etc), and all these are considered water gone under the bridge. He's now the US President, and I'm happy being here to have a great view of these interesting times in US history from my own imperfect way.