I am a Man of Power and Influence!

I like to pretend I am, sometimes. Most of the time this usually goes on in my own somewhat fevered imagination; one has to do something to keep out the wailing demons of one's manic insanity, after all. Seems like the decent thing to do; after all, as Carl Carlsen of The Simpsons fame said, "If I didn't have inner peace, I'd go completely psycho on you guys, like, all the time".

Sometimes, though, things happen that enable me to buttress these delusions with something more substantial. Like when I got a phone call from the Consulate asking me if I would care to dine with the Japanese Ambassador and a few select guests on Sunday, and take in the Heisei Nakamura-za Kabuki performance afterwards, currently completely sold out to the end of its run at Lincoln Centre. Not a JET thing - the Ambassador personally requested that I be invited. The other guests? The Indian Consul to New York, the head of the Japanese-American Association of New York, and two Indian professors of economics from Columbia, who are on the Council for Foreign Relations. And me and Kate. Spot the odd couple out. Heh.

Still, it was a very swish afternoon; washoku lunch and polite conversation in sumptuous surroundings at the Ambassador's pad on 5th Avenue, and the best (and most expensive seats in the house) for the Kabuki. Normally I stay the hell away from Japanese theatre - there's a reason one branch of it is called No in my opinion - but this was awesome. I strongly suspect that the play, Hokaibo, was deliberately reworked for an American audience and made considerably funnier than normal, but it was a delight to watch. Course, the fact that I had a headset doing simultaneous translation from the Japanese and thus didn't miss anything can only have helped.

So for a few hours at least, I got to hang around in the halls of the mighty of the land and pretend that I'm one of them. Now, of course, the next thing to do is reflect on the irony of this, as I hold my credit card bill in one hand and wonder how the hell I'm going to pay it...

I'm off back to the UK for a little while, so I may be on hiatus for a week or so. Cheers!