O How the World Works

I post this entry with hesitation knowing that my parents and others will worry about safety, but I want to stress that there is nothing to worry about and that this story has a very happy outcome. I also thought it was important because it occurred on the same day as Obama's "Cairo Speech".

For those of you abreast of international news recently, in Australia there was a group of 5 Indian students severely beaten by a group of Australians. This has obviously caught traction and drawn much outrage here in India. Keep this in mind.

So on Monday I realized that I was in a competition to lose the most weight out of the group of guys so I said to myself, "Its time to get serious". I knew there was a park about half a mile down the road so I thought I would give it a whirl. Boy did I ever. On my last lap however I noticed off to the side of the park but still in it, was a room with weights. The group in there seemed to be a group of males in their late teens, early twenties and a pretty exclusive group at that. But I figured that the park was free so I would give it a try next time I came back to the park.

Fast forward to today. I get to the park and start to stretch outside of the gym. I am getting the regular stares that I get on a daily basis. Also the the same group of guys were there that were there on Monday. They started getting together and pointing at me with not so pleasant looks on their faces. I ignored it and kept listening to my iPod. A minute went by and there was now ten guys staring at me conversing. Then they began walking over to me with the same stern looks on their faces. So I took my earbuds out waiting to hear what they were going to say. The leader of the group, said" WHAT COUNTRY?!!! AUSTRALIA?!!!". Immediately my Twitter sense went into overdrive and I knew what they were pissed about. I said, "America". To which he replied inquisitively, "Obama?". I said, "Yes Obama". They all began to smile, give me high-fives, and invited me into the gym where they all wanted me to be their partner and try every exercise with them. When I left, no joke, they all gave me a round of applause and thanked me for coming. One invited me tomorrow to meet him at 6:00 to work out.

While I doubt seriously that this event had anything to do with Obama's speech, since these guys were Hindi and probably did not see the speech, the moral of this long story is that America has done a 180 degree turn from all accounts, in our international standing. People are not seeing us as war-mongers but rather as progressive and diplomatic. It also does not hurt when the guys at the gym have American flag patches on all their clothes and pictures of WWF stars such as John Cena. I hope you all are inspired and I am as always, proud to be an American.

This characteristic of understanding an open-mindedness are essential to becoming a 'global citizen' in today's global society. The message that President Obama expressed yesterday should and does not apply just to the Muslim world but to the world as a whole. With that I am off to the gym with my new workout companions.