Around the world in eight days…

Because Foreign Policy, when done right, is not a noun but a verb, I’m leaving the country. (Ok, so it’s never a verb. I’m having premature jet-lag.  But you get the idea.) None of this arm-chair punditry for me. I’m going out where you can taste that clash of civilizations and walk the flat earth. (And that’s just eating and trying to get to my plane at most airports.)

During the next week and a half my business will be taking me to four continents. Admittedly, four continents in eight days is borderline insane for someone who has to fly commercial but think of all the time it will give me at 35,000 feet to contemplate the big issues and provide juicy blogs full of local color.

Consider it my Sleep Deprivation and Digestive Distress (S Triple D) World Tour…and view it as your chance to get a window on the world as I hobnob with cab-drivers, bellmen, secretaries who don’t understand a word I am saying, and drug sniffing dogs. Naturally, to the extent that major developments break anywhere in the world, I will be there to offer a distinctly outside the Beltway perspective on them. And all of it will be viewed through the lens of crushing exhaustion that will add special color to it — like hallucinations, imagery of large insects crawling all over my body, paranoid fantasies of hotel shampoo bottles coming to life, that kind of thing.

So now, in the grey light of dawn, I head to the airport with my primary achievement thus far being the ability to get all that I need for the trip into my carry-on luggage. This does not mean I am traveling light. My suitcase and briefcase together weigh roughly the same as any car from the Kia line of fine, Korean-made, automobiles. (Although I worry my luggage may actually have lower fuel efficiency.) 

Barack Obama has made it a new world in which everyone loves Americans. And I am ready to go out and collect my hugs and free drinks.

More news as it happens… 

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