Monday, January 21, 2013

barack obama takes oath with gala to follow today

President Obama took the oath of office Sunday for a second term in a brief, intimate White House ceremony as thousands of celebrants streamed into the sun-splashed nation’s capital in preparation for Monday’s inaugural festivities.

With his left hand on a Bible that belonged to
Michelle Obama’s grandmother, Obama took the oath inside the Blue Room, facing the Washington Monument.

“I did it,” Obama said to his youngest daughter, Sasha, after a 42-word oath was administered by Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. Sasha, perhaps remembering how Roberts forgot part of the oath four years ago, requiring that Obama retake it, told her father: “You did not mess up.” This time, Roberts read the oath from a piece of paper.

On a day that the first African-American president officially began his second term, hundreds of people packed a park holding a large stone monument to Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights icon whose memory is honored on Monday.
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Friday, January 18, 2013

Flooding in Jakarta on 1/17/2013






Jakarta has received it's full monthly rain average in just half the month so far, saturating the ground and easilly over running the rivers & dams whenever there's a strong downpour like this morning. 


I took some photos of a main street (Sudirman) in central jakarta near my apartment this morning at 9am local time (9pm wed night for east coast usa/canada). I am a Canadian temporarilly stationed abroad in SE Asia on business.