Stanley Bing: Friends, Romans...

Wherever you go, there you are. It doesn't matter how far you fly, how many time zones you traverse, how odd the stated agenda or proposed workflow, the land of business is the same the world over.

The same gentlemen strutting around in suits whose quality bespeaks their level of power. The same little shoulder bags filled with orientation material. The same attempt to wring joy from the everyday work that must be done. The same white wine. The same canapes -- although in this case I will say that the pistachio puffs were a new experience. The same jitters around speech time. The same bonhomie afterwards. The same feeling that rises in a room where alcohol and long associations mix. The same sense of content being stuffed into a carapace of form. The same business life, in short.

After a period of ice cold shivering that always attends a plunge into a new pool, you warm up almost immediately. Ah, you think. This is just swimming again. I know how to do this.

I will report to you that I believe it is FAR more pleasant to have visited Europe after the election of Barack Obama than it is before. There are two headlines that leapt out at me from the vast newstands covered with Obamamania of one sort or another. One was from a British paper, and simply said: "THANKS, YANKS." The other was also in English, but looked local. It said: "Welcome back, America." During the conference, at which there were but two other Americans among a crowd of some 1,500, a number of folks came up to me and congratulated me on our new president. The only one who expressed serious reservations, quite interestingly, I think, was a pleasant, very thin, very gray Russian fellow. Shades of the Cold War. I don't think they like us very much. Again.