The Stars and Bars

I was mistaken for Korean for the third time today, by my cab driver. He proceeded to bash the United States. "They talk human rights, then their kids shoot other kids," he said. "Is that human rights?"

He also expressed concern that my fellow Koreans were being corrupted by American culture.

* * *

Later, I flew out of Changi Airport to Cambodia. I did something that probably means I ought to be on a watch list: I agreed to check in someone else's bag. She was distraught, a Singaporean woman whose son had just left his Chinese flute on a cab. Later, she and her family treated me to dinner in Phnom Penh: Cambodian chicken, Cambodian fish, Cambodian eggs and Cambodian rice. All hormone-free, she explained, and tastier than their Singaporean equivalents.

* * * *

"There's something pointy in your bag," the woman at airport security insisted. She dug into my backpack--and pulled out a Confederate flag. She held it high for inspection: for the first time, the Stars and Bars flew over Singapore. She gingerly poked herself with the miniature flag pole, then carried it over to her shift supervisor, who decided it wasn't a weapon and allowed me to keep it.

They probably thought it was the flag of an innocuous nation in Europe.

I looked around to see if any Americans were present and shooting me dark stares. None in sight.

Of course, you may be wondering what I was doing with a Confederate flag. Would it suffice to call it a good luck charm during the World Series, meant to aid my friend Craig win his furniture? I picked it up in New York a few days before that, not realizing I would soon unintentionally become an international representative of the South. It's a mid-length story related to Robert E. Lee, AK-47s and the Battle of Shiloh; too sleepy to relate it, but at least I had better luck traveling than my colleagues on the Trent.