home again

I'm back home again. I actually arrived yesterday but was too tired to blog until today. I have a backlog of articles and stuff that I found, mostly for my clip blog, that I didn't have time to post during my trip. I wasn't planning to post to veiled4allah either but that thing about 27% of people thinking that all Muslim Americans should register their locations with the government - that is so disturbing that I couldn't wait so I blogged it immediately after I saw it. I was thinking about it a lot because of being on a business trip. If I had to register my location with the government, that means that I would have to get permission from the government to go on a business trip, inform the local office in Seattle that I'm going to be gone, check in with another local office in San Mateo to let them know I'm there, inform them again when I'm leaving, and then check in with the Seattle office again when I get back home. And all of this not because I've been proved to be a dangerous criminal but because of my religion. What makes me especially upset is that the same people who support something that violates American ideals and American law so much are the ones who say that I'm anti-American or un-American for being a Muslim or for having liberal political beliefs. And 27% of Americans think this? There is something that is very disturbingly wrong in this country today and it scares me to death when I think about it too much. As some of you might guess from the mention of San Mateo, as well as the fact that I would only be going on a business trip for my employer, I was going to the Six Apart office, which is currently located in San Mateo, California. It was a chance to meet the rest of the support team in person since all of us work remotely, including my manager. I also got to meet everybody who works at the office (except for one guy who was out sick). So we had support team meetings, a very productive meeting of the TypePad product team (I work in TypePad support), a full staff meeting, and a meeting of the support team with our direct supervisors the VP of Product and the CEO. Finally, there was a holiday party where I mostly hung out with some other people who, like me, don't drink and don't really like parties. I didn't have any problems with airport security on either leg of the trip (in case it's not clear, I don't wear my face veil when traveling because Muslim women are required to unveil their faces when it's needed to verify their identity and in any case I believe face veiling is religiously recommended rather than religiously obligatory, so I wear it when I can and don't when I can't). Despite the new security regulations, things went much more smoothly than when I last travelled two years ago. It's a bit more of a hassle that only passengers with boarding passes can go to the gates now; when you're meeting someone you've never seen in person before, it's easier to find them in the smaller crowd at the gate than in the huge crowds at baggage claim. But overall, everything went smoothly, al-hamdulillah.