baccara, or, who the hell is that?

Down some infernal internet rabbit hole this afternoon, I ended up on the Wikipedia page listing the best-selling songs of all time. Three of the rarified top group, which have sold more than 15 million copies, are Christmas songs. Bing Crosby's got two: "White Christmas" and "Silent Night." Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" is eleventh, with 16 million copies sold. The others in that group are all instantly recognizable. "Candle in the Wind," that sort of thing. But I did a double take on number nine: "Yes Sir, I Can Boogie," by Baccara. Didn't ring a bell. So I looked it up on YouTube thinking it would be something I knew but not by name.

Two things:

1. It is a terrible song. 
2. I'd never heard it before. 

What? How is it possible that I had never in my life heard even a snatch of the ninth-best-selling single ever? The other songs on the list are, again, ubiquitous. Part of the fabric of existence, as impossible to avoid as the golden arches. "My Heart Will Go On" plays in muzak form in the lobby of my office building every single day. But I made it to 32 without ever hearing "Yes Sir, I Can Boogie." 

traveling

My friend Andrew made a post in his training journal about being excited to use racing as an excuse to travel in 2019. He said he's never been on a plane and only left Florida twice. Got me thinking about traveling and about how much I take for granted my own experience of it. When Linc came to visit last year, he hadn't been overseas in a few years, since he visited Alex in South Korea. He was nervous about arriving in a strange country and extremely relieved that SRB and I were waiting for him outside the terminal. M&D went to England four years (?) ago and haven't been overseas since. They are coming in April and they'll stop in Istanbul on the way for a couple of days, an adventure they would not likely be planning if I hadn't decided to live 7,000 miles away.

Meanwhile, I've built my life around traveling. SRB is even more extreme: apart from living in Pakistan, her mother, father, sister, and brothers all live in different countries (South Africa, France, Australia, UK), and as she becomes part of my family that's another country altogether (US, obviously). If we stay together over the long term, even if we settle down somewhere and leave the field we're in, which requires international travel, we'll still have to fly long distances to visit family.

One of the reasons I was interested in international development as a field coming out of college was that I wanted to get paid to travel and eventually live overseas again. I was less than a year removed from living in Chile when I got my first job and itching to see new places. Eleven years later, that mission is well and truly accomplished. I'll finish 2018 having flown nearly 90,000 miles and having been to ten countries (^ = my first time there):

1. Pakistan
2. USA
3. Tajikistan
4. Portugal^
5. UK
6. Singapore
7. Malaysia^
8. South Africa^
9. Botswana^
10. Namibia^

Pretty cool. I've been incredibly lucky.