The day before Prime Minister Sugo’s speech, Alexei Navalny stepped off a plane in Moscow. At 44, the Russian has become the most popular anti-corruption crusader in his country, and possibly the world. Tall, fit, and with just a few wrinkles around his eyes when he smiles (which he does often) he does not look like a middle-aged man recently recovered from a poison-induced coma that many believe was meant to end his life.

In Greek mythology, Athena springs from Zeus's head. There's nothing weird about this. In the world of myth, perfectly healthy things can erupt out of the oddest places. That's not so in real life where America's beloved freedom of expression has given birth to a belief that the best thing to be is authentic.

It will come as no surprise that America is not popular. In fact, if a movie were made in which the world's nations were cast as high school students (a kind of Fast Times at Globalization High), the United States would be the rich, douchy homecoming king. At best, arrogant and sort of dim-witted.

Now, though, I think of Egypt often, and fondly. Cairo is both a sophisticated metropolis of malls and yoga studios, and a clumpy-dirt desert where hundreds of poor people shelter in cemeteries.

As is the case all over the world, the day happens, unfolding in its predictable chronological fashion. But that is where predictability ends and Kathmandu begins. On my way to the UN...

Believe it or not, this is progress. I've moved up the linguistic ladder from a befuddled mute who can only say hello and thank you to a toddle with a vast lexicon filled with useful words, such as coffee, horse, very, go, small, and of course banana.