As you may know, my journalist sister is back in India for 3 months of Yoga instruction, and I think you will find these economic insights from her blog of interest>
16 Jan.
Lots of load-shedding (power outages) lately; this computer has a tendency to go blue and shut off, so this will be brief....
W is here -- has been coming for years -- and brought a real firecracker with him, named V. I think there are more people here from Chicago than Helsinki (tre unusal). We met them last night (when X was eating hte bindi) and this AM we had an hours-long breakfast, with lots of schtick and laughing our asses off. Again we were at the German Bakery (which sells chai by the pot), looking out over the blue blue sea. (BTW we can hear the sea from our rooms at the Sky Palace; it soothes the insomnia that I now have after kicking Tylenol PM).
I still need to explain more about Bangalore and how difficult it is for regular upper class folks to get housing and servants now that the IT people have all come back from Silicon Valley and are commanding the huge salaries and how weak the dollar is and how L. explained today that it's because of Bush's reelection plan to jump start the economy by making it easier for other countries to buy our shit, thus creating jobs and making people wanna vote for him, ugh.... This means that it is costing, if not an arm and a leg, than at least a few teeth to take the worshop here. So far tho it's well worth every cent; again I had another very intense, deep practice today despite the very aromatic woman on my left and sick sneezing man on my right (kept turning my head away when he'd let one go). And so far no pain in backbend....(knocking wood now).
21 Jan.
Spent the afternoon buying books, making a call to the US (where it was 1'45 AM, oops), eating (and expelling) iddly and hanging out in my room. I ventured out an hour or so ago for a tender coconut on the beach, where I met a German man who told me about a type of alpine skiing where you walk up the hill yourself. He said not many Americans are traveling abroad. I said it was because of the weak dollar. He said no, they're afraid of air travel. And then it all became clear: Bush's reelection plan is to keep us scared so we don't travel and find out how weak the dollar is (and how upset the rest of the world is with the US right now). Meanwhile our foreign goods are cheap, they fly off the shelves and jobs are created in 'Merica. Life looks good so people actually elect him this time around. O for an absentee ballot....
Diatribe is finished. Can I just say I can see the beach from where I am typing this? There's a breeze, the sun is going down, and there is a beautiful pink glow to everything. Feeling very lucky to be an ugly 'Merican right now....(and knocking wood at this very moment). |
