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Entries in economics (179)

Friday
Mar122010

Sunset drive

Greetings,

At dusk as an orange flaming ball of gas drifts toward blue mountains, setting trees on fire, painting the sky red, the Kampot river drive comes alive. I sit across the street with an iced coffee at a rolling stall. It costs 1500 Real or 75 sense.

The woman is friendly because I am Mr. Lucky Foot and bring her good fortune. People are curious about the stranger so they visit her and buy something cool and refreshing. They stare. They drink. They mill around. They pay. They leave.

She's been here since dawn. She stakes out the corner across from the Post Office every day. She has everything she needs; a hammock for a mid-day nap, sugar cane grinders, apples, oranges, dragon fruit, mangoes, bananas, java, tea, umbrellas, plastic chairs, folding tables and a fine view. Her husband and two sons help her in late afternoon. 

Fifteen fishing boats return south from up river, chugging through wake reflections of sky. A woman with her daughter perched on the running board of a motorcycle putts past. Men and wives with their kids pass. A man with his dog blowing white hair cruises along.

Blue vans serve as a local buses. They're crammed with millions of humans and their market shopping. The roof is covered with lashed bamboo baskets, boxes, tires, and assorted packages. The open back door exposes material threatening to explode and spill into the road.

Heavy-duty construction dump trucks filled with labor boys blast their horns and spit gravel. 

Chattering Muslim girls in colorful scarves, having finished their day shift at the local P.T.C. weaving center for 200 disadvantaged youngsters from rural areas pedal home. Teams of young chattering cycle boys prowl for girls. Prim girls in blue school uniforms pedal bikes, ride scooters. Blond fat Europeans walk the front as serious local women on a weight-loss program of infinite proportions march along, swinging their gaited arms like puppets in a play.

A man with his rolling cart near the curb pulverizes ingredients with a mortar and pestle. He serves dinner noodles, vegetables and spices to sidewalk lovers, kids, moms and dads cradling infants. A busy woman next door with her rolling restaurant grills meat and fish using pieces of charcoal fired below a clay pot.

Wealthy people blast past in 4-wheel drives. One day I saw a Hummer. It was humming black money. The people inside were invisible. Someone said there are 200 very, very rich people in this country and millions of poor people. How many poor people can fit in a hummingbird? 

Humans trapped inside vehicles scream, "Look at the people outside. They are eating, breathing, living, laughing, talking, dreaming and loving. What if I die here in this cartoon graveyard? Who'll be my role model?"

Accidental children inside rolling machines pound their tiny craniums against reinforced tempered glass barriers yelling, "Look, mom! See the kids by the river. They're playing a game in fresh air. They have air-conditioning. I want to play. I'm hungry!" Mom ignored their plea of temporary insanity.

Dad steps on the gas blasting loose gravel and dust into the air. He wants to get home to his gated house with high fences wearing shards of glittering sharp green glass. To keep them out.

A young boy and and his sister finish eating corn-on-the-cob. He runs to the edge of the world, pulls out his imaginary pistol and fires at the flaming orange sun. It explodes and disappears. He laughs, "Bulls-Eye!" 

He and his sister find their father's comforting hand and they walk.

Metta.

 

Friday
Feb192010

Mine

Greetings,

Here I am. I communicate my reality to the world. 

Do you like my shirt? Can you read words or do you need a picture? How about a picture of a picture?

I don't know how to read so I like to look at pictures. 

My country has 11.5 million people and maybe 6-10 million mines. Adults say there are 40,000 amputees in my country. Many more have died because we don't have working medical facilities.

Mines are cheap. A mine costs $3.00 to put in the ground and $1,000.00 to take out of the ground. I'm really good at numbers.

Talk to me before you leave trails to explore the forest. It's beautiful and quiet. I know all the secret places.

I showed my picture to a Cambodian man and he didn't like it ;-(

They call this denial. He said it gave him nightmares. So it goes.

My village is my world. Where do you live?

Metta.

Cambodian Land Mine Museum...

Landmines in Cambodia...

Tuesday
Feb022010

Buy

Greetings,

Hands of Cambodian children.

"Mister, wanta buy a book? Wanta buy some postcards? Cold water mister? No money for school. Book mister?  Good price. You buy..."

Metta.


Tuesday
Dec152009

Take bus #11

Greetings,

I'm walking across a screaming motorcycle street in Saigon. Bus #11 is bearing down fast and furious. I escape. Another person in another country in another life along another path said.

'Poor people walk. They take bus #11. It means use your legs.'

The gap between rich and poor - such is the reality in developing countries - is becoming more apparent.

Recent figures speak. Average city wages - $1,054 a year. Rural wages - $540 a year.

The central party hopes their economic stimulus will encourage rural people to buy appliances and cars. I need a 4x wheel drive washing machine so I can I take my family on weekend excursions to the beach, the Himalayas and deep tropical jungles where life is simple. Yeah!

The process evolved like this. I walked. I saved and eventually bought a bike. A Flying Pigeon. Black. One speed. It got me from home to the village rice paddies.  

We had a radio in the work unit. The local propaganda machine blasted revolutionary worker party anthems day and night. We got one for the home. My wife was happy. Then we had the required one child. We wanted another one but the forced abortion committee and local officials said, NO! You do not qualify for two children.

Then my wife wanted a TV. Ok I said, let's get a 24" flat screen with a remote.

What about a new rice cooker? Ok I said.

How about a used refrigerator? What's wrong with the box of ice? You shop for fresh vegetables at the market every morning. Why do we need a refrigerator? Because the neighbors have one.

Oh, I see. I scrounged around and traded rice for some chickens and traded the birds for some used teak wood smuggled in from Burma. I developed some connections. One trade led to another and I eventually found a well used fridge. My wife was happy. Then we filled it up with baby formula.

The formula was tainted with a chemical to increase the protein. We didn't know this small fact.

Our little girl became sick. The Worker's Hospital #8 said I had to pay them a lot of money for medicine or she would die.

I sold my bike to buy medicine. Now I walk to the hospital to see my daughter. It takes forever and a day.

I want to move to a big city filled with neon and food smells and construction projects and appliances hoping against hope to find a job but party leaders say millions of unemployed workers are returning to their villages in the new year.

I have a feeling the new year is going to be a lot like the old year.

The radio and flat screen scream stream tells us to stay home. Be quiet. Don't worry. Practice social stability and harmony. My future opportunities look precarious.

I have to go now because they will cut off the electricity soon and I need to buy some candles.

"Life is found in a desperate situation." - Chinese proverb.

Metta.


 

Saturday
Dec052009

clean your ears day

Greetings,

Today and everyday is International Clean Your Ears Day.

It's a big deal considering ears are so small and portable. They go everywhere you go.

The first time I had my ears physically deep cleaned was in China. A woman at the empty opera place in Chengdu one Saturday morning. I watched her doing men sitting in bamboo chairs. Her tools and instruments were clean and disinfected. Scaling, probing, curling out the wax, cotton swabs soaked in liquid. I wrote about it in 2004.

It's a great feeling. BUZZ!

WHAT?

Today was another opportunity to get the old ears cleaned. Bliss baby.

I've located a street barber here in Saigon. He's on the corner of Noise & Confusion, a main drag through the heart of a swirling mass of mobile humanity. Beep-beep.

His place is an example of real bare bones marketplace essentials. He has a very small corner of a cement area surrounded by a wire fence with a gap on the sidewalk. One old comfortable broken barber chair, a lopsided table with a mirror. On the table are his ancient well used tools; blades in cheap paper, electric trimmer, a straight razor, comb, and brush.

Cut black hair spills out of a green plastic bag near the gutter waiting for someone to collect and recycle it. Makes good stuffing. 

 

The aural chambers sing. The ear cleaning procedure removed this debris and clutter:

  1. cycle of cycles
  2. incessant trajectory of love and passion
  3. bird songs
  4. laughing children
  5. crying, whining, screaming children (many over 25)
  6. heart broken lovers
  7. distraught wandering tourists
  8. dancing fools (you are a fool whether you dance or not, so you may as well dance)
  9. distracted kind idiots yelling at high decibel levels
  10. minstrels
  11. singers, dancers, hustlers
  12. motorcycle cowboys, hookers, massage parlor slaves, rice slaves, wage slaves
  13. laughing slaves
  14. lonely philistine Filipinos in exile from martial law and massacres hanging out in a park bothering travelers, talking about the weather and shoes and jewellery on sale at discount stores
  15. bored frustrated wives and their husbands
  16. unemployed vagrants, misfits, derelicts, amputees, homeless, and orphans
  17. nutritional experts and particle collider scientists
  18. fortune tellers and assorted prototype aliens filled with monetary motivations and clear intentions
  19. visions of a supreme creator laughing at all of us
  20. people who say, "I don't have a hearing problem. I have a listening problem." 
  21. your choice. All for $2.77.

What? Open ears, open mind.

Metta.