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.

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.

 

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.

Gator Aid

Greetings,

My name is Ali Gator. I live on a farm with 200 friends near Saigon. I used to live in the Mekong River but was trapped by some greedy animal poachers and brought here. Many humans are too greedy and clever for their own good. They use me for breeding. The babies are sold to restaurants. Bye-bye baby.

One tropical afternoon a group of us were relaxing by the pool after our weekly vegetarian lunch. Surely initiated the idea. She knows a thing or two about consumption habits.

"You know what we need to do is expand. I suggest we create a line of bags, belts, shoes, purses and accessories made of human skin."

Aghast, a strong-willed female member of the dwindling population has a degree in marketing.

"I agree," she said. "Considering the passion carnivores crave for designer wear so they can make a fashion statement, it's only logical to assume Italian, French and English skins will provide us the color, texture, suppleness, elasticity, diversity, durability and above all the QUALITY demanded and expected by millions of animals."

"Remember their eyes," said Esther.

"What about them?" sang the chorus.

"They make great buttons."

"Yes," replied Grace. "We should respect them and recycle everything."

Scales, with a background in finance and dodgy mergers spoke up.

"I've done a cost-benefit-analysis and it's doable. Human skin resources are cheap and plentiful. Sweatshop labor manufacturing and production facilities are already up and running. Our biggest hurdles are the ethical values of the end consumer. I mean, why would a Siberian tiger, whale, Malayan sun bear, elephant, cobra, eagle, or pileated gibbon be caught dead wearing anything made of human skin? It's beyond me."

"Everything is beyond you," countered Minksy a new member of our slumbering tribe. "It's all a matter of personal taste."

We took a vote. It was unanimous. "Hooray! Let the hunt begin!"

We celebrated with a round of drinks made with human blood. This is perfect timing, I thought, seeing all my friends in a new light. We'd create a new line of human skin products to be introduced worldwide before the holidays. It's a wonderful life.

Metta. 

By the numbers

Greetings,

The rich make money. The poor make babies.

Only two percent of Chinese women practice birth control. About the same here give or take a number depending on the fear and educational level of the woman. In Vietnam with a population of 85 million, 50% are under 30. That's a lot of babies.

You see them everywhere, driving taxis, motorbikes, buses, boats, trucks, planes, cooking along the road, selling fruits and vegetables in the market, building new super cities in the suburbs, hauling cement and bricks, fixing broken machines, waiting in empty shops, selling anything and everything possible with an infant on their hip, chopping down forests for kindling to make fires and hunting animals until they become extinct.

Babies become extinct? Yes, if they don't run fast enough.

Humans are the only animals that work. This is why monkeys are afraid to talk.

You have to work to make a baby and then, more sooner than later the baby has to work to take care of you. It's a business deal with severe heavy emotional guilt overtones. Marketing and branding. The "one child" policy does not apply here. You can have as many babies as you want, like grains of rice.

You can hear parents and grandparents whispering to their children, "Accelerate Production!"

The bitter fruit, this legacy of love. Love is a legacy and it's more about sheer practicality than emotional love. It's a pure and simple matter of numbers and pragmatic reality. Long term child investments with a human savings plan.

Metta.

 

Say hello to tomorrow.