Do plants have a soul?

I was just preparing all my stuff to move to Vegas when I was thinking about some VERY DRAMATIC THINGS I saw in the "Plants" episode of Life that Regina gave me (thanks Secret Santa!) Plants are pretty awesome. Especially the fact that there are carnivorous plants!

Now follow me if you will, to ponder what kinds of things have souls? Living things, riight? Well then if that's the case, then shouldn't plants have souls? Most of them live to worship the sun, spreading their CRAAAAZY prayer leaves out in every direction. Still others are evil, like Venus fly traps eating insects to absorb their souls. Maybe it would be acceptable to eat carnivorous plants, if only we could get them to be delicious and fruit bearing. I mean, why not experiment a little more with the tree of life? Plants are just our distant cousins!



well what i'm proposing is further evil science with this plants section to produce





What if a soul is just that mysterious additional quantity that appears when the whole becomes more than the sum of its parts? We're all made up of tiny cells, that appear to have a will all their own, to reproduce and thrive, yet when they come together they serve an entirely different purpose all together. Maybe that's what our soul is, our will to live.

Negative emotions

I had them.

NOW THAT I'M DONE! (almost)

I turned in my research paper to my prof yesterday over the internet. He emailed me back like "i'll take a look at it, but is this what you're turning in for the research class?" and i'm like... uh... ya? and then he said "OK, this should be fine!"

So I'm like WOW! I have never felt so great about an OK before, but if he says its fine, then I don't have to worry about it anymore! So i'm just procrastinating about reading for psychology, and I've decided I should come up with some goals over the next 8 months to accomplish. So here are some kind of... low tier goals that I can accomplish... maybe

1. Tutor 300 hours
2. Get 50 customers a night in my restaurant on Friday and Saturday
3. learn how to play this:

Perfect for a warm summer night by the pool rite?
4. Build a computer storage box that doubles as a table for the restaurant
5. Buy a 2nd tv, and then remount two tv's on the left side of the restaurant. Run wiring through the ceiling
6. Design a night menu that goes on all the tables (laminated, 14"x11")
7. Put cong yo bing on the night menu (so as not to compete with Emperor's Garden upstairs)
(OKAY THIS IS TURNING INTO A TASK LIST... I cannot separate goals from tasks...)
8. Secure a low-volume water pump and a DC motor
9. Mount a potentiometer with a torsional spring to serve as a throttle for the motor
10. Make motorized bicycle
11. RECOUP INVESTMENT LOSSES! ($1500!)

Thanksgiving reminds me of.... how much I hate flying

I was thinking about all this shit I'm going to have to go through at the airport and it's so unsettling! Why do we have to go through so much security? It started out with taking laptops out of your bag, no liquids or gels, no lighters or pocket knives... All to stop something that has only ever happened once from happening again. Now I can understand that after 9/11/2001, we were worried that someone would PLAN on doing that again. Here we are, though, 9 years later, and we shouldn't be worried about that anymore! Enough is enough!

The reality of the situation is that there are people out there who want to hijack our planes. But there are people out there hijacking our boats everyday and we don't do shit about that. It would be of like... minimal extra cost to put a few soldiers on every boat that crosses past Somalia - I mean we would save millions in ransom dollars and lost time from NOT BEING HELD HOSTAGE. But we don't do that...

Instead the U.S.A. pulls this 1984 shit on us and takes away our possessions, conditions us to submit to random searches, and wastes who knows how much money on full body x-ray scanners and stuff. All the while EVERY SINGLE SMOKER who goes on an airplane has to buy a new lighter in their next stop. Or buy new toothpaste. Or contact lens solution! (Yes I know they sell travel sized, BUT FUCK THAT)

It's been 9 years... The politicians who were making decisions back in the day took our freedom away to protect us, but made zero progress on relieving anti-western sentiments. The TSA should know damn well that patting down my balls isn't going to stop radicals from bombing us. I want my freedom back!

Rio de Janiero's police use soft power for dealing with slums

The article I'm talking from NYTimes


It's really touching to see authority figures behaving in this way. Really, that relationship must work both ways, with the peace officers developing a strong connection with the communities they work in. You can't walk around 12 hours a day in an area and play with children as part of your job and not develop a bond with those people. It's just not human nature! You can even tell how committed those officers were from how they spoke and So this is all really awesome.

And it was really interesting to note how the police felt they have to live side-by-side with their communities. This is exactly the same kind of approach that counter insurgency uses - our strat for the middle east. It seems to work so much better here because they speak the same language and are understanding of each other's histories and cultures.

Relationships

I was thinking about this as I walked home today from class. I only had one so far, from 9-10, my mechatronics class. He keeps saying the same things over and over (maybe he's not expecting many people to come to class) but he does take the opportunity to lecture in very fancy suits.

After class, I thought i recognized one of my group mates and called to him, but it turned out not to be him, so I felt hella dumbbbb... but then I scheduled a meeting for later in the day. I'm glad I'm starting to have stuff to do. I was getting kinda bored before, doing stats hw sets and stuff.

But then after that, I was walking home and I thought about how people change. Don't we all change? I think I've changed a lot since 4 years back. And how do we change? By learning things: all sorts of things! Like how to cook meals - the knowledge of which might cause you to stay home and cook more. Maybe learning judo would make you more active than you used to be. Or even being in a long relationship... it teaches you how to love someone because how you spend time together is not all okay. It's not about the general things a couple does with each other - it's about the specific things that make the relationship special and fun. I don't know about anyone else, but I think it takes a long time to learn how to take it all in - the partner has to communicate all the time. Sometimes the communication goes wrong, and the relationship goes bumpy... but once you've learned how to love her...

Putting all that aside! What I'm saying is that it changes you! All the time spent to get just a little better at relationships creates a lot of bad memories. In the end, I can't imagine meeting anyone new knowing all I know now without thanking Carolyn first.

something I wrote to my dad, but doubles as an update

Update:
This prototype is pretty different from the one back in berkeley because I couldn't find the proper materials. I had to redesign many of the parts as I went along, and now many of the components are made of plastic and pressed together, rather than have anything secured with screws. We're just now starting to put the designs in peoples homes. I've been going out with my teammates and talking to people in the slums, trying to recruit 20 households into our study. So far we've gotten 17, but there's quite a bit of work explaining to people what the designs do and why they should be used. For the most part, people have been accepting. Only once have we been turned away because of feeling insulted. I think the Indian people pride themselves on living very simply/traditionally, and to say that some of their practices make them sick, then might come off as offensive. We held some focus groups, inviting many community members into one person's house, or talked to them in the street, and explained what we were trying to do. Those people that we talked to for a long time, and in a large group, were very easy to recruit into the study because we had a long conversation. Now we've run out of familiar people, so it's difficult to find more households.

The cows do really just walk around in small packs. Seldom do you see cows alone, but when they're together, I don't know what relation they are to each other. A cow came up to me as I was sitting down the other day, and I pet its nose and head, and it was very nice to me. It nudged me on the leg and then walked off. There are so many cows, too, and water buffalo. Their horns seem very scary, but they are peaceful animals. People feed them in the morning, but then they turn it away if it tries to come indoors. So it's good that the cow does not go into their home. People in the slums that I have visited, called Maruti Nagar, or (the name of one god) (place), have only two or three spaces in their home. Either a room and a kitchen, or a room, a hallway, and a kitchen. people sleep either in one large bed, which I believe is for the whole family, or on the floor on mats that can be rolled up. I'm started to see a whole different side of India that I didn't get to see when i was busy in the workshop. But I feel lucky that I've had that kind of experience, and I bet it's like working in a factory. It'll help me out if I apply to manufacturing positions.

George Washington was one smart guy

Taken from Foreign Policy:

This year [for July 4th], I recommend you spend a few minutes reading George Washington's Farewell Address, originally published in September 1796. Read the whole thing. Our first president has many wise things to tell us today, but none is more telling than his trenchant advice on the conduct of foreign policy:

Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it -- It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that, in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it?. . .

In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment [towards Iraq], sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject [Our legislators getting swept up in the false WMD reports]; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim.

So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another [Israel] produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation [Sharing "common" values], facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter [Iraq] without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges [Military and Nuclear Technology] denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained [Without which Israel would never have been able to invade so many countries and harm so many civilians], and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld [Iran]. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation) [The Israel Lobby; AIPAC], facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country [A Decade of War in the Middle East], without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.

As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils. Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.

Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests."

----
It makes perfect sense, and George Washington is a wise man.

What I've been up to.. but more importantly, what EVERYONE ELSE has been up to!

Hmm... What have I been doing? Well - living in India for one. That's the same ol'... I've also been making the same project over and over, mainly because I'm in the phase where I have to make 8 of the same thing over and over. And I have been seriously just flying through these things! I'm almost done with the entire pump device, with only 1 little element missing.. (plus I have to cut all the pieces of metal to length so that they custom fit the households that they'll be placed into, but I'll do that later, it's not a hard task)

Inner valves and bottom caps (which are also valves, mind you!)





Caps!




Faucets!

But that's enough about me. Do ya'll know what everyone else has been up to? Apparently the world has been falling apart since I've been in this part of the world. Maoist rebels/Communist Party Members (What's going on here? are the legitimate or what?) are gaining steam in India, becoming more and more violent. It wasn't too long ago that they ambushed a bunch of security officials, but now they are playing a game of spy vs spy, killing informants for the police and trying to collect intel on the locations of high-ranking security officials so they can assassinate them. That's India...

Pakistan is failing to uproot the Taliban from their mountainous regions, and the Taliban knows all too well how to simply avoid their would-be hunters. Their newest trick is to hide in densely populated areas where CIA drones wouldn't dare to drop bombs aimlessly (yet it doesn't seem to stop them from blowing up civilians houses in other regions)

And finally Afghanistan, where all the shit is blowing up. Not too long ago, an issue of Rolling Stone Magazine came out with a long article detailing the character of General Stanley McChrystal, our ex-commander in Afghanistan. He was one of the drafters of counter-insurgency strategy: "use the green berets as a kind of armed peace corp" or something like that, where troops live with the occupied populace and try to build up their government and infrastructure. But it isn't working; the military has a strict hierarchal order but civilians do not, and our diplomats in Afghanistan are all competing and vying for conflicting interests. I'm sure there's more than a few of those diplomats are career bullshitters too, just trying to stay in their job much like our domestic politicians. But apparently in the article in Rolling Stone, McChrystal was caught bad mouthing those diplomats for being annoying, and Obama sacked him. Now he's been replaced by his mentor Gen. Petraeus, and the notion of changing leadership mid-game is a little bit frightening.

And now let's go over to the Lebanon, a region that Israel had invaded in the not so distant past (maybe 40 years ago?) Hezbollah, the militant group that is fighting Israel right now, built an awesome theme park to indoctrinate young people into the struggle against the Israeli Oppressors. I don't think we can expect peace to come very soon if people already put their money down on a THEME PARK! haha

Well that's the news in brief. Dinner time now! Latahs

Whew sorry for neglect!

Or am I just saving my words? Haha I think the way I talk now is very strange, and comes out in very poor grammar patterns. I guess my brain is switching to a Chinese way of talking? My inner voice is turning from English to Mandarin, interestingly enough! But wouldn't the title in Chinese be "dui bu qi wang le ni" - ? Maybe that's no good in Chinese either, but whateva! Maybe I'm a poet because it rhymes ya?

Well anyway, I have been busy! Trying to get SOMETHING done (like finish a bunch of prototypes) But I have only succeeded in getting a couple of prototypes done (built entirely in India from Indian materials!) All that's left really is to weld the faucet portion onto the body, and it's GOOD TO GO! (What I call 80% done, lol) There's still the matter of fixing it onto a storage container lid, but hopefully that'll just... come to me later haha~!

But that reminds me, I really should be documenting what I'm doing. I guess it eluded me because I was so involved in just getting the first two prototypes made completely in India. There were quite! a few things that had to be changed since coming here due to the lack of certain tools - working in another country is definitely something I have had to overcome. But I think in the end, this entire thing could be made with a lathe and a hacksaw... and a file.. and a mill.. and a welding torch.. well anyway! It could be easy to make someday in the future, and I really hope someday it can be made by just any old entrepreneur, and not by some mega corp trying to rip off the proletariat.

Okay! Just too a break to draw a little sketch of a crazy ice ram idea to make the hole without a mill... but it'd have to be CRAZY to work! But yeah please those of you who read my blog remind me to post pictures if none come soon... I'm finally starting the point in my project where I make a bunch at once! 8 to be exact! Yeah... I know I already have two done (the ones I brought with me from the states) but those seem ugly in comparison to these new ones! They're all stainless steel (no more copper faucet) and have all white handles and caps!

But in other news, I have been eating street food! And I think I'm finally getting a bearing of what to eat for breakfast and lunch. Dinner is still kind of peculiar, but I realized the trick to eating late is to eat an assload of streetfood beforehand! Haha so I have been getting this pakora sandwich (which Sandeep told me the kannada word for, but I have since forgot) and an ear of corn salted with a lime for two days now! They are delicious!

I'll take a picture of that later, too!

Well I better get back to work because I don't really use my computer that often. It ends up that I have a stack of emails that I have to look at. Very unsettling!

See ya!

Making Progress!

CHICKEN HUT!


So on Monday we had a general meeting for planning purposes and I was just generally confused about our goals for the summer. Haha I guess I had thought of those long time ago for the class I took and ended up forgetting all about them right when I got here. (Heh culture shock made me forget about a lot of things) Coonie told me to eat lots of Indians, but that made me realize that I haven't really been talking about the food! I'm more of a eat-the-same-thing-everyday kind person (as those of you who knew me in my Thai-noodle-4x-a-week phase might already know) so in the morning I eat Puri (which is like fried puffy bread with two kinds of sauces. One I believe is known as chutney which is kind of sweet and yogurty, while the other is this orangish-brown that is spicy and filled with peas and carrots. So what you do is tear up the puri and dip it in the sauces. For cold drinks, I have slice, which is an Indian mango drink that is really freakin awesome... except after having it every day I'm kind of getting sick of it. For lunch I generally have a Tali plate (or Dali?) Basically it means some Roti Breads and a huge variety of sauces. Heh, I kind of think Indian food is kind of like Mexican food... lots of the same things prepared in very different ways.

But anyway, I found a machine shop! Right here on campus, and the machine shop superviser said all we had to do was write a letter of permission to get access to the shop. Then he told us where to go in the city to buy all the materials we need to get started! So hopefully today I'll go get the materials and tomorrow we'll fire up the machines! I'm excited

The weekend!

Relaxation and settling in, mainly, for this weekend. I washed my clothes next to the street yesterday and a bajillion kids came up to me and tried to tell me things in Kannada. I tried to communicate that I didn't understand... but I guess that's obvious anyway lol. Then when we went out for dinner, I got lost and asked for directions. And the guy I asked wanted to know if I was looking for Chinese food... haha.

But did you hear in the news? Israel attacked a flotilla of aid ships trying to break through the blockade on Gaza. This obviously pissed off a lot of people, and I found these articles:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/weekinreview/06cooper.html
http://csis.org/publication/israel-strategic-liability

About the changing relationship between the U.S. and Israel... Sound a little familiar? =P

Hubli Day 2 - Settling I

First, some pics I had left out from Mumbai! The city skyline from the water side and a big building somewhere in the middle of the city.

I woke up yesterday at 8am hoping to be ready by nine. I had woken up much earlier, like around 5 am because a bug bite on my foot had been bothering me. (I think the only reason i had a bug bite on my foot was because it was hanging off the bed) I'm so glad that my aunt bought me so much stuff because I searched for the anti-itch cream she had given me and it worked like magic. I took my bucket bath from the questionable bucket that had been left in my bathroom ( a squatting toilet and a faucet with no sink or mirror) but found myself with more time. I used the toilet, which made me rather proud of myself because it was my first time using that kind of toilet. But that ended up making me late for the 9 oclock meetup time.

The whole group then went to this small restaurant, which I think is called a canteen, and had a small breakfast with some chai. The canteen was right across from the BVB campus and we walked out there for the first time to meet with Dev in the HMS office. It's a nice room shared by a couple of different NGO's ( one woman worked on a project known as "safe hands" which trains women to be security guards and housekeepers as a form of employment. Come to think of it, I'm not sure what the unemployment rate is among women in India. I'm sure they're doing good work though because the security guards at the Deshpande Foundation were from their organization.) After the meeting with Dev, we met for a short planning meeting and acquainted ourselves with the only room in the city that we know of that has wifi.


Right across the street from the school, the whole gang got passport photos and cellphones (my number is +91 973 816 9761) and had a late lunch around 4. Then it was back to the Deshpande Center to meet with one of the fellows and give him our welcoming present: Ghirardelli Chocolates! Zach then left to pick up one more Berkeley student who will be staying with us (a girl named Anu) while I discovered that there are western style toilets at the Deshpande Center =]


Doug, Jasmine and I searched around for necessities and found many small shops. I had some really good cold apple drink and then we went out to dinner at around 8pm. But dinner lasted until 10 and we had to rush back to get home before the hostels locked up for the night. I realized I had fotgotten my wallet at the restaurant and jumped off the rickshaw I was on and ran back to grab it. Then I found another rickshaw and asked the driver to take me to some hotel. He dropped me off there and I was like wtf? But I was supposed to tell him to take me BEHIND the hotel, so I got directions from zach and ran home. Barely made it alive because I had just had dinner, but now I'm safe and sound at home. Love home... Miss Carolyn!

Hubli!

Hi all! I've been in Hubli for a day now, but I wrote this journal entry last night. I'm finally getting internet access at the Deshpande Foundation, one of our awesome sponsors which has a building on the college campus across the street from where I live.

After boarding the bus at around 9:45 (there was some packing difficulty which was resolved by just piling things into the seating area of the bus) I shared a double sleeper bed with Sean for the 9 hour bus ride. I had originally been told the ride takes 5 hours, but it really ended up taking 12 hours. Sad thing is the night before I had been fighting diarrhea, and didn't eat anything for lunch or dinner that day. I woke up not feeling too hungry, but once I had finished lugging my luggage all th way up to the top floor of our hostel, it hit me! Our local man on the ground, Devadanam Talapati, helped us check in and deal with the room arrangements. We ended up with two rooms with five cots for six people. The room we were supposed to get has a giant bees nest right outside the window! The landlord said it would be gone by Sunday (which I'm kinda sad about because bees are disappearing and getting rid of the nest only makes matters worse) but in the meantime, he let us stay in an extra room where the tenant had just moved out. So here I am all alone on the floor below everyone else in the deserted room. The kid left behind a lot of things; a lot of school notes as well as his bedding and sheets (along with soap, underwear and some socks... he must have left in a hurry).

The school notes show he was a mechanical engineering student at a nearby college (BVB, where I'm at right now) and I found a note for his parents mixed in with his papers. Apparently, in order to take his finals for his classes, he had to have at least a 75% attendance rate, but the paper showed he had gotten below that for some classes. Maybe that's why he left. But it was sheer coincidence that his papers also showed descriptions of lathes, mills, and other machinery. That means that there's a good chance that the mechanical engineering department has the machines I'm looking for. That's doubly good too because one of our sponsors, the Deshpande Foundation, has their office on that very campus! (Lol i wrote this last night)

But back to the timeline of the days, after settling in we walked over and checked out Jasmine's girls hostel, which is much nicer and cleaner, and paid for her room there. Then we went to eat lunch at piccolo's, where we waited an hour for our food! That was terrible, and the food was just ok and really overpriced. The whole gang of 7+1 then went over to koppikar road and shopped for mattress pads, towels and sheets, and some cleaning supplies. I cleaned my bathroom, tried out the messhall at the bottom of our hostel (which was 35 Rs for all you can eat of one dish (~75 cents))

Today I'm going to get a data card so that I can access the internet using a USB drive from anywhere! Which will be AWESOMEEE.

Well ttyl's all. Cya!

No WIFI!

Ah... blogging without wifi is such a hassle. I can't upload pictures, I can't write at a nice pace; because i'm renting a computer from a pc cafe right now and I can't upload my pictures to some straaaangers PC! But I can tell ya'll what I've been doing!

So I got off the plane at around 1:30AM Bombay time. First thing I did was wait for my bags, but as I was walking out, I saw a currency exchange and I was like... good idea! Except there was this group of French tourists in front of me who took FOREVER! I mean, if they're all one big family, couldn't they exchange money together? Time consuming old people, no wonder French tourists are rated the rudest in the world, lol. Well then I got out, and it was HOT! I was wearing 3 layers + a jacket and jeans and shoes, and right when I got out, I was drenched with sweat. My friends met with me right at the front of the airport, and we all took a taxi to our place of residence, which was really just down the street in Andheri East.

Where I'm staying right now is this really nice 3 bedroom apartment on the 3rd floor of a building in this housing society. The people on the 1st floor are really nice, and the girl who lives there, Pageshre, came out and introduced herself to us. Apparently, HMS stayed in the exact same house last year, so they got to know her really well. The apartment has three rooms with AC and it is GODSEND! Lol I swear the difference between an airconditioned room and one that's not is like 30 degrees and a bucket of water. (The bucket of water being in the air) But I slept that night

The next morning, I went out for some Indian breakfast/lunch and got myself a Masala Dosa, something I had before in the states! It was fantastic, and the sauces they give are good too. I struggled for a while trying to eat with just one hand (in India, they eat only with their right hand, and they eat WITH their hand) so I was all clumsily trying to tear the bread with one hand. Heh it took me about twice as long to eat, but that's no problem. Mangos are ReaALLy good here, and everywhere you can buy this awesome drink called Slice... or basically Mango nectar. It tastes JUST like mangos and I can't get enough of it. It's also a cold drink, so it really hits the spot.

After that... a friend joined us after his plane landed, and we went out to explore. We went to a bagel shop (lol ridiculous right? eating western food before even getting sick of Indian food) and they had free wifi there. But finding Wifi is actually pretty tough. Then we walked around, sat by the ocean side, had some beers, and then ate at a pizza place. While we were sitting by the ocean side, there was this charismatic young guy who was acting out scenes from lots of bollywood movies. Then at the end, he totally approached us and just demanded money! I was like... I don't see a collection cup.

So that was kind of a spoiler, but afterwards we went to the pizza place across the street because it was the only thing open at that hour (11pm) The pizza was good, and we got two Local Specials, Bombay Masala and Indian Smoke. Both were really good and hiddenly spicy! I guess they worked the spices in with magic.

Aftewards, we took a train back home, and I fell asleep around 2. I woke up today around 10 and went out to eat indian breakfast. I ordered a tomato omelette, but it wasn't made of eggs, it was a pancake! I'm kinda confused as to why eggs arent vegetarian (oh yeah, btw, everyone here is vegetarian) but dairy is. But whatevaaa. Eggs are good but overrated, and the pancake was good anyway.

So now it's about 6pm, and the time difference between here and the states is terrible! I don't think I'll ever be awake at the same times as you guys, so that makes webcamming pretty hard. But I did buy a logitech webcame today for about $20, and it works great with my laptop. So expect to see me on skype sometime once I figure out where the best spots for wifi are, and after I get to my permanent city.

Tomorrow night, I'll be sitting on an overnight bus from Mumbai to Hubli, so I'll hopefully just wake up where I need to be =D No time lost, and no boring bus ride. Well cya all later, and hopefully I'll be able to post up some pictures soon!

Hong Kong Airport

Hi everybody! I've landed in Hong Kong after 14 hours of travel at around 7PM Local time. (But the pic is from LAX airport before I left, at around 1pm) Having a watch is awesome, but I struggled for a little while trying to figure out whether I should turn it forward by a couple hours... turn it forward by a couple hours plus twelve, or just to go backward a couple hours and then change the date... but that must have only been because I napped an astounding 8 hours on the plane! All thanks to that fantastic special cookie John baked me.

And boy am I glad I had it. The whole plane was filled with Indian and Chinese infants and toddlers, screaming up the whole plane. The crazy Cathay Pacific seats didn't help either - reclining just slides your whole butt down, rather than actually letting you recline backward. I also didn't find out until the end that the headrests could be curled around your head, keeping your neck from rolling around like a zombie and landing in your neighbors lap!

As for in flight entertainment, I watched some pretty serious shit (Harry Brown) followed by the more lighthearted but EQUALLY SERIOUS Fantastic Mr Fox. The lady sitting next to me told me she was going to Bangalore. Lucky her; her son is getting married in a couple of weeks and she's going to prepare the wedding. But we only started talking at the VERY END of the flight, after I watched her be dramatic over having a headache and not being served a vegetarian meal. They said they'd hook her up with a vegetarian meal on her connecting flight, so I hope everything worked out for her.

Well I landed safely, hungry and tired. I brushed my teeth in the bathroom, before realizing the water would KEEELLL MEEE! but I rinsed my mouth with U.S. water when I was done so hopefully I saved my intestines from some damage. I kinda wandered for a bit; used my unspectacular Chinese skills to ask "where is" (chinese) "gate" (english) "23" (Chinglish) and eventually found my way. I struggled with an ATM machine, unsure if I was going to withdraw $200 USD into HKD or if the ATM was going to give me $200 HKD, so it wasn't so bad. I'm glad I did it, too, because it let me eat THIS!


#16, Singaporean style fried noodle, with bbq pork, ham, and shrimp. Pretty awesomely delicious, with curry flavor, bell peppers and onions, and lots of meat. Some of the best fried noodles I've ever had, sadly.

And here's some pics of the fantastic HK Airport. I saw a girl with a shirt that said "Nevada | 83 | Lucky" and I was like, waaah? Nevada?! How random.

=( I could use a shower. But not one that I'd have to pay for! Eff that! Sounds like raunchy things happen in a "pay-in shower lounge"



And check this fasmatasmic construction! That roof is hiiiiigh. And arched.

And finally, use the power of black hole to suck in light! Problem is... you'll never get your light back. You'll never get your arm back either... AHH don't reach in!

My flight to Mumbai is in another 50 minutes! Wish me luck!

Go Hillary!

Yeaaa! We just got sanctions on a nuclear Iran; now lets work on no nuclear weapons for Israel - then the whole world would be a better place

More Stakeholders

Kind of related to outreach

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/world/asia/18india.html?hp

"India’s Maoists have existed for decades and claim to represent the interests of the country’s rural dispossessed, including the tribal groups who rank among the poorest in the nation. But what was once a low-boil insurgency has steadily become more violent, with Maoists controlling several regions of rural India while maintaining a presence in rural areas of more than 20 states."

The Maoists are much stakeholders as other NGO's are, since both NGO's and political parties/revolutionary groups claim to represent the rural dispossessed. And in that way they are our competition. We have to compete for hearts and minds with them, getting those we are working with to believe that our way of peace is better than their way of war, maybe?

Goldman Sachs and their economic downturn

So I was watching C-span for 6 hours yesterday and I figured I'd summarize wtf is going on in the investment banking world for you. That'll save you the agony of watching c-span, though some of our nation's senators are pretty feisty! So here's the dilly-o as I understand it...

Apparently Goldman Sachs sold tons of product. The product was an assembly of lots of individual components (a portfolio), but all those components were pretty much at the same level of crappiness that had a huge risk of failure (Like loans that people take out on "stated income" not "proven income"). But they made it look good by adding in a few golden eggs, which ups the average of the whole portfolio. Lay people didn't get to see what's inside but saw the average/rating thinking it was o.k.; insiders that knew couldn't get a straight answer from Goldman Sachs as to why they were selling it! But they continued to sell it.. and they continued to give the impression that the products (CDOs) were an investment that would grow, not fail. All the while, they never told anyone that they were putting money on the products FAILING (short selling) and continued to aggressively sell it to investment firms even after they had sealed their position on it. And then when everything failed, they cashed in (because they had done such a good job of exposing everyone to the risk) and laughed all the way to the bank... errr banks closed down. Maybe they just laughed in their office.

So where did they get their product from? Well no one just willy nilly creates portfolios. A company like ACA compiles a list of components that gets put into the product which middlemen like Goldman Sachs can sell to their clients (which are investors who want to buy products that will make them money) One of the products they sold was known as Abacus, and it was the idea of one of Goldman Sachs' former employees, John Paulson who runs his own investment company now. He sat in on several meetings between ACA and Goldman Sachs when they were crafting the portfolio and supplied a list of at most (but over half) 55 of the 90 components in that portfolio. (see reference at bottom) Then Paulson organized through Goldman Sachs an arrangement to short sell that product... as in plan to make money when the product loses value. So THIS is the motive for why Goldman would want to sell so much of the bad product... to benefit one client over another.

But this didn't just happen once with one product. It happened again... and again.. with so many different product names and portfolios, but they all had one common thread. They were all solely dependent on risky loans that should never have been given out in the first place. So why were the loans made? It's because CDO's like these takes the risk off the bank and shifts it to the people who buy the CDOs. The banks were happy to make loans because the money keeps pouring in from one end to give to the other. But when the money never appeared to send the money the other way (people didn't pay their loans/mortgages), that's when all the products lost value, the banks crashed because there was no money, and EVERYBODY that was betting for the CDOs to increase in value lost their money.

I think the real damning evidence in the case would come from whether or not we can prove this:
Did Goldman's aggressive sales of the poor product drive riskier and riskier behavior from the banks, causing the whole system to feedback on itself and explode? It's interesting to think of this in Mechanical terms.

Hope you enjoyed,
Alvin



http://www.businessinsider.com/aca-didnt-exactly-select-most-of-those-mortgage-bonds-paulson-did-2010-4

Israel... Secular State or Religious Entity?

The government of Israel is a democratically elected, secular body. Shouldn't we as Americans be able to criticize the actions of said government without even bringing up the notion of antisemitism. Of course, if Israel is a religious body like the Vatican, then is the formation of their state really legitimate? If that's the case, then Israel should definitely not be allowed to have a modern military just like the Pope does not have a full-scale army within the Vatican. If Israel is a religious body, then no, we can't criticize them without risk of antisemitism. But if Israel is ruled by a democratically elected, secular government, then we can say WHATEVER THE FUCK WE WANT!

ISRAEL BETTER STOP SETTLING ON PALESTINIAN LANDS SO WE CAN END THIS MIDDLE-EAST CONFLICT AND GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE!

Tax and Regulate 2010

It's really going to happen... Marijuana is going to be legalized this year. Do you know what that means?! That means no one will lose their job for failing a drug test (which can happen from trying marijuana once, months before the test) People won't have to buy marijuana from drug dealers who also sell more dangerous substances, possibly have connections to Mexican drug cartels, and from whom there are zero consumer protections. Doctors and the general public will have access to more research on marijuana, and there will be an even larger variety of marijuana plants available. Also, more and more textiles will be made from hemp, which I am fairly certain is every bit as efficient a plant in making textiles as cotton with a fraction of the care. (Not to mention that they're supposedly more durable - I saw Albert and Gio's hemp messenger bags. Stylin')

What does this mean for me? I won't be a criminal anymore. I can tell my parents about what I do, and why I like doing it. I can share with them how it's helped calm my life down from the frantic pace of college life (I pulled two all-nighters in a row just last night, and I only had a 4 hour nap just now.) so I can chill out and take a break. I'm not like those other people who can just sit and watch TV and put work on the back burner. Maybe I can do that for a little while, but then it just starts to nag, and knowing you have work to do makes any short period of downtime very difficult to enjoy. Marijuana changes that. It lets you focus on what you're doing, setting aside the other parts of your life that don't matter at the moment.

And what does this mean for you? You could get a job! You like baking? you could grow plants, bake cookies, sell them! They're not regular cookies, people will buy them for a much higher price, and it's freaking wholesomely delicious! You bake, I buy, then we baked. how about that? Haha some freakonomics we're up to, huh?

Census 2010 and LBJ is my hero

The Census is so important! I don't know why cable news is portraying it as a possible threat, but it's clear that recording demographics is an essential part of governing! How else would the government decide the distribution of tax revenue needed to build infrastructure? How would you like it if you lived in a major suburb, but no one knew to build any sort of mass transit to your location? Worse yet, people could be PROFITING from your plight? (THE OIL COMPANIES) The fact that you're forced to operate a car, wait in traffic, all the while burning more and more gasoline?

An ideal government should act for the right reasons, in expanding the opportunities of its citizens, and preventing abuse between its groups. Our government needs this information to provide you with more opportunities. Whether extending and upgrading the Bart train to save you money on commuting to work, or building that awesome high speed rail that could get me back down to socal much more conveniently and cheaply!

Um... Shouldn't economists be reevaluating? And who the hell is driving this car?!

I don't think the economic concept of working entirely on credit has been around for a long time. Since economics depends so much on assumptions of how people behave, and with human beings being somewhat variable, could there not be a problem with our current theory of economics. Why isn't it possible that a controlled economy is an advantageous economy in ways other than the bottom line? We should not let the market be the judge of who we are, as so many capitalists propose: "Let the market decide" as they say. But rather we should have a vision of the future in mind and build toward that future.

[METAPHOR] Liken our journey as a civilization through time as embarking on an epic road trip from point a to point b. The success of our car is rated by how far we've gone, and we're trying to beat other civilizations in other cars to the finish line. The size of our road is like the economy! For a big road, like a freeway, the car is moving fast, and we're succeeding! We need a large and growing economy so we can speed faster and faster to the succeeding. Those are the good times. But sometimes freeways turn to highways... and highways into boulevards, avenues, then sometimes just a dusty dirt road on the outskirts of nowhere... then you're stuck. That's the crash. But when you drive do you just let the road determine where you're going? No! You don't let the road tell you what to do! You exit! You transfer! That's called the transition! If you're in charge of this country, like you need to drive this car somewhere, not just let the road take us where it goes. [/METAPHOR]

Americans should no longer elect people who champion doing nothing.