Senator Everett Dirksen, the highly regarded former Republican senator from Illinois, is supposed to have said during a speech arguing for restraints in spending: “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money”. If Dirksen were alive today he would say the same thing but it would no longer be talk of billions as much as trillions.
We have a budget that is out of control – just about everyone agrees on this – but that is where the agreement ceases. How to fix the problem is one that neither party can find common ground.
Yesterday, I heard former Senator Alan Simpson – a Republican from Wyoming – say that part of the problem is that the average American cannot fathom what a billion dollars is and even more so what a trillion dollars is. As a result there is not the outrage there should be about the uncontrolled expenditure on the part of the federal government. Sure they may know that there are a lot of zeros in that number and it is a lot of money but it is difficult to conceptualize what it really amounts to in terms that the average person can understand. I have a background in finance and despite this, it is just a number to me – albeit a very large number.
Simpson offered an explanation that just blew my mind as to what a gargantuan number a trillion dollars works out to be: he said that if one spent a million dollars very single day from the birth of Christ to the present day, one would still not be able to spend a trillion dollars! In fact, one would have to spend $1.365 million a day from the birth of Christ to today to spend a trillion dollars! Now this is something the average American can sink his/her teeth into!
We are running a fiscal deficit of $1.5 trillion this year and will be running deficits of over a trillion dollars each year for the foreseeable future!
How did we ever come to this situation?
Winston Churchill said: “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried”. But Churchill also offered a less than ringing endorsement of democracy when he said: “The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter”.
The second quotation came to mind during the recent budget impasse when it appeared that the federal government was likely to shut down. It was truly extraordinary to see some of the arguments being advanced by prominent Republicans and their supporters as to why we have the budget deficits that we do and what should be done to balance the budget.
Start with the widespread belief among average Republicans that Democrats are responsible for the huge deficits that have been run up over the past three decades. The fact is that the national debt when Jimmy Carter left office at the end of 1980, amounted to $930 billion – in other words from 1776 until 1980, a period of over 200 years, the total debt accumulated by various administrations was just over $900 billion!This link shows what transpired thereafter under various administrations:
In 1988 when Reagan left office, the national debt had grown to almost $2.7 trillion – Reagan had effectively tripled the national debt in a span of 8 years from what it had been the prior 200 years!
In 1992, when George HW Bush left office, the national debt was about $4.2 trillion – an increase of $1.5 trillion during his one term
In 2000 when Bill Clinton left office, the national debt was approximately $5.7 trillion – an increase of $1.5 trillion during two terms in office – he ended his last year in office with an actual SURPLUS for that year, reducing the national debt by over $100 billion compared to the prior year.
In 2008 when George W Bush ended his presidency, the national debt was $10.7 trillion – an increase of $5 trillion over 8 years and to make matters worse, he left office with the country in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and a budget for his successor that was going to result in a deficit in a single year of $1.6 trillion, including the bail out of the banks.
(in trillions of dollars)
So there is something more than a little awry – in fact, it is almost as if one is living in the twilight zone when Republicans claim that the Democrats are the party of fiscal irresponsiblity! It was under Republican presidents, who held office for twenty of the thirty years after the Carter administration, that the national debt increased by $10 trillion – a TEN FOLD increase – compared to what they inherited from Carter!
There is a fascinating trend developing in the US – still in its infancy – but one that could see rapid growth. It has been labeled “concierge medicine” and is the result of a variety of factors: consumer demand, consumer frustration, financial incentives for physicians, the impact of managed care, reduced reimbursement and the shortage of good primary care physicians.
Basically, the way it works is for patients interested in such an arrangement to pay their physician a retainer of say $1500 annually – in return for which, they get priority in being able to see their doctor usually the same day, ready phone access to the doctor directly and presumably more time with the doctor when one goes to see him/her. From the physician’s standpoint, there is the assurance of a guaranteed stream of income that would otherwise not be there. For example, a physician who has 500 patients enrolled in such an arrangement would be assured of $750,000 in annual revenue – and in return the physician offers ready and prompt access as well as a more personal level of attention to the patient.
There are variations in the business model when it comes to concierge medicine. According to Wikipedia:
“Concierge physicians care for fewer patients than in a conventional practice, ranging from 100 patients per doctor to 1,000, instead of the 3,000 to 4,000 that the average physician now sees every year. All generally claim to be accessible via cell phone or email at any time of day or night or offer some other “special” service above and beyond the “normal” care provided. The annual fees vary widely, from $600 to $5,000 per year for an individual, with the lower annual fees being in addition to the usual fees for each service and the higher annual fees including most services.
“Some concierge practices do not accept insurance of any kind. These are also referred to as cash-only or direct primary care practices. By refusing to deal with insurance companies, these practices can keep overhead and administrative costs low, thereby providing affordable health care to patients. They become “concierge” only if the practice assesses an annual or monthly fee instead of or in addition to a fee for each medical service. Other concierge practices do take insurance, even Medicare, but ask for an annual fee for additional services exclusive of those covered by insurance plans. This annual fee is not a substitute for medical insurance, and generally does not cover consultations outside the practice, laboratory procedures, medicines, hospitalizations or emergency care from other providers.”
I have mixed feelings about this trend. It appeals to my basic belief in allowing the free market to operate – and why should physicians not avail of this just as any other business does. It could also provide a much needed source of income to primary care physicians who are in short supply as more and more prospective doctors gravitate to specialties that compensate better than primary care. It also enables physicians to limit their practice to fewer patients and allows them to provide more comprehensive care than is possible under the present system that requires increased volume to derive sufficient income.
I have already posted about my affinity for dogs and how among my siblings, I am the one who is the most attached to them – a couple of my siblings react to dogs with emotions ranging from distaste to disapproval. My children have mixed feelings about them – one is quite fond of them and the other two are fond of them as long as they don’t have to take care of them!
The role of working dogs is well known: they have from time immemorial been used by humans in various capacities whether as seeing eye dogs, detecting explosives or drugs, pulling sleds, police work, search and rescue, hunting, herding, detection of cadavers, as guard dogs, for tracking and even in the detection of diseases.
Today while reading the news about the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the admirable way the Japanese are coping with the tragedy displaying a discipline and equanimity which would be hard to imagine in most other countries, I came across a news item about the undying loyalty of some dogs to their masters.
This particular news item pertained to an Akita by name of Hachiko. It was the catalyst for a little research relating to other true stories about dogs. We all hear anecdotes about the dog who alerted the family to a fire in the house while they were sleeping or who kept a child from harms way when confronted by a stranger or intruder. But there were a couple of true stories that were just amazing for their poignancy and illustrative of the loyalty one associates with dogs.
Hachiko was an Akita that lived in Japan. He was brought to Tokyo in 1924 by his owner, Hidesaburo Ueno who was an agriculture professor at the University of Tokyo. Uenao commuted to work every day by train and Hachiko would accompany his master each day back and forth from the train station. Every day, the young Akita would return to the station in the evening and wait patiently for his master’s return on the train platform.
On May 25, 1925, when Hachiko was eighteen months old, his master did not return. The dog waited like he did every day for the professor to arrive on the four o’clock train, not knowing that his master had suffered a stroke at work and died.
Soon after his master’s death, Hachiko was given to the professor’s relatives to be cared for, but the dog would constantly escape and return to his old home to wait for the professor. Eventually, Hachiko realized his master no longer lived there and returned to the train platform. As the legend goes, Hachiko would wait at that platform every day for Professor Ueno to return but his master never came back.
Other commuters who saw the relationship between master and dog were touched by the dog’s show of devotion and would feed Hachiko as he waited for his master. This continued for nine years with the dog appearing every night at four o’clock when the train was due.
Vicki Shigekuni Wong, a co-producer of a movie based on the story of Hachiko, has long been fascinated with Hachiko’s story. She said: “Something about this dog’s simple act of unwavering loyalty, of waiting, is so profoundly moving…People seem to identify with Hachiko. He symbolizes so many different things to different people. Hachiko represents innocence, fear, hope, joy, loss and loneliness.”
The exact spot where Hachiko waited in the train station is permanently marked with bronze paw-prints and text in Japanese explaining his loyalty.
Hachiko is memorialized in a bronze statue at Shibuya station. The location is a popular Tokyo meeting place, with the statue now symbolizing the commitment and love of people who meet there. The original statue was erected in April 1934, with Hachiko present, but it was melted down for use in World War II. The Society for Recreating the Hachiko Statue was formed, with sculptor Takeshi Ando, son of the original sculptor, commissioned to make a second statue, which was unveiled in 1948.
An identical statue of Hachiko is at the train station in Odate, Hachiko’s hometown and, in 2004, a statue of him was put in front of Odate’s Akita Dog Museum. Hachiko’s stuffed and mounted remains are at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo.
A footnote to the story of Hachiko that was resolved recently pertaining to the cause of death – a mystery that was solved because Hachiko was considered such a model of devotion that his organs were preserved when he died in 1935 which enabled modern science to determine the cause of death.
Just a quick follow-up to my last post “Dell laptop problem: “Plugged in battery not charging”:
The fix I posted ceased to work on my laptop. I contacted Dell since the laptop is still under warranty and a technician was sent on a service call to replace the motherboard and the A/C adapter. The technician started the laptop using the new adapter and the problem disappeard. When he attempted to use the old adapter, the problem returned which seemed to confirm that the issue was with the A/C adapter.
So it turned out to be a relatively simple fix and it was not necessary to replace the motherboard though he had brought one with him since Dell indicated it would probably need replacement.
The fix I outlined in my last post may still work for some people faced with this problem since many people have commented on the blog where I got the fix that it had solved resolved the issue for them. It just turns out that in my case the failure of the battery to charge when using the adapter was caused a defective adapter.
My posting today is a total departure from the usual subjects and issues on which I comment.
I have been beset with a problem on my laptop – a Dell Inspiron 1764 – which Google searches have shown to be a relatively common problem affecting laptops irrespective of the manufacturer – and therefore not confined to Dell. I use Windows 7 but the problem also affects other operating systems such as Vista and XP.
What happens is that when one tries to charge the battery a message appears that an incompatible adapter is being used and therefore the battery is not charging. However, power is being transmitted to the laptop and one can continue to use it but the battery will not charge.
The causes for this problem apparently vary: some say it could be a defective charger, others suggest that the battery is defective and quite a few people say that the problem is with the motherboard. Some claim that reverting the bios to an earlier version seems to solve the problem. Others suggest that it is a bug in the Windows operating system. Some people, whose laptop is out of warranty, have spent a lot of money trying different fixes.
I am using the charger that Dell supplied with the laptop so I know that it is not an incompatible charger. Tests have shown that my battery is fine. I doubt if it is the motherboard on my laptop since the fix I have outlined below takes care of the problem – at least for a while.
After endless googling, I came upon a solution almost by accident that someone said worked for them. I tried it out and, lo and behold, it took care of the problem – although from time to time when the problem recurs I end up having to repeat the process. I claim no credit for the fix – it was posted on this site. But it took me forever to find it so I thought that I would make it a blog entry in case someone does a google search and ends up on this blog.
Here are the steps to take – slightly more detailed than outlined on the above site:
Growing up in Mombasa, Kenya as a young boy I was occasionally teased by North Indian kids with the expression “Goa machi kathore” – these were kids usually with origins from Punjab and Gujarat. The term was meant to be derogatory and was a reference to the fact that Goans liked to eat a lot of fish! Now why Goans would be singled out and be subject to disparaging comments because of their affinity for eating fish is a mystery to me today especially since the Bengalis are also avid fish eaters! But at the time, one did not go into such subtleties – one merely responded with some sort of disparaging remark about the culinary habits of those who made fun of me! Pretty harmless teasing, all things considered.
Never mind, that I was not Goan – to those from other parts of India such finer points were neither here nor there. The only sizable group of Indian Christians in Kenya – in fact, in East Africa – were the Goans. Being a Christian from Kerala, my family was grouped with the Goans since Keralites were an insignificant minority in Kenya. Sure, there were a few things that puzzled people – for example, my mother wore a sari and most Goan women wore dresses – or “frocks” which was the usual nomenclature used! But one thing they were right about despite getting our origin wrong was that Keralites also eat a lot of fish! So one could rightly have said: “Malayalee machi kathore” – and they would have been on the mark!
All of this came to mind when we visited Goa during the past week during our annual sojourn in Kerala.
We spent a thoroughly enjoyable five days in Goa – a place I last visited over forty years ago when I was doing an all-India tour in my Standard Herald car. I spent a couple of days in Goa on that occasion.
We stayed in Panjim – which is the capital of Goa – at a hotel that was arranged for us. The Palacio de Goa – was centrally located and very comfortable. About my only complaint was that I could not get coffee until well after 7am which given my weird waking hours meant an impatient wait for a couple of hours! A relatively minor draw-back all things considered.
Goa is a remarkable, very picturesque place – and I can well understand why it appeals so much to Western (mainly European) tourists who were there in abundance – which was all the more remarkable given that the peak season is in December and January when the hotels are apparently packed! We were told that in season, the beaches are teeming with Western tourists so much so that a visitor would think one was in Europe! Goa’s appeal is because of beaches that are out of this world – there are 33 beaches in Goa! The beaches and the city as a whole are clean, the roads are excellent and most busy roads have side-walks so you don’t have people walking on the road. The Goan people, who look rather like the Sinhalese in Sri-Lanka, are very friendly and although Konkani is the main language, English is spoken by just about every one. Booze is plentiful and cheap, there is an abundance of sea-food also reasonably priced especially when compared to prices in the West or even within India and amenities are geared to suit tourists. For example, when we arrived at the train-station in Margaon, there were a few young Westerners who proceeded straight to an adjoining section where there were dozens of motor-cycles and scooters parked and available for rent. Within no time they removed their shirts and set off on motor cycles riding bare-chested! There are lots of activities available at the beaches, especially things like para-sailing and jet-skiing – all priced at a fraction of what it costs elsewhere. Our guide told us that tourists can still get drugs here though not as readily as it used to be available when Goa was a hippie haven in the sixties. Today, as he put it: “one has to find it”!
It has been a while since I updated this blog – attributable to laziness more than anything else after we returned from Cochin back to the US. There have been events which I wanted to write about but for some reason never got around to doing so. So it may seem a little odd that my first entry after a four month hiatus should be about a colonoscopy I had last week. But as you read on, you will see why I felt that a light-hearted account with the help of Dave Barry is a good way to restart the blog.
For those who live outside the US who are reading this, you should be aware that it is recommended that anyone over the age of 50 should have a routine colonoscopy just to make sure all is well. How often one has a colonoscopy thereafter depends on what is found at that initial examination. This was my third colonoscopy and I must say that the experience becomes no more pleasant or palatable with repeated procedures. The worst part is the preparation for the colonoscopy. I could describe the experience but would never be able to do it with the humor that Dave Barry provides even as he accurately describe the process. So here is Barry’s account:
“I called my friend Andy Sable, a gastroenterologist, to make an appointment for a colonoscopy.
A few days later, in his office, Andy showed me a color diagram of the colon, a lengthy organ that appears to go all over the place, at one point passing briefly through Minneapolis.
Then Andy explained the colonoscopy procedure to me in a thorough, reassuring and patient manner.
I nodded thoughtfully, but I really didn’t hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking, quote, ‘HE’S GOING TO STICK A TUBE 17,000 FEET UP YOUR BEHIND!’
I left Andy’s office with some written instructions, and a prescription for a product called ‘MoviPrep’, which comes in a box large enough to hold a microwave oven. I will discuss MoviPrep in detail later; for now suffice it to say that we must never allow it to fall into the hands of America’s enemies.
I spent the next several days productively sitting around being nervous.
Then, on the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation. In accordance with my instructions, I didn’t eat any solid food that day; all I had was chicken broth, which is basically water, only with less flavor.
Living in India for any length of time has its challenges. I came to the realization several years ago that if one does not go with the flow, it can be frustrating to a point that one becomes exasperated. At a basic level one must accept that one is not living in the West where certain conveniences and protocols are the norm – to expect to find a life-style akin to the US in India is a recipe for disillusionment. There are also some cultural differences and customs/etiquette which can be amusing and at other times disconcerting to someone who visits from the West.
For example, it took me a while to get used to the idea that when one is on the phone whether with a stranger or friend or relative, there is no “sign-off” as the conversation ends – they just hang up the phone while I am still waiting to say good-bye!
Which brings me to English as spoken in India. English is not the easiest of languages to learn what with its illogical pronunciations and subtle nuances. As G.K. Chesterton said: “The word “good” has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.”
Some of the more hilarious and, occasionally frustrating, experiences are with the use of “Indian-English”. I recall calling Asianet who provides my internet service because it was not functioning. The very polite lady in customer service did a little checking and told me that this was a “common problem”. We were conversing in my rather limited Malayalam and I asked her why if it was a common problem steps had not been taken to fix it. I was getting increasingly irate at her apparent lack of responsiveness and constant reiteration that it was a common problem. It took me a while to realize that what she meant by a “common problem” was what in the US would be called a general outage! She probably was at a loss to understand why I was getting on her case about something that she had no control over!
There are many other instances of “Indian English” – essentially a version of English terminology that would have a different connotation in the West but is very much the norm in India. Then there are other instances where words are just misused with humorous results such as a political poster which was prominently displayed in Mumbai! In the interests of full disclosure, it should be noted the quirky indian website is the source for several examples cited here, although I have previously heard most of these examples of Indian-English. The image of the poster shown below provides an example.
.
.
With regard to the image, I guess one could say that the congratulations were right from the heart so why not call it “heartly”!
They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder – perhaps, the same can be said for health care reform.
Barack Obama’s health care reform which goes under the title – H.R. 4872, The Health Care & Education Affordability Reconciliation Act of 2010 - is now law. To describe it as “reform” is a misnomer. The positives accomplished are to provide health coverage to 32 million Americans who are either uninsured or under-insured. It has also made illegal the use of pre-existing condtions as grounds for denying coverage.
But the other side of the coin is that Obama essentially gave away the store to the insurance industry. Despite all the hoopla regarding insurance industry opposition, in essence the insurance industry wanted the Obama plan to become law as long as there was no public option or attempt to remove the anti-trust exemption that the industry enjoys.
At a basic business level, the simple reality is that Obama’s plan will provide a windfall for the insurance industry. One does not need to be a rocket scientist to figure that out. Their customer base is being increased by approximately 32 million customers with no effective cost contols and no new competition. The only real downside for the insurance industry is the change in the law regarding pre-exisiting conditons which has minimal penalties for non-compliance. Would any business ever turn down an opportunity of getting tens of millions of new customers – and mandated by law to boot?
.
Today is my mother’s death anniversary. Sarah Joseph died in 1965 at Trivandrum Medical College Hospital. She had turned 52 years of age two days prior to her death on March 18.
Her death was an event that had lasting repercussions on the family in many ways. She was larger than life and had a certain commanding presence about her. When she walked into a room she was a person one noticed. One cannot help wonder how various events which profoundly affected the family subsequent to her death would have evolved had she been alive.
For, at least, the first fifteen years after her death there was not a day that went by when I did not think of her at least once and often several times in some context or the other. I could write a whole lot more about her, as a person and mother, but it would be a repetition of what appears about her on our family website.
I was a student in London when I received a letter from her in 1964 telling me that she had been diagnosed with cervical cancer. I was 18 years old and strangely, the significance of the news did not hit me until much later. She was a strong woman who seemed able to overcome any challenges and I think I just felt that this would be another challenge that she would overcome. She wrote to me about wanting to come to the UK for treatment instead of going to India, which was the other alternative, since Kenya at that time did not offer treatment for cancer. Her letter said that almost as much as the desire for the best treatment for her cancer, the thought that she could see me and touch me was perhaps just as great a motivation for coming to London.
Someone once said: “Bureaucracy is the art of making the possible impossible”
Dealing with the bureaucracy in most countries is frustrating but the bureaucracy in India is ubiquitous and time consuming with no assurance of a positive outcome.
Since purchasing our flat in Cochin, we have had to deal with varying levels of bureaucracy on a host of issues. Transferring the electricity at the flat into our name should be a fairly routine task but in Kerala, it requires the use of what is euphemistically called a “wire-man” to intercede with the Electricity Board to effect the transfer. The charge for the services of the wire-man ranges from R2,000 to R5,000. We finally did not transfer the account to our names on the advice of an official at the Electricity Board who recommended leaving it in the name of the former owner and thereby avoiding the red-tape involved in a transfer! Apparently, this sort of non-transference of responsibility is not unusual.
When it came to registering the flat at the Cochin Corporation Office for the payment of property taxes, I again had to use the services of an intermediary. Trying to do it myself, I was told would result in delays and being subject to the run-around. So the lawyer who handled our flat purchase had a somewhat shady guy contact me to get this done. I went with him to the Office together with the original of the title to the flat. My role was a passive one as he took me to some man who sat in an open office surrounded by a host of ledgers which brought memories of Charles Dickens’ “Pickwick Papers”!
The guy looked up some salient points in the title document and then I was told to wait outside – ten minutes later the guy who accompanied me came and handed me a document that showed the property was now registered in my name. I paid him R1,500 for the privilege of being liable for future tax bills!
When we first bought the flat, the title had to be transferred to our names. There were the obvious documented fees and taxes associated with the purchase but there was also a sum of money that I paid for the expeditious transfer of the title to our names. I have no idea who it was paid to and how much precisely was paid. I was told that while legally such a payment is not required, if one did not do so it would result in multitude delays as various documents in connection with the transfer were scrutinized and nit-picked to death!
Which brings me to my latest and most consequential exposure to the bureaucracy in India – obtaining a copy of my birth certificate dating back over six decades ago! I lost the original some years ago during one of our moves within the US when a box containing various documents went missing. What I did know for sure was that I had a birth certificate, it was issued by the Corporation Office in Madurai, Tamil Nadu and the date of my birth and parents names were on the document. There was other information on it such as the date my birth was registered as well as the precise location where I was born – but I could not recall that information!
The quest for a copy of my birth certificate was an adventure in itself and brought into effect all of the dynamics that one finds when trying to get something done in India. First, I had started the ball rolling almost two months ago after arriving in Cochin when I talked to a couple of people about it. But one of the things one realizes about India is that if one really wants action, it is necessary to be there in person. Little will happen if one sits in Cochin and expects people to initiate action in Madurai. This is not a criticism of the people who were kind enough to help me – it is just the way things work in India. Perhaps one’s personal presence provides a sense of urgency to the task or perhaps if one is there in person, people switch their priorities.
Munnar is a beautiful place well worth visiting!
Our visit started with something of a fiasco which brought to mind the axiom: “if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is”. We were offered an unbelievable deal in Munnar at what was described as a “resort”. As it turned out it was no resort – and, in fact, to describe it as a dump would not be an exaggeration. Frankly, if Ted Kaczynski – the “Unabomber” – who was a recluse during the latter years of his life prior to his arrest, living in isolation away from society in a rudimentary abode, ever gets out of prison in the US and wants seclusion in Kerala, India, the place we stayed the first night in Munnar would suit him perfectly!
How we ended up there is a story in itself but essentially a friend of my brother from his days in Kenya, arranged three rooms in the so-called “resort” – owned by his relatives – at a supposedly bargain basement price for me, my brother and for himself and our respective spouses. It turned out to be no bargain and was not worth what we paid for the room. In fact, I’d say that it was probably the worst place we have stayed in all of our travels to many countries with the possible exception of the “tea houses” in Nepal frequented by those trekking the higher elevations of the Himalayas!
But I don’t want to focus on the negative aspect of our stay in Munnar in this blog entry though it would make for interesting reading in terms of quite how bad a place can be and how easily one can be misled by a description on a website.
I love a good massage. It is in some ways the ultimate pampering experience. The first time I had one was in California in the early nineties. I was so hooked on it that I would have one with some regularity even though it was expensive. Spending $80 for a forty minute massage every couple of months was a bit of self-indulgence but it was at a time when I was making more money than I knew what to do with. After I retired, in 1994, massages were a less frequent occurrence. By the time we moved to Virginia, I’d tell my kids and others to give me a gift certificate for a massage for birthdays and Christmas since there was usually nothing else I really wanted.
Once we began to travel, I would indulge in massages with greater frequency. I got them in Thailand, Cambodia, China and in India. They were of varying standards – the ones in Cambodia and China were pretty good. The one in Thailand was just so so – they seemed focused on selling other “services”! But the one that was really quite an experience in more ways than one were the ayurvedic massages I got in Kerala, India. Keep in mind that Kerala is known for the ayurvedic massage which really is more a therapy than a massage.
So what brings me to this subject? Well, it is a combination of factors: first I saw a very funny episode of Seinfeld yesterday in which George Constanza gets a massage from a good looking masseur – he was not comfortable with the idea of a guy giving him a massage but reluctantly went with it providing the set-up for a few laughs!
I also happened to read about the experience of an American tourist who got an ayurvedic massage in Kerala which brought back memories of my own massage!
Two years ago I went to an ayurvedic hospital in a fairly remote location in Kerala – a place known for the “real thing” as opposed to the so called ayurvedic massages that are sold to tourists. This was a very highly regarded ayurvedic hospital and most of the patients were people who had serious medical ailments. I was probably one of the few who was in relatively good health. Once the doctor who interviewed me realized I was not suffering from any particular ailment, he evaluated me as someone who was there for what he classified as “rejuvenation”. There were quite a few patients from the US, including several who had suffered strokes and a couple of Westerners from Germany – relatively young women one of whom had some sort of creeping arthritis which was not responding to conventional treatment.
The only “treatment” I received other than a fairly controlled diet was a daily ayurvedic massage. It was an experience I will not forget because it was so different from any massage I ever had until then.
The first day, at the appointed time, I went to the massage room and was met by the masseur – a slim, young man. Now I knew that in Kerala it is masseurs that provide massage to guys and women, in turn, are massaged by a masseuse! So that was no surprise – irrespective what happens in other parts of the world.
He told me in Malayalam to strip completely – and I double-checked with him whether that was what I was supposed to do or whether I had misunderstood him. He then left for a few minutes.
The heading for this post is a well-known saying about how numbers can bolster a weak argument depending on how they are interpreted. Add to the mix the use of anecdotal information that can be cited to bolster a point of view and we get to a couple of issues that I have been involved in several cyber-exchanges.
Someone sent an email providing the chart below showing the income distribution in the US by religion.
It shows that Hindus and Jews earn substantially more than do people of other faiths. The survey was conducted by Pew Research – a reputable polling organization – and I have no doubt that it is accurate. But the conclusions to be derived therefrom are what I found problematical. They ranged from suggestions that it is the values found in those faiths that accounted for the achievements of people of those faiths to even more blatant assertions of the superiority of the faiths in producing such results.
A couple of people have asked me how I select the subjects for my blog. I told them the catalyst is usually something I read or information sent to me.
I was recently sent pictures of my high school, Allidina Visram HS, in Mombasa, Kenya (thanks Prem Saint) and it brought back a flood of memories as well as a chance to reflect and ruminate on four critical years I spent there before I left for England to pursue Chartered Accountancy. AVHS looking at the pictures appears to be in remarkably good condition and exactly like I remember it from almost 50 years ago!
AVHS, was probably the premier high school for Asian students in Mombasa. Kenya was still a British colony and education like many other facets of life was racially segregated in practice, if not the law. It was a high school for boys since the sexes were also segregated. The school was built by a philanthropist after whom it was named. The only students allowed admission into AVHS were Indians, Pakistanis and Arabs. There were other schools for Africans (the term used to describe the indigenous people) and for Europeans (the term used to describe anyone who was white). Almost all of the teachers were Asians though there were a few who were British, one Canadian and a couple from Australia. My father, AG Joseph, taught English there from the early fifties until 1961 and my brother, George, taught Economics at AVHS from 1960 to 1966.
One of the striking contrasts in terms of the education at AVHS and the schools in the US are the methodologies used and what was deemed the norm. Teachers were not allowed to paddle students but errant students would be sent to the principal where one was “caned” on the buttocks. The severity of the caning would range from one strike to a maximum of six. There was no need for any parental notification and students who were caned were anxious that their parents knew nothing of it – and if they did, it would probably mean a round of punishment at home as well! Teachers disciplinary methods included making an errant student stand on his chair for all or part of the duration of the class while all the other students were seated! If one were the victim of this punishment, it was not so much a humiliation as much as a feeling of sheepishness and concern about not losing one’s balance while standing!
The high school consisted of four grades (to use US parlance) before one graduated. What was amazing, upon reflection, is that each grade had four “streams” (A to D) consisting of about 30 students in each stream. The brightest students were in stream A and the least academically proficient were in stream D! So it was considered to be very much the norm to, in effect, “label” the students as being “bright” or “less than bright” (being polite) from the very start. Once one ended up in a particular stream, it was usually not easy to be “upgraded” because it required someone else to be “down-graded” to maintain class size. Upon reflection, it really was a very retrograde system though we never had a second thought about it. Just as we never had a second thought about the races being segregated.
We were graded on “marks” received out of one hundred. The passing grade was around 40 and anything over 70 was considered to be a “distinction”. Scoring over 70 in any subject other than mathematics was a rarity. If one scored as high as 80 one was considered to be a genius! Very different than the grading in the US! Each month and at the end of each term (semester) the cumulative “marks” obtained in each subject was posted for every student on the notice board in the class and we were all ranked based on those marks from the first to the last! The ranking was something that anyone could view – whether from within the class or from another class! I think part of the thinking was that publicizing the results like this would motivate students by encouraging those who did well and humiliating those who did not so that they would strive harder. Never mind that any such ranking system would inevitably result in someone being ranked first and someone else being ranked last no matter how well the latter fared overall!
The education we received was generally excellent and the culmination was having to sit an exam called the Senior Cambridge which was conducted under the auspices of Cambridge University – the questions were formulated there and the exams were evaluated there as well.
My cousin, Bobby Abraham, recently sent me a very interesting article called “Coming of Age in the Milky Way”. It made for fascinating reading because it was both educational and also offered some context as to where the earth and life on earth fits into the scheme of things.
In 1967, two scientists Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, were working on satellite communications for Bell Laboratories. They encountered what was described as a persistent unfocused, unrelenting hissing noise that made their experimental work impossible. No matter what they did, they could not get rid of the noise. It took a while but they finally realized that they had stumbled on the edge of the universe itself! The persistent hissing noise was caused by photons, the most ancient light in the universe which over vast periods of time and distance had converted into microwaves! It was coming from 90 billion trillion miles away – a number so large in terms of being able to conceptualize it, that it would not make a difference to me if it were hundred times as much or a tenth as much!
It turned out to be one of the greatest discoveries of all times – a “eureka” moment, as Archimedes would have put it or as Isaac Asimov puts it great discoveries are preceded by more of a “That’s funny……..” reaction!
The entire article by Alexander Green makes for fascinating reading but there were a few things that really captured my attention. In 1929, Edwin Hubble, after whom the famous telescope is named, “discovered that the distant fuzzy patches in his telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory were actually other galaxies, each composed of billions of stars. Even more astonishing, these galaxies are rapidly moving away from us – and each other.
“This eventually led to Hubble’s Law: If the galaxies are receding then:
Tomorrow they will be farther from us.
But yesterday they were closer to us.
And last year they were closer still.
At some point in the past, everything was piled together and squeezed into a tiny volume.”
It is believed that the universe as we know it today commenced with a gigantic explosion almost 14 billion years ago in what is today referred to as the “Big Bang”.
Green’s article covers a lot of territory – all of it very readable. It blends science and religion as he discusses the creation of the universe as we now know it. But the part that I found most illuminating was when he shows how long ago the universe was formed. Numbers like 14 billion years ago or a distance of 90 billion trillion miles are so huge that the human mind cannot wrap itself around something so astronomically large. But Green, quoting the astronomer, Carl Sagan, provides an illustration which ordinary mortals can relate to in comprehending the age of the universe.
Sagan calls it a “Cosmic Calendar” and as Green says “it not only enlightens but provides an object lesson in humility”. Here is how Sagan’s Cosmic Calendar works:
“Imagine that the 13.7 billion-year history of the universe is compressed into one calendar year. The Big Bang occurred in the very first second of January 1 and the current moment is the last second of the last minute of December 31. Using this compressed timescale, each month equals a little over 1.1 billion years. Each day represents 40 million years. Each second covers 500 years of history.
“The Milky Way coalesces in March. The sun and planets form in August. The first life – single celled – show up in September, the first multi-cellular organisms in November.
“The first vertebrates appear on December 17. Dinosaurs show up on Christmas Eve. (And become extinct on December 29.)
“Modern humans finally appear at 11:54 p.m. on December 31.
“And all of recorded history occupies the last ten seconds of the last minute of the last day of the year. The pyramids were built nine seconds ago. The Roman Empire fell three seconds ago. Columbus discovered America one second ago.”
Pretty stunning isn’t it when our existence is shown relative to when the universe is believed to have come into being? The 13.7 billion years assumes a whole different frame of reference.
I have cited only a small portion of Green’s article. The entire article is well worth reading!
Christianity is believed to have come to Kerala in the first century AD when the Apostle Thomas, like other disciples, ventured near and far to spread the gospel in accordance with Christ’s command. There has been some speculation that the reason why St Thomas came to Kerala had less to do with converting the “locals” and was more to do with trying to convert the sizable Jewish population who lived in Kerala especially in Cochin. These Jews assimilated into the community though they continued to maintain their own faith and customs. They were welcomed and, unlike in many other countries, have never been the victims of persecution while living in India – a testament to the receptiveness of the Hindus who lived in Kerala and were willing to receive people of a different faith. Today there is still a centuries old synagogue in Cochin and a handful of Jewish families but most emigrated to Israel over the years because of better economic opportunities.
How successful St Thomas was in converting the Jews is not known but it is generally believed that he converted several prominent Brahmin families and these conversions together with others is the genesis of the Syrian Christians who live in Kerala and elsewhere around the world.
I write about this because there was a communication on a Yahoo group to which I belong consisting of mainly Asians who lived or live in East Africa. Apparently there is a debate going on in the UK about outlawing caste discrimination in Britain – yes, the old-fashioned discrimination against Dalits that is associated with India. There is opposition among some Hindu groups in Britain, to this legislation – in effect arguing that caste discrimination in the UK should not be addressed! This entire issue of seeking to achieve a “protected” status for casteism in the UK by certain Hindu groups is a whole different discussion.
But, in this context another member of the Yahoo group cited an email he received from someone known to me and several other family members which essentially said that such casteism is not just confined to Hindus and that even Christians in Kerala are guilty of the same thing.
A part of his email stated:
“But do you know Hindus are not the only ones to be blamed for this accursed practice. Even the so called upper class Christians in Kerala are guilty of this though they had given up Hinduism centuries ago claiming to have been converted by the Apostle St. Thomas!”
He went on to cite a Goan he knew from many years ago when he was a student in England who apparently asked him what caste he was. He (the Goan) claimed he was of the Brahmin caste. He goes on to say: “Wow! I was confused. My parents had never told me what caste we belonged to, not that it would have interested me in the least.”
Now, I am a Syrian Christian by birth but because of my upbringing in Mombasa, Kenya where there were only a handful of other Syrian Christian families, my involvement in the Syrian Christian faith has been minimal. However, I felt that a response was warranted to address the statements made in that email. Here is the thrust of my response:
“The email that you forwarded from S—- misstates the way that “upper class Christians”, as he puts it, classify themselves. Some of what he says does have some substance.
Read the rest of this entry »
We are back in Cochin and pretty much settled in our condo/flat here. It is nice to be experiencing the warm – and, as yet, not too hot – weather of Kerala and away from the colder than normal winter we left in Virginia. More about Cochin, Kerala and India in future posts because a couple of days ago I came across something on the web about music which I knew would have to be my next blog post.
“Music can change the world” – so said Beethoven. Dr. Karl Paulnack would certainly agree – but more about this later.
First, by way of background, my interest in music is confined to listening to a fairly wide range of music depending on my mood. In the late fifties and early sixties, I was totally into the music that typically interested a teenager – those were the years that I listened to Elvis and the Beatles with Belafonte and the Everly Brothers thrown in for good measure! Interspersed with this music which appealed to teenagers influenced by Western pop music were Hindi songs that blared out from neighbors’ houses when we lived in Mombasa – songs sung by Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Mukesh and Mohammed Rafi. I had only the most rudimentary knowledge of Hindi but the tunes, if not the lyrics, left an indelible memory so much so that even today, listening to them brings a sense of nostalgia. I would occasionally make an attempt to sing one of them – I’d get the tune right but garbled the lyrics so badly that those who knew the lyrics would ask me to stop destroying the song!
By the late sixties I had developed an interest in folk music – and Joan Baez, Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan were my favorite artists. I loved the music and the protest aspect of many of the songs -after all, it was the era of the struggle for civil rights and demonstrations against the Vietnam war.
I have an interest in classical music that I owe to my elder brother, George. He came back from England in 1960 after his undergraduate education and imbued in several of his siblings a varying level of interest in the works of famous Western composers. He introduced us to Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Dvorak and Rimsky Korsakov – though for some reason, it is Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique and Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata of which I have the most vivid memories, I assume, because George played and talked about those pieces more so than others. After I went to England for my studies, this interest became more varied and perhaps a little more informed – especially since, as a student in London, I spent a year as a paying guest with an English family who had a deep and abiding interest in classical music since the husband was a retired first violinist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra who had played under the direction of some of the famous conductors in the fifties. He introduced me to Mozart – who he described with passion and considerable emotion as “a genius” whose music had no parallel.
After I came to the US, I developed a very limited interest in opera though, I must confess, it was primarily because I love listening to Pavarotti and Placido Domingo who would sing these arias from different operas – not a word of which I could understand! In fact, my enjoyment of the music without any understanding of the lyrics reminds me, at times, of the memorable scene from “The Shawshank Redemption” which must rank as one of my top ten movies of all time. The scene is vividly described in another blog – “The Ecstatic Living Room”:
Tim Robbins, playing the wrongfully convicted banker who refuses to have his spirit broken by prison life, has briefly barricaded himself in one of the prison offices and decides to treat his cellmates to some music over the Shawshank (prison) loudspeaker system. Sitting back in his chair, Robbins’s character, Andy Dufresne, sinks into reverie as Gundula Janowitz (The Countess) and Edith Mathis (Susanna) sing the Duettino (little duet) “Sull’Aria” (“on the breeze”) from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. Andy gets time in solitary confinement for the infraction, but it’s a small price to pay for the transcendent moment he has given himself and his fellow inmates. His unlikely prison friend Red (played by Morgan Freeman) sums up the experience this way:
“I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I’d like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can’t be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.”
Here is the scene from the Shawshank Redemption referred to above:
Red’s lack of understanding of the lyrics even as he is entranced by the music somewhat resembles my reaction when I listen to arias sung by Pavarotti and Domingo!
I have never been able to listen to Wagner for any length of time although I have tried. My inability to listen to Wagner reminds of Woody Allen who said: “I can’t listen to that much Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland.”
All of the above is a prelude to the main reason for this post which struck a chord with me at several levels. On one of the forums that I visit someone had posted an address by Dr. Karl Paulnack, director of the Music Division of the Boston Conservatory which I found both profound and moving. Paulnack has given this address – that has apparently been cited all over the world – on several occasions to parents of incoming students with modifications.
Here is his entire speech:
“One of my parents’ deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn’t be appreciated. I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remember my mother’s remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school—she said, “you’re wasting your SAT scores!”
The reaction of Paulnack’s parents is probably the reaction that most Indian/Asian parents would have if one of their academically talented children told them that he/she had decided to make a career in music – it is interesting that this reaction is, apparently, not limited to Indian or Asian parents whose yardstick of success for their children is a career as “a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer” as Paulnack puts it! Sure, there are the obligatory music lessons – whether piano or violin or the flute – which children in the US go through but the ulterior motive for the lessons, for most Asian/Indian parents, is to enhance the chances of their offsprings’ admission to a good college when the time comes!
Paulnack continues:
“On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they loved music: they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren’t really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the “arts and entertainment” section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it’s the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk a little bit about music, and how it works.
I have been recovering from the flu and while I lay on the sofa sneezing and moaning and groaning, I was flipping channels and ended up on some wedding channel which highlighted what were deemed “platinum weddings” – and lo and behold, the wedding being featured was that of an Indian guy – Deepak Nath to Sara Hlavka. As befits the designation of “platinum wedding” you can imagine that it was an extravagant event – and it brought to mind a peeve of mine about Indian weddings.
Indians are by and large a very frugal people. As Russell Peters, the Canadian Indian comedian, said in one of his skits, when an Indian is accused of being “cheap”, his reaction is not one of being offended as much as one of pride – well, Peters exaggerates a bit but the gist of what he says is nonetheless valid. Indians pride themselves in getting a bargain – and feel cheated when they find out that something they bought could have been obtained for much less. This is true for Indians in just about all socio-economic groups.
Where this propensity to be frugal ceases to apply is when it comes to Indian weddings – and again this is true of all socio-economic groups. Whether one is middle class or very affluent, there appears to be a compelling need to “put on a show”, In the case of the average Indian family in India, they spend much more than they can afford even if it means going into considerable debt especially when it comes to a daughter being married. In the case of the affluent, money is spent to a point of vulgarity.
Who can forget the spectacle of Lakshmi Mittal’s daughter whose wedding cost between $60 million and $78 million -based on various reports – in an extravaganza that caused it to be named the “wedding of the century” by Forbes magazine. It was a wedding that lasted six days and at least 1200 guests were invited to the occasion where a number of richest people, pop stars, singers, world’s celebrities, business tycoons and industrialists were present. The guests included some Bollywood stars – Aishwarya Rai, Akshay Kumar, Shah Rukh Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Rani Mukherjee and pop star Kylie Minogue. The engagement was held at the Palace of Versailles (once used by Louis XIV). Twelve Boeing jets were chartered to bring guests from India to France with all expenses paid. And there was much more which you can read here
Well, the Nath-Hlvaka wedding was obviously nothing on the scale of that of the Mittal one but nonetheless by the standards of Indian weddings in the US it was quite a spectacle. The wedding was held at the Bellagio in Las Vegas with 650 guests at a cost of $1.3 million. Although the bride’s family often bears the brunt of the wedding expenses, in this instance, the entire wedding was paid for by the groom’s parents who are successful entrepreneurs in Minnesota. Incidentally, the success achieved by parents, Mahendra & Asha Nath is a remarkable story in itself and illustrates why the US is called the land of opportunity – two immigrants who arrive with very little and achieve spectacular financial success. Mahendra Nath’s story appears here and makes for interesting reading.
My final entry for this year as 2009 draws to an end – and what a year it has been. These are some random thoughts – mostly personal – about the year that will pass into history in just over a couple of hours.
We saw the inauguration of the first African American president of the US and that was something that I did not expect to see in my lifetime. It was a presidency that most of us who voted for him had the highest of hopes and expectations which at this point remains unrealized for the most part.
We came to the brink of a financial cataclysm where the entire world’s financial system was on the verge of collapse with a second great depression as a possible consequence.
Amidst the financial carnage that has affected so many Americans when it comes to their savings, retirement funds or their jobs, I feel greatly blessed that we have come out of it relatively unscathed.
We spent a month in China, Singapore, Hong Kong and Macau – one of the more memorable vacations we have had and about which I have posted elsewhere on this blog.
Our stay in Hong Kong gave us a chance to become acquainted with my relative Thomas Abraham’s wife – Rebecca – and family, although he was unfortunately in Geneva at the time of our visit. We were also able to renew our association with Shanthan and family – after a break of several years – who hosted us in Beijing where he is on assignment.
Mini, after working part time for several years, retired at the end of last year and seems to be thoroughly enjoying her retirement.
I started this blog earlier this year when we were doing our winter sojourn in Kerala. I have been able to keep the postings to a couple on most weeks. It seems to bear out what several people who know me well have said: namely, that I seem to be more comfortable and communicative when it comes to the net than in person. Not sure that is entirely true but who am I to argue!
We have stayed In relative good health and for that we feel blessed especially given the realization that it has enabled us to stay active and mobile.
My children are doing well both personally and with regard to their respective occupations. What more can any parent ask for when it comes to the welfare of their offspring?
I have been particularly fortunate to have my three children now living close to me with the relocation of Neeta to Virginia from California. Her move was quite unexpected and has worked out well for her – she enjoys the support systems of having family close by. One of the routines that has occurred with Neeta’s move – which started out almost casually – is a weekly lunch that I do with one or both of my daughters.
My grandchildren are a source of joy and pride. I can’t believe how fast they are growing. The notion that my grandson, DJ, is now in the same middle school that Amit was just a few years ago and will be actually testing for entrance into the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology is almost difficult to conceive.
I recently posted that Thanksgiving was my favorite holiday of the year. We are now into the Christmas holiday season and I would have to say it ranks low on my list of favored holidays. This is all the more surprising because when I was growing up in Kenya, Christmas was a holiday that I looked forward to and of which I have joyous memories.
Of course, Christmas in Kenya was very different from that in the West and especially in the US. The holiday in Kenya was a family occasion and it was a time for going to church, carol singing, perhaps a nativity play, lots of great food on Christmas day when my mother would cook one of her famous biriyanis and we would invite a few close friends. Gift giving was almost a non-event and only very young children received gifts from “Father Christmas” – the Kenyan/Indian version of Santa Claus. Typically, not long after kids reached an age when they realized that there was no Father Christmas, gift giving at Christmas came to a halt and thereafter the only special occasion when kids would get gifts was on a birthday.
I recall the family receiving lots and lots of Christmas cards and the ones we received and sent had a distinctly religious slant since there was none of today’s politically correct view that Christmas cards should be non-religious – to suit the sensitivities of non-Christian recipients. There were so many cards received that after space on top of cabinets and other such locations was filled, they would then be stuck on a wall! The main rooms in the house would be decorated with streamers which really was the only type of affordable decoration available. There was no Christmas tree – after all, evergreens were not available in Kenya and there was no other tree that could take the place of the conventional Christmas tree in the West. If there were artificial Christmas trees available, I never saw one.
We were in a neighborhood where there were lots of other Indians residing – most of whom were Hindus. We would send food such as fruit cake (referred to as Christmas cake) and other culinary delights to some of the Hindu neighbors and friends – a reciprocation for the many North Indian sweets like ladoos, gulab jamun, jalebi, padas, etc that we received from them at Diwali. The baking of the Christmas cake was itself a family event. It was in the days before we had any mechanical devices to mix the cake batter and so we kids and our mother all took turns to mix the ingredients in a bowl until she decided that it was suitably mixed. It was a long, tedious process but the reward for the kids was being able to lick the batter that remained in the bowl after almost all of it had been put into baking pans!
Attending church on Christmas eve or Christmas day was an imperative and the entire family would attend church together. We went to an Anglican church in Mombasa – the equivalent of the Episcopalian church in the US. Most of the congregation was made up of Europeans – a term in Kenya that was used to describe any white person irrespective of their country of origin. In fact, most of the “Europeans” were, in fact, British since Kenya was then still a colony of the UK.
We dressed up in our finest and my most vivid memory of one of the services was my father – who was totally tone deaf – singing Christmas carols with gusto. He usually did not sing any of the hymns during regular services or if he did it was limited to just a very few hymns like “Onward Christian Soldiers” which was a hymn that he liked. But when it came to Christmas carols, he took a very different view …… it had nothing to do with his familiarity with the carols as much as his desire to get into the spirit of Christmas!
I voted for Barack Obama in the presidential election – a vote that was predicated on the policy positions he enunciated as well as his charisma and his life history.
The criticisms leveled at him by Republicans that he lacked the experience with a resume that was just too thin to be president had merit but after the disastrous presidency of George W Bush and a Republican controlled Congress that went along with all of W’s hare-brained ideas, I felt that anything would be better than what we had gone through for the prior eight years. It was a point of view that gathered additional reinforcement after John McCain selected Sarah Palin as his nominee for vice president – someone singularly unqualified to be president – although I liked McCain himself and felt that he could have been a good president.
Fast forward one year and I will admit to my mounting disappointment at Obama’s performance. As I look back at his accomplishments over the past year I must say that he has accomplished remarkably little. His greatest accomplishment has been in reversing the hostility with which the US was regarded in much of the world under Bush with his bullying tactics and his “my way or the highway” attitude.
Obama recently, in an interview with Oprah, gave himself a solid B+ in terms of his performance during his first year in office. I think he is being overly generous – I would give him an “I” or “incomplete”. Most of his major initiatives have been either stuck in Congress or have been compromised to a point where it bears no resemblance to what Obama said that he wanted to accomplish. This holds true whether it is climate/global warming, reform of the financial system and now with healthcare reform. I am not even going to cite the economy and the jobless rate given that Obama inherited a gargantuan mess with a financial system that was in a state of near meltdown and he has had only one year to undo the damage that he inherited.
Well, we are back from our 12 night cruise during which we visited St Thomas, St Croix, St Kitts, Antigua and San Maarten. It was wonderful, relaxing and met all of our expectations, for the most part.
A few months ago, I wrote about having experienced a mzee moment in Singapore. Once again, the term “mzee” is a Swahili term that literally means “old man” but is used as much as a term of respect as a reference to chronological age. Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of Kenya, was universally referred to as “mzee” – a term of affection and respect associated with his age and wisdom, since the acquisition of wisdom is associated with age in Kenya as in much of the East!
Well, on this cruise, there were no “mzee”moments – in fact compared to most of the passengers, we felt positively young! Over half the passengers were in their 70s’ and 80s’ and there were a sprinkling of passengers in their 90s’! The rest of the passengers were in their 60s’ and 50s’ and then there were an assortment in their 40s’ and 30s’ – and very few any younger! A reflection of the timing of the cruise when schools were closed and so the people cruising were retirees or vacationers.
I have never seen so many people in wheel chairs and using walking sticks. It was positive in the sense that despite limitations on mobility, these were people who still were able to go out and enjoy themselves as opposed to being home-bound. A big difference with India and many other countries, where being disabled would severely limit one’s mobility. The staff were very attentive to the needs of these passengers and went out of their way to make them comfortable.
We met a number of interesting and very nice people on the cruise – and a few not so nice people. Most of the passengers were Americans with a few Brits and Europeans. There was only one other Indian couple from Virginia who seemed reluctant to socialize with us for whatever reason. Among the Americans, the only time we felt less than welcome was with the much older people who I suspect had limited involvement with minority Americans and were therefore perhaps inhibited in dealing with us. But those who had any degree of interaction with a more diverse group were quite warm and friendly.
I tried to stay away from political discussions such as with the older lady from Western Pennsylvania who told me that she did not trust Obama right from the start even when he was running for office – and her suspicions were now confirmed since Obama had appointed all these “radicals” within his administration. Pennsylvania is viewed as leaning Democratic in most elections but one needs to remember that western and central Pennsylvania are very conservative – after all, Pennsylvania has been referred to as being Philadelphia in the east, Pittsburgh in the West and Alabama in the middle when it comes to its political make-up! I have been told that there are people in Western Pennsylvania who still have confederate flags as bumper stickers on their trucks together with gun racks! She must have gathered that I was not in agreement since I changed the subject and moved on to other areas less controversial – like which cruise lines she liked!
We are off on a 12 night Caribbean cruise starting tomorrow so this will likely be the last entry on this blog until our return.
We both love cruises and now that we are retired we have the flexibility, within reason, to go for one as and when we please. This flexibility gives us the opportunity to take advantage of pricing which is usually a lot less during certain times of the year.
People either love cruises or they just don’t like them. We obviously fall in the first group and find cruises to be relaxing, love the ocean around us, enjoy the usually excellent food, the entertainment that is available after dinner, the flexibility to either laze around or to be involved in various activities and the opportunity to go to different places with the minimum of effort. One occasionally meets interesting people – and if one is fortunate enough to have some interesting company at the table one is assigned for dinner then it adds yet another dimension to the cruising experience. What cruises don’t offer is the chance to do some in depth exploration at ports of call since one is typically at each port for just one day.
We thought that we were experienced cruisers having been on ten prior cruises but veteran cruisers have been on dozens of them. In fact, on a cruise that we went on about two years ago we ran into a couple who had been on 97 cruises as of that time! As they put it, where can one have all accommodation, gourmet meals, room service, entertainment and transportation included at the fraction of the price it would entail if one were to try and do the same thing on land!
Our last two cruises have been with my brother, Peter and his wife, Shiny – and the one earlier this year included his children and our son, Amit. So that made for a lot of company and a lot of fun. So this will be a more subdued affair in comparison.
Thanksgiving is, without a doubt, my favorite holiday of the year. It has all of the elements that I find most desirable – a time to gather with family and extended family, lots of good food and fun. Most importantly from my standpoint, it has not been commercialized the way Christmas has in much of the West with the focus being on gift-giving and shopping. In the case of Thanksgiving the only shopping that one does is buying groceries for the dinner.
Wikipedia says: “Thanksgiving Day is a harvest festival celebrated primarily in Canada and the United States. Traditionally, it is a time to give thanks for the harvest and express gratitude in general. While perhaps religious in origin, Thanksgiving is now primarily identified as a secular holiday.”
There is really no equivalent holiday in India to Thanksgiving – perhaps, Onam which is a huge holiday in Kerala has some of the spirit of Thanksgiving though the similarities are limited.
We are hosting Thanksgiving dinner this year and will have around 28 people – most are family or extended family and a couple of friends. It is the one function that over the years – when we have hosted it – we have insisted should be done as far as possible in the traditional American way in terms of the cuisine. Yes, there will be the obligatory couple of items which have an Indian flavor but the dominant theme will be American with turkey, stuffing, beans casserole, corn casserole, pumpkin pie, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, etc.
I have to give full credit for the idea of making Thanksgiving traditional occasion to a friend from Chicago where we then lived – Thomas Idichandy, who was then a relatively recent immigrant from India. He was from Kerala and they were a fairly traditional Indian family. We spent our second Thanksgiving in the US – in 1972 – with them and I expected dinner to be Indian fare with a biriyani and other similar items with perhaps the obligatory turkey. I was surprised to find it was nothing like that – and was as traditional as you would find at any American home. Idichandy said the reason that he was insistent on keeping it traditional was primarily for the sake of his two very young children who had just started school. It is usual here for young children to be asked at school as to how they celebrated Thanksgiving and he felt that it would be unfair to his kids to have to listen to other kids talk about the traditional Thanksgiving that they celebrated and feel like the odd ones out in not being able to relate if they were eating Indian cuisine.
We then had one child – Saira – who was then two years old and as time went by, I felt that he had a legitimate point. This was our rationale as well – though as time went by and the kids grew up, it seemed like a good idea, in any event, to follow American tradition with regard to this one holiday. After all, we eat Indian food most of the year – so it makes for a pleasant change! Besides, cooking the traditional Thanksgiving with all of the fixins’ is still a lot less work than preparing Indian food for a similar celebration.
I am personally in charge of the turkey, mashed potatoes and a surprise dish which I have previously cooked and has been well received. It is not typical Thanksgiving fare by any means but it introduces a little variety to the dinner! I recommend this recipe to anyone who wants to try something different. As you can see it has great reviews.
A dinner for 28 people is a huge undertaking but all of those attending are helping out so it becomes manageable.
So have a wonderful Thanksgiving everyone – and in the spirit of the season I would urge you to send a card in support of our troops. Irrespective of one’s views about the wisdom of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or US foreign policy, I think we can all agree that our troops – who are, after all, following orders – deserve our support, especially at this time of the year when they are away from their families.
When Sarah Palin was selected by John McCain as his running mate, I was intrigued by the choice. On a personal level, I felt that her decision to give birth to a baby with full knowledge that he had Down’s Syndrome, was an act of grace and courage – and I admired her for it. I still do so. But I became quickly disillusioned as to her preparedness to be president if the circumstances ever warranted it.
As I watched the Sarah Palin appearance on Oprah and other shows it felt, as Yogi Berra would say, “like deja vu all over again”! On the one hand, I am able to understand her appeal to a sizable minority in the US. There is something refreshingly candid and genuine about her – unlike the typical politician’s scripted responses. Having said this, there was little about her responses on the various shows to persuade me that she has grown in the months subsequent to the presidential election and has the knowledge and understanding of complex issues to be president.
In fact, what came across was her tendency to resort to platitudes in her responses to complex issues. It is a source of puzzlement to me that according to a recent Washington Post/ABC poll, 46% of Americans would either definitely support her or would consider voting for Palin to be president. Also 43% have a favorable opinion of her. It is stunning to me after the presidency of George W, who even his supporters would acknowledge lacked intellectual curiosity and depth, would be willing to entrust the country to someone who makes Bush look like an intellectual giant.
I was an admirer of John McCain who I felt was a genuine American hero and a patriot and was someone who did not hold on to positions based purely on ideology. I felt that I could vote for him for president but all of that went up in smoke when he selected Sarah Palin as his vice presidential nominee. In the first major decision that he made as a presidential candidate he selected a person who he must have known was utterly unqualified to be president – and the fact that McCain was over 70 years old made the selection all the more inexplicable.
In 1994, we were living in Southern California when the Northridge earthquake occurred. It was 6.8 on the Richter scale and took place in the early hours of the morning while we were asleep. Our house literally shook for what seemed an eternity but was actually less than a minute. It felt like King Kong had grabbed hold of the house and was literally shaking it! Our house was probably about 7 miles – as the crow flies – from the epi-center.
Several days later I was in a discussion with an associate at the company where I worked. He was a Californian – born and bred – and I told him that given what we had experienced, I could not imagine what it would be when “the big one” would strike. “The big one”, in the parlance of California, was the quake which seismologists have predicted will hit California sooner or later and would be in the magnitude of somewhere between 8 and 9 on the Richter scale. He told me something that has stuck with me ever since. He dismissed the talk about the so called “big one”, not as to whether it would happen or not but in the context of what it really means. He said that for the people who lived at or near the epi-center of the Northridge earthquake, that quake was “the big one”. It did not matter to those people if a much larger quake were to occur elsewhere several hundred miles away from where they lived – even if that was generally accepted as “the real big one”.
All of the above came to mind in the context of the controversy that has erupted in the US over changes recommended in breast cancer screening for women through the use of mammograms and self-examinations. After years during which it was recommended that women over the age of 40 years should be screened annually for breast cancer through mammograms, a task force has recommended that women over the age of 40 years don’t need to be screened unless they fall into a high-risk group and that the self-examination is not needed. After the age of 50 years, bi-annual mammograms are recommended.
If anyone wants an example of how rationing in health care works, the following excerpt from this article provides it in spades:
“Statistics from the National Cancer Institute show that the risk a woman of 40 will be diagnosed with breast cancer before she turns 50 is relatively low – less than 2 percent. But the false positive rate for those same women is relatively high – 50 percent higher than women in their 50s.
And those women are likely to undergo further, more expensive, procedures — only to find out they are, in fact, healthy.
“Although screening every woman between the ages of 40 and 50 would turn up some breast cancer…the question is what is the cost per diagnosis per relevant harm,” said Marmor.
If that calculus sounds cold, it shouldn’t. That kind of cost-benefit analysis is, in fact, already routine in the health insurance industry.
“The question is going to be, between the ages of 40 and 50, what is the frequency with which you are going to find a true positive cancer finding, how many cases would we miss, how many of those cases would develop into cancer and what is it going to cost to treat them,” said Ian Duncan, president of Solucia, a company that provides actuarial health care analysis for insurers.”
I posted a few weeks ago about North Carolina’s plan to require higher health care premiums from state employees who are obese – a proposal that generated criticism especially from those who felt that reversing obesity was more appropriately done through education.
The “tea-party” crowd and Republicans who are so up in arms about various policies espoused by Barack Obama and the Democrat controlled Congress and especially health care reform should be glad that they don’t live in Japan. I say this because Japan is the only nation that has decided to mandate the waist size for men and women!
In an effort to combat obesity and the corresponding impact on rising health care costs, Japan has legislated that, after the age of 40 years, men must have a waist size of not more than 33.5″ and women must have a waist size of 35.4″. This is all the more remarkable in that Japan has a minimal problem with obesity, as evident in the chart shown below (courtesy of OECD) – only 3% of the population has a BMI greater than 30:
Incidentally, take a look at where the US ranks when it comes to obesity compared to other countries, with over 32% of the population with a BMI over 30!
The program in Japan, which aims to cut down on metabolic syndrome, a leading indicator for heart disease and diabetes, has been controversial and critics feel the thrust of the program is not scientifically well grounded. Some of the supporters say that Japan is being pro-active and addressing the problem before it gets out of hand. Japan like other countries is faced with the problem of rising healthcare costs for the aged – and this is an attempt to address a major factor in wellness care.
The print media in the US is facing the greatest financial crisis since its inception – essentially caused by the internet which has changed the way entire generations get their news. But I am getting ahead of myself ………………
When I was about twelve years old while living in Mombasa (Kenya), my father got on my case about the fact that I did not read the newspaper and was therefore ill-informed about what was going on it the world. He pestered me to a point where I started to read the paper reluctantly and with some resentment. Interestingly, over time I developed a genuine fascination with current affairs and politics – an interest that has stayed with me ever since. Now this was before the days when TV was available in Kenya – and the only sources of news were the newspaper and BBC radio transmissions which I also listened to avidly as it crackled through our short-wave radio.
It was a remarkable time in Kenya because the movement to gain independence from Britain was in full swing so there was a lot going on – and one did not have to be a political junkie to be enthralled with the nationalism that was prevalent and the efforts by the white settlers with their privileged life to thwart the freedom struggle. In time to come, after I moved to England and then to the US, my interest never waned – it just morphed into politics and other happenings in the country that I lived.
I came to appreciate my father’s admonitions to be an informed individual – though it was not a sentiment that I felt at the time. I will add that I tried to do the same thing with each of my children with remarkably little success – actually, at times it seemed that they reacted to my attempts to get them interested in the news by almost developing an aversion of sorts to listening or reading about current events, etc. I will add that my grandson, DJ, seems to show some level of interest in listening to the news, etc – though I am not sure whether it is something that he does in my presence to keep me happy!
Well, the years have rolled on and my interest has never really diminished – but what has happened is that my sources of information have become more varied and abundant with the advent of the internet. What is unusual for someone of my generation, is that I have gone off the print media and my only source of information nowadays is the the net – and for me it is almost a dream come true that I can read the news from almost any part of the world and a wide variety of sources with the click of a mouse!
I am clearly not typical of my generation – most of my generation still relies on the conventional newspaper for their news. But my children’s generation almost eschew the print media in just about any form and therein lies the crisis facing the conventional news media today.
Indians and most Asians, have had a love-affair with gold for centuries. Perhaps, it is because gold has always been viewed as the ultimate refuge in times of economic and political instability. In most of Asia where there is no safety net whether in the way of state pensions or government provided healthcare, having a stash of gold is viewed as a form of investment/security. To this day, in India and presumably other parts of Asia, when parents bestow upon their daughters at the time of marriage, large amounts of gold jewelry to be worn during the ceremony and reception.
Fast forward to the the US and the UK ……………..
I have to give my brother, Peter, credit for drawing my attention to this new phenomenon when he told me about it. Despite my extensive browsing of the net, I had not picked up on this new target for criminals.
Of course, it is not altogther surprising what with gold prices reaching well over $1000 an ounce – and the typical desi’s love affair with all things made of gold. When I say “gold” I am not referring to the 14 carat or 18 carat jewelry that Westerner’s wear but the “the real thing” which Indians – and other Asians – go for: namely, the 22 carat stuff. They would doubtless have gone for the 24 carat pure gold – except that it would be too soft for jewelry!
It turns out that South Asian (Indian or desi) homes in the US and the UK are being burgled and the only things being taken in many cases is gold jewelry. Apparently this has become an epidemic of sorts and the thieves are very discriminating in their choice of jewelry – the leave behind the fake gold and take the real stuff. And horror of horrors, nothing is sacred because the burglars are also ripping off the jeri (the gold embroidery sometimes used in abundance as decoration on saris) from the rest of the sari and taking away the jeri!
Now to offer context to any non-Indian reading this blog entry, Indians have customarily kept their expensive jewelry at home usually well hidden in the most unlikely of places to be retrieved and worn by the women folk on those special occasions when they would adorn their jewelry so that other women could admire/envy it – and seek to emulate them on their next visit to India! Putting it in a safe deposit box would rather defeat the purpose since ready access is needed to facilitate being able to wear it on those special social occasions which really is any party where a number of desis are gathered together.
Recent Comments