saturday notes

Last night, I actually met a sub-prime mortgage investment banker who was fired from Bear-Stearns in London. He is now in Kunming trying to learn Chinese. The grass really is greener over here on the other side. His temperament was strikingly, um, fierce and antsy. He really hated getting advice from the Icelandic guys who always tried to tell him how to invest. Ha! They are all done now. And they wish they spoke Chinese....

AND

I will post this here for now, but will come back to it. I have been telling people for weeks that we should just buy all the damn poppy in Afghanistan, infiltrate, deprive them of the revenue, save our cash, and maintain the largest national warehouse of opium. Then Christopher Hitchens has to go and actually write the article (this week!) that lays out the logic in a contextual way. I just spout. See Sudarshan, this is no joke! This is How We Win In Afghanistan.

Here:
I happen to know that this option has been discussed at quite high levels in Afghanistan itself, and I leave you to guess at the sort of political constraints that prevent it from being discussed intelligently in public in the United States. But if we ever have to have the melancholy inquest on how we "lost" a country we had once liberated, this will be one of the places where the conversation will have to start.

AND

China is going to announce major land-ownership reform in the next few days?!

As the population ages and the workforce shrinks, agriculture will need to be modernized.
As the country modernizes, urbanization will draw people off the land.

I have been thinking about this issue for a long time. Wow! And now, on the 30th anniversary of the Reform and Opening, Wen is looking for a way to inject some energy into the rural economy, to incentivize efficiency and offer a pathway into the cash economy for those 800 million farmers tied firmly to their subsistence plots (by a precarious red government string, of course) What an exciting time!

Voting, Crisis and Laundry

I have been busy the last few days... getting back into my routine, going to pilates class, four loads of laundry (by hand!) doing research on Yunnan, having a send-off for a friend headed back to the States, celebrating birthdays.... regular life stuff. Oh and thank you to the Cook County Board of Elections for sending me all my fancy absentee ballot materials to my email inbox. How nice of them.

Here are a few interesting things I have come across lately:

George Packer's profile of real voters in Ohio, people talking about how they are organizing, not voting, undecided... The whole spectrum is represented, in their own words! Captivating.

I have made friends with an Icelandic kid who rides around Kunming everyday. One day his country's financial meltdown might make sense to him. I wonder if this is the first of many casualties.

Perhaps we can all feel better that some portfolio managers are taking note of the low stock prices and seem eager to get back in the buying state of mind. Perhaps fear really will trump logic? This NYT article looks at how people are reacting.

Steve Coll at the New Yorker takes a short look at how we got here in the first place.

People don’t generally panic in the sunshine. They panic in the dark. And we are in the dark about what assets and liabilities are truly held in what has been properly labeled the “shadow banking system”--the global aggregation of hedge funds, privately placed debt securities, and the hedging or insurance contracts known as credit default swaps.

And in China...
Chinese banks had to write-off more than 300$US billion in stocks and bonds when the big collapses occurred. They seem to think this is a drop in the bucket. China needs the United States to not collapse.
But their are certainly many many opportunities in this mess for them, not least among them the chance to buy into cheap foreign companies, a strong rationale for a strong continued government hand at the wheel of the macro-economy, and a growing understanding of why China is indeed a major player in the health and future of the US economy. Their optimism looks something like reassurance.

Prime Minister Wen: "So long as people of all countries, especially their leaders, can do away with hostility, estrangement and prejudice, treat each other with sincerity and an open mind, and forge ahead hand in hand, mankind will overcome all difficulties and embrace a brighter and better future," he said.

"China, as a responsible major developing country, is ready to work with other members of the international community to strengthen cooperation, share opportunities, meet challenges and contribute to the harmonious and sustainable development of the world," he said.

Asia Times: "In the past, China has been blamed for the low-degree of internationalization of its financial industries. Now it seems we are profiting from this 'fault,' according to XinHua commentary.

"Our not-fully-open financial system and not-fully-convertible currency saved China from being rattled during the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. And now again this seems to be a strong dam to protect us against the current financial tsunami," an economics researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) said.

This picture is for my mom.
She bristles at Barack's finger pointing.
There is much blame to be assigned.
Go Get 'Em Barack!

As John Falls, So Shall We Stand

Why is John McCain acting so angry and delusional? Why is Sarah Palin so frustratingly evasive? Why are both sides lying or exaggerating about so many issues and policies? I am happy to hear that Barack is staying steady in his tone and climbing in the polls. It seems McCain (or McCain 2.0, depending on your beliefs in body-snatching) is doing himself in each time he opens his mouth. But as I have noted before, McCain has turned into a human talking points memo... a broken record... a canned act... a puppet. His mistake is continuing to rely on a team that is internally split; one side is the maverick who wants to champion his departures from party line (ie. immigration) and the other side is the Bush-style-red-button-pressing-Rightist. He is bound to come across as schizophrenic, unsteady and disingenuous (at best).

I like this video of Maddow; you can see McCain being described as 'Uncle Ziggy in the ZigZag Express' by Newsweek's Jonathan Alter. Watching McCain blame Barack for the financial crisis has helped me realize how purely delusional he really is. Thank goodness Barack can use it to highlight the fact that 'John must be feeling panicked.' An irrational panicked old man for president will hopefully scare the centrists over the fence to the side of all that could be good in the world.

UPDATE: This profile of McCain in Rolling Stone is captivating. He comes across as entirely consistent... in his blind ambition, disregard for others, complete lack of humility and inability to stand up for anything. SCARY!

AND: Frank Rich has put together a compelling rationale explaining why Palin is Cheney with lipstick. SCARY!

AND: Apparently, Barack is going to hit John on the Keating incident in a big way. As Joe would say, "What is past is prologue." I hope the chickens are coming home to roost.

Shangri-La and Beyond

I have put together some photos from our recent trip up north to Zhongdian, Lijiang and Dali. You can visit my Facebook page to see more pictures here to get sense of what we were up to in Paradise!

Earmarks for All (& I Love Ezra)

This post over at Foreign Policy Magazine's blog, Passport, seems to sum up the ridiculousness of McCain's hollow, out of proportion rants against 'earmarks' and 'pork barrel spending.'

I remember working in the Governor's Office and encountering many kinds of earmarks. There was money for roads and bridges, schools and hospitals, stadiums and community centers. I remember thinking that everyone must have one of these projects in their backyard. And I thought about the Governor teaming up with Mayor Daley to go to Washington to ask for federal dollars for the regional public transportation network. When I actually worked for the regional commuter transportation agency, the Governor said no to a state-funded bailout package. I guess my point it that sometimes federal funding of infrastructure and community projects should come from the federal government, but there should be a mechanism for the Feds to work with State and Local authorities to prioritize, manage, monitor and evaluate projects on a case-by-case basis.

Hell, I live in an increasingly inequitable country where the State government continues to get subsidized infrastructure loans from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank at below market interest rates just because they ask for them. In China, hundreds of subsidized kilometers of roads and rail track are laid each year while the government holds $518 billion in US Treasury Bonds and fails to make any noticeable investments in education, poverty reduction, social security or health care.

I will take some earmarks any day, thanks.

UPDATE (10/03): Apparently, Ezra was having some similar thoughts. He has, of course, gathered some interesting sources that illustrate my point exactly.

The "how-a-bill-becomes-a-law" lesson from last night's bailout bill vote is pretty simple: Pork.

McCain loves to condemn pork, but the fundamental reality of lawmaking is that pork is how bills get passed. Brad Plumer wrote a great article on this for The New Republic back in 2006:

"The point is this: Any big-government program on the progressive wish list will likely prove even more difficult to pass than the 1986 tax reform or 1993 budget. Single-payer health care? Card check for unions? Reductions in carbon emissions? It won't get done without an orgy of earmarks to entice the inevitable skeptics in Congress. That won't be pretty, but if the price of, say, universal insurance is a bit of borderline corruption here and there, it's a tradeoff worth making."

Like a lot of McCain's posturing, his war on pork makes for good headlines and bad governance. If he were anywhere near as dogmatic on earmarks as he claims to be, it's impossible to imagine him passing any major legislation. Ever. Or voting for any major legislation. or approving budget bills and spending. Or having a working relationship with Congress. Or getting reelected, as every district in the country finds crucial programs and infrastructure subsidies are being cut.

Meanwhile, whenever the topic turns to earmarks, I always suggest that folks go play around the the Sunlight Foundation's interactive earmarks map. Earmarks are rarely obviously wasteful. Rather, they're small appropriations that exist beneath the urgency level that would merit federal consideration. So districts and states elect individual representatives and one of their side jobs is to push through local priorities. Those priorities may be odd, but relatively few are obviously wasteful. Type in my hometown of Irvine, and the nearest earmark is in Long Beach: $450,000 to outfit the children's hospital. Near to that is Mission Viejo, with $400,000 for the Neonatal and Pediatric Intensive Care Unity. And a tick over from that is Huntington Beach, which got $50,000 for an afterschool arts education program for low income youth. It's easy to talk about cutting studies on bear DNA. It's a bit harder to explain why you want to cut children's hospitals and afterschool programs. And it's nearly impossible to then say how you're going to pass bills after you do.

Go West!: Philanthropist Entrepreneurs in Western China

James Fallows took a trip out to the rural West of China where cities are rare and desert landscapes dominate. He and his wife happened upon a fascinating project that has evolved over many years- Taiwanese entrepreneurs who decided to invest in the lives of poor rural children on the mainland. This is an example of people with no direct interest thinking about equity and equality and opportunity in ways that hopefully may become more pervasive.

Here are some excerpts from his story:

On Western China:

If I were running a travel agency, I would skip the likes of Beijing and Shanghai and send foreign visitors out toward these western villages, where they would see aspects of China beyond its urban spectacle and manufacturing prowess.

In the villages, people effectively live in a different century.

This is not the China that most foreigners read about or experience on visits, but its isolation and poverty are important parts of any understanding of China.

On Sayling Wen, entrepreneur, founder of Inventec:

In 2000, he developed a new and very powerful passion: to save the poor people of western China. He had a new idea: western China would have to become fully modernized—brought into parity with Shanghai and Beijing—by 2010. Soon he had written a manifesto called Develop Western China in Ten Years, which was published in English and Chinese, and he steered Inventec’s money toward sites in the west.

On Kenny Lin, engineer, researcher and manager:

The hardship that stunned him most was the powerlessness of rural people against brute natural misfortune. “Oh God, help these simple and innocent children out of the poverty, deliver them from the tortures of the lack of rain,” Lin wrote.

The Story:
These two men made a grand scheme replete with grand gestures. They planned to transform 1,000 rural villages into globally integrated 'internet villages' and worked with western schools on exchange projects. They made grandiose plans for a hotel, resort, conference center that would welcome easterners in a non-confrontational setting where they could learn about the economic reality of their fellow compatriots.

THEN ONE OF THE GUYS DIED...

The management of the resort was turned over and the eco-tourism, international exchange vision was scrapped in favor of a lure-Chinese-businessmen and tourists model.

The internet villages that were training the village kids to dream of an urban lifestyle instead has been refocused to help lure global business to western China.

And the company has also ventured into 'outright philanthropy' where kids apply for a stipend that essentially covers their public school fees and boarding costs ($115/year). In exchange, the kids are required to research and write about aspects of their rural life. As Fallows puts it, 'They are essentially paid to become bloggers.'

The essays are available at WestChinaStory.com; One middle-school student writes about the “moment of joy” when the family wheat crop is ready for harvest. A high-school boy tells about how great it was when his school got a basketball to play with outside. Another, about learning Tibetan dance. Another, what is hard but satisfying about herding sheep. It might sound maudlin, but having met some of these children, I take their accounts as alive, hopeful, human.

Some 2,200 rural students now earn their keep through this kind of blogging, supported by half a million dollars in donations mainly from Taiwan, Hong Kong, the United States, and a few businesses in mainland China. My wife and I signed up to “hire” a number of blogging students from the school that welcomed us. (On the site, you can not only see all of the students’ essays in Chinese and their pictures but also choose students to sponsor at 800 RMB, or about $115, per year.) I’d like to know what becomes of them.

It is fascinating to see this kind of homegrown philanthropy, one that recognizes the huge burden that the Chinese public education puts on poor families. I remember meeting an American woman in Zhong Dian years ago who had set something like this up specifically for girls in Sichuan and Yunnan. This kind of story makes me hopeful that more people will understand the bifuricated nature of China- East and West- and the great growing inequalities that threaten to undermine any hope of gender and class equality going forward. I personally will continue to think about the modes of development that are most likely create opportunity for rural kids and families.

Home Sweet Home

There is so much to write about from the trip these last two weeks. I have stories...photos...musings! But I realize that I have so much to do in the next few days to catch up on my (growing) To Do List.
Being away from a computer for so long makes it harder to jump back in, but....
1) The world continues to be fascinating
2) I can't help myself from diving into the news
3) My little Vaio is chugging along alright for now
4) My new b-day presents from my mom (mini-flatscreen + dvd player) helps draw the line between work and audio visual entertainment
5) I am really excited to finish some work in order to get back to musing on the places I have been recently and even places I wish I had gone

SO, look for pictures soon and stories soon after. I will be putting my nose to the grindstone.

Final Crows Arrived and We're Off!!

Consuella and Diane have both arrived safely and all is well. Consuella had a good day yesterda ybeing introduced to Kunming's scenery. Mom had a nice dinner with the Xizhou family. Diane made it through a monsoon in Shanghai. It is warm and sunny and we are heading off Right Now to the ceiling of the world to test our high elevation chops and medidate on boutique hotel verandas overlooking a sacred mountain. What an adventure! More later....

I am sipping Gin and (Lemon) Juice with my Mom In KUNMING!!!

she is here. she is talking about things she read in magazines. things about the election. brain development. china. she cracks me up. she likes my apartment. and we really are drinking gin and juice.

Morning Show Madness: McCain 2.0

I was just scanning the news to see how depressed I could get about the economy when I stumbled upon this pastiche of McCain on every single morning show. Apparently, John is taking a populist turn: praising workers, dissing executives. But, I scratch my head and think.... You are an Anti-Regulator and so much of this crisis started with deregulation and loopholes that he supported. Workers (and unions) depend on RULES that PROTECT them from Greed and Corruption. It makes me kind of ill to watch this, but here goes... John McCain becomes a populist with a very very rigid set of talking points.

And: notice at 2:12, he says, "dead-a-little." Does this mean John is rigged up as the spokesperson for some mysterious man behind the curtain? Will the real Wizard of Oz please stand up!

UPDATE:

From Steve at the Washington Monthly
To hear John McCain tell it, when it comes to the Wall Street crisis, he deserves credit, not for taking steps to prevent it, but for knowing it was coming.

On CBS's "The Early Show" yesterday, McCain said, "[T]wo years ago I warned that the oversight of Fannie and Freddie was terrible, that we were facing a crisis because of it, or certainly serious problems.... [T]he influence that Fannie and Freddie had in the inside-the-beltway, old-boy network, which led to this kind of corruption is unacceptable, and I
warned about it a couple of years ago."

Evidence to support McCain's gift of foresight is surprisingly thin. In fact, evidence to the contrary is much easier to come by.

ABC's Jake Tapper found an interview McCain did in New Hampshire, shortly before the Republican presidential primary, on the seriousness and the dimensions of the subprime mortgage crisis. McCain conceded that he didn't see the mortgage crisis coming.

"I don't know the dimensions of this. It's hard to know what the dimensions are.... [I]n this whole new derivative stuff, and SIBs and all of this kind of new ways of packaging mortgages together and all that is something that frankly I don't know a lot about.

"But I do rely on a lot of smart people that I have that are both in my employ and acquaintances of mine. And most of them did not anticipate this. Most of them, I mean I can find some that did. But, a guy that's on my staff named Doug Holtz-Eakin, who was once the head of the Office of Management and Budget, said that there was nervousness out there. There's nervousness. There was nervousness that we had such a long period of prosperity without a downturn because of the history of our economy. But I don't know of hardly anybody, with the exception of a handful, that said 'wait a minute, this thing is getting completely out of hand and is overheating.'

"So, I'd like to tell you that I did anticipate it, but I have to give you straight talk, I did not."

Funny, he seems to have a far different message now. I wonder why that is?

ANOTHER MCCAIN REINVENTION UNDERWAY.... Yesterday, on the "Today" show, John McCain rejected the notion of government intervention to support AIG, saying, "I do not believe that the American taxpayer should be on the hook for AIG." NBC's Matt Lauer asked, "So, if we get to the point, in the middle of the week when AIG might have to file for bankruptcy, they're on their own?" McCain replied, "Well, they're on their own."

This morning on "Good Morning America," McCain took a far different line on the bailout. "I didn't want to do that. And I don't think anybody I know wanted to do that. But there are literally millions of people whose retirement, whose investment, whose insurance were at risk here," McCain said.

It was yet another reminder that when it comes to addressing trying economic times, McCain has to pretend he never believed all of the things he's always believed.

A decade ago, Sen. John McCain embraced legislation to broadly deregulate the banking and insurance industries, helping to sweep aside a thicket of rules established over decades in favor of a less restricted financial marketplace that proponents said would result in greater economic growth.

Now, as the Bush administration scrambles to prevent the collapse of the American International Group (AIG), the nation's largest insurance company, and stabilize a tumultuous Wall Street, the Republican presidential nominee is scrambling to recast himself as a champion of regulation to end "reckless conduct, corruption and unbridled greed" on Wall Street. [...]

McCain hopes to tap into anger among voters who are looking for someone to blame for the economic meltdown that threatens their home values, bank accounts and 401(k) plans. But his past support of congressional deregulation efforts and his arguments against "government interference" in the free market by federal, state and local officials have given Sen. Barack Obama an opening to press the advantage Democrats traditionally have in times of economic trouble.

This is more than just about giving Obama an opening; it's principally about McCain trying to reinvent himself on the fly, hoping no one notices.

[In 1999], McCain had joined with other Republicans to push through landmark legislation sponsored by then-Sen. Phil Gramm (Tex.), who is now an economic adviser to his campaign. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act aimed to make the country's financial institutions competitive by removing the Depression-era walls between banking, investment and insurance companies.

That bill allowed AIG to participate in the gold rush of a rapidly expanding global banking and investment market. But the legislation also helped pave the way for companies such as AIG and Lehman Brothers to become behemoths laden with bad loans and investments.

McCain now condemns the executives at those companies for pursuing the ambitions that the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act made possible.

In other words, McCain personally gave the financial industry a green light to do exactly what they did. And now he's outraged.

It's precisely why McCain's economic message has been so oddly incoherent this week. Turning on a dime, he's gone from supporting fewer regulations to supporting more, from supporting less oversight to supporting more. McCain is slamming Wall Street execs for playing a dangerous game after McCain helped throw out the rules.

McCain said during the Republican primaries, "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should." He continues to prove it with each passing day.

In case anyone was wondering....

I have been camped out her in Kunming this week, not posting much. When I read the news, I am starting to get weary. Watching the US economy implode is not a fun activity. I sit at the bar with friends lamenting the future of the world. There are so many cynical people here who really think McCain is going to win. I literally cry in my whiskey.

I did my part this week and registered for an absentee ballot with the Chengdu Consulate. There was something very exciting about applying for a ballot in China. Apparently, Cook County is the only county in Illinois that will allow you to vote via email. My friend from Texas has to fax it in.

In other news... I have been preparing for the arrival of my mom and her two lovely lady friends. We are going to take a 10 day trip up into the mountains of Shangri-La and wind our way back through Lijiang and Dali, back to Kunming. I have made a makeshift bed out of foam and thick quilts for my mom to sleep on. I have filled the house with flowers. I am really excited to show them my city and take a break together. I live in semi-retirement at this point, but I know they really need a break from the hectic Chicago work-a-day lifestyle.

It is strange to think that just three weeks ago I was sunning on the beaches of northwest Sumatra and soaking in an entirely new environment. It will be good to go up high into the Himalayas for a change of scenery.

This picture makes me laugh. There was an old school desktop just sitting on the beach. The boats were bobbing out on the ocean, the breeze was blowing... and then the modern world jumped into view. Makes me happy to leave my computer by itself some days.

McCain vs. The World

It seems that McCain and his foreign policy team have taken a very Cold War-era approach to the rest of the world. In simple math, it goes something like this... Georgia=good, Russia=Bad. According to McCain's chief foreign policy guy, Randy Scheunemann, Russia and China are not our allies and pose serious threats the the United States and democracy in general.

I like the way Ezra responds to this madness:

One thing worth keeping in mind about great power conflicts is that they're rarely inevitable. At times, France and England have been at war, and at times they've been allies. A lot of it has to do with how leaders interact with each other, and whether they aggressively court conflict or publicly seek a constructive relationship. If you court conflict, soon enough, the other country does, and both sides build up a narrative of slights and provocations -- many of them quite real -- that lead to war and discord. But it is a choice: You can decide whether you want a relationship defined by transgressions and stare-downs, or whether you want a relationship where the overriding narrative is of alliance and both sides work to play down points of disagreement. Scheunemann, here, is courting conflict, and as McCain's chief foreign policy adviser, that's a pretty good indicator for how a McCain administration would look.

One of McCain's ideas - a league of democracies - is supposed to counter the perceived threat of a Russian or Chinese veto in the United Nations Security Council. While I think there are critical issues where a Chinese veto stymies progress (eg. Burma), the Security Council does a great deal to serve the interests of the United States.

Yglesias puts it well:

The UN Security Council mechanism by design prevents any country from taking action that is deemed contrary to the vital interests of the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Russia, or France. This causes some very real problems. It’s important to note, however, that it’s a completely two way street and, historically, the U.S. does more vetoing than any other country. I think it would make a lot of sense for the United States to propose shifting the Security Council from a unanimity rule to some kind of qualified majority rule. But what Scheunemann seems to be contemplating (a world in which the US does get to protect its vital interests, but Russia and China don’t) is going to be a non-starter in Moscow and Beijing for obvious reasons.

And at the end of the day, each country is going to do what it is going to do:

If the U.S. were to try to invade Burma in the face of Russian and Chinese opposition, in the context of new great power tensions, you’d just wind up with a bloody proxy conflict not with vast new humanitarian benefits. The problem, at the end of the day, is with the underlying pattern of facts — SLORC is terrible, Burma is close to China, China sees defending Burma’s sovereignty as important, and China is a big and important country these days. Given those facts, there’s no great procedural fix no matter what you do with the UN Security Council. But the Security Council mechanism, as currently operating, has a lot of value in other domains that would be lost if we cast it aside in pursuit of a fantasy that doing so would somehow allow us to completely brush off opposition of other major countries to certain proposed military adventures.

Thou Shalt Not Cook On T.V.

I love Thailand. After weeks of protests across the country, the Prime Minister was finally forced out of office for...hosting a cooking show.

Dieting: Save My Soul and Our Planet!

I remember the first time I heard the Dalai Lama say that in order to find inner peace Americans should eat less. Now we have the United Nations saying we should reduce meat consumption in order to slow global warming. And, sure science says a reduced calorie diet extends life by up to 1/3, but these days who knows if that is a good thing.

Look for Illinois

A little statistical analysis goes a long way. It seems that governors in small states have higher approval ratings because "In a large state, there will be more ambitious politicians on the other side, eager to knock off the incumbent governor; small states often have part-time legislatures and thus the governor is involved in less political conflict."

I include this not only because Gov. Palin seems to follow this trend, but because Gov. Blago (my former boss) seems to have hit a new and lowest low. Yikes!!

Sino Space Walk Planned

While my mom and her two lady friends will be here in China, there are bound to be some fun newspaper reports to take home for souvenirs. It's like they planned it or something....

Palin's Jeramiah Wright?

It seems that Republican VP candidate Palin has some interesting 'religious mentor' issues in her closet as well. I wonder if the Democrats will mention it (probably not) and what the Republicans would have to say in her defense. Ideas: She was not in the pews that day. She does not subscribe to these extreme views of her pastor. America (and Wassilla, AK, even) are bastions of sin and only the saved will survive the wrath. What bittersweet revelations...

Kroon placed Zephaniah in a modern context, warning that the sinful habits of Americans would invite the wrath of God. “And if Zephaniah were here today,” Kroon bellowed, “he’d be saying, ‘Listen, [God] is gonna deal with all the inhabitants of the earth. He is gonna strike out His hand against, yes, Wasilla; and Alaska; and the United States of America. There’s no exceptions here — there’s none. It’s all.’”

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan and the Atlantic

Bangkok Bliss

I put a few photos of my recent trip through Bangkok here on my Facebook page. It was the first time I had the chance to navigate the city on my own, but there were the usual stops to Chatuchak JJ Market and stunning views of the river. Enjoy!

Indonesia Pictures

I have posted a few of the pictures from my trip to Indonesia on my Facebook page. I plan on posting more so stay tuned, You can click here to take a look! If that does not work, just go to my Facebook page and scroll down on the left to my picture album called Awesome Aceh.

Melting Machines

I wish I could say it has been a great 24 hours, but I have been battling with technology. I hate to admit this, but I am not that great with computers and my technical Chinese (How DO you say compressed air?) is lacking. Yesterday. I noticed my precious laptop running sloooow and hooooot and getting angry with sudden shut downs. As you may well imagine, my computer is my lifeline to the outside world. I NEED it. So, I set off in search of a can of compressed air to blow out the piles of Kunming dirt nad dust that must have been accumulating.

At the computer bizarre, I found weak little vacuums and screen cleaner. Then, I found someone who seemed to know what I was talking about. She somehow convinced me that a can of air with some 'detergents' was just what I was lookin' for. Sure! It says it is used to clean precision instruments and that is exactly what this hardworking laptop is to me. So I took home the spray and blasted the chemical mist into the vents and around the keys to 'remove the dust and dirt'...BUT seconds later I realized the spray was melting my computer!!!! MELTING, like the Wicked Witch of the West. I scrubbed, to no avail. My heart sank.

After a few drinks with friends who came over and consoled me that the most precious, expensive thing I own was not dead.... I realized a few things: I cannot afford a new laptop so must make this work; I should NEVER trust Chinese computer people again unless they know me; I really really really love and depend on this machine; I CAN reinstall Firefox and solve one of the random scary 'crash' issues I have been facing today; When the fan stopped, I realized perhaps I need to go to a professional for help on that one; AND my old laptop has a lovely grey-ish talc powder patina on the entire keyboard that will forever serve to remind me how careless I am not to have done an 'allergy test' like they advise on the bottles of hair dye.

I am trying to remain calm in the face of random shut downs, sticky keys and crashing programs, but I wanted to write this on the computer as long as it is staying on and functioning for a few minutes. I hope on my life this is not the last dispatch from Old (Nuclear Bomb Tested) Faithful.

UPDATE: The NYT today posted a recall notice on Vaios. Funny, my model is not included but it does remind me that other people have melting computers as well.