Book Review - Ghost Train to the Eastern Star by Paul Theroux

According to Mr. Paul Theroux a travel writer should be able to make a decent living if he's capable of making breezy generalizations. This I inferred from a paragraph about Prince Charles, one of the many people you meet as you journey across Asia through Mr. Theroux' wonderful travelogue. The author does not refrain from sweeping declarations himself, from "a country's pornography offers the quickest insight into the culture and inner life of a nation" to "Ugly and soulless, China represented the horror of answered prayers, a peasant's greedy dream of development".

I found myself agreeing with much of Mr. Theroux' impressions of India, especially the ones about modernity and development and what those concepts translate into on the ground. In other parts of Asia, in Sri Lanka and Vietnam for example, the author does sometimes display a bit of the western liberal's tendency to romanticize when confronted with the untouched countryside and laidback village life, but he then walks back, cognizant.

The book takes you from London, to Paris, Romania, Turkey, Mary, Tashkent, Amritsar, Mumbai, Chennai, Colombo, Rangoon, Bangkok, Hanoi, Kyoto, Vladivostok, Perm and then back to London through Berlin. Some of those cities are close friends of mine, some are mere acquaintances, most I will probably never meet. It is nice then to have an observant and tireless guide like Mr. Theroux show you around. He also is kind enough to take the time to sit down and talk to two of my favorite authors, Mr. Orhan Pamuk in Istanbul and Mr. Haruki Murakami in Tokyo. On the way we meet other colorful characters, an obnoxious environmentalist in the train to Jodhpur ("a gargoyle in horn-rimmed glasses") and a creepy pimp in Lee's Singapore. Speaking of Singapore, the writer gives the country a scathing treatment, portraying it more as an Orwellian dystopia than as the uber-efficient city state we all hear of.

Ghost Train to the Easter Star is an eminently quotable book, with several interesting thoughtful observations, both original and borrowed. It is also, like many books ambitious in scope, sometimes flawed in its generalizations. But that's okay. This is not a book on economics or sociology, it is a book of impressions, and impressions filtered through perspective are imperfect by definition.

An enjoyable read. Recommended.
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Netflix Instant Play - IE 6 Crash

I use an IBM (nee Lenovo!) T60 laptop and recently replaced my entire machine with another one, except for the hard disk. The old hard disk in a new laptop created some interesting problems. For example, iTunes forced me to register my laptop as a separate machine ("This is your second registration out of a maximum 5"). Another irritating problem was that IE (I'm still on 6, I use Firefox for browsing and IE only when forced to), kept crashing when I tried to play a movie via Netflix's Instant Viewing feature. This was weird because I'd been playing movies without any problems until last week, before I switched the hardware. Specifically, after clicking "Play", the screen would show "Determining video quality" and then the IE would crash. I did a quick search and found this link - http://smashedlife.wordpress.com/2007/06/03/netflix-instant-viewing-errors/

Based on the advice contained in that post, I downloaded the Netflix SDK Runtime Environment and the DRM Reset Utility. After installing the runtime environment and resetting the DRM I tried playing a movie - this time IE did not crash - instead, it prompted me to install another component and then played the movie. Problem solved!


Other system info -
OS - Windows XP Professional with SP2
Media Player - Windows Media Player v11
Browser - IE 6


Hope this helps!
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Hermes holiday display in San Francisco

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Fiat

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Movie Review - Flashbacks of a Fool

Based on the Rottentomatoes critics' consensus, I was a little reluctant renting this movie. I'm glad I wasn't dissuaded! This is an incredibly well directed movie with a superb cast, strong characters and some really good acting (Felicity Jones as the young Ruth is a delight). As another reviewer mentioned, the music by Roxy does stay with you. Ruth and Joe's first date, at her house, is a little reminiscent of the scene from Pulp Fiction where Vincent Vega goes to Marsellus' house to pick up Mia. In fact the discussion between Ruth and Joe on the relative merits of Bowie and Roxy is very Tarantion-esque (is that a word yet?).

I really enjoyed the movie and I think it is definitely worth your time (if you are the kind who likes the kind of movies I like :) ).
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Moulin Rouge, in Pigalle

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Dinner at Ladurée

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With a Sphinx at the Louvre

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A Love Poem and a Couplet

Aaaah! It has been several months since I last posted and today I feel like sharing one of my favorite love poems and a couplet. No reason. Enjoy!

Sonnet XVII

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

- Pablo Neruda


Zabaan-e yaar-e mun Turkie, wa mun Turkie nami daanum,
Che khush boodi agar boodi zabaanash dar dahanay mun.

translation
My beloved speaks Turkish, and Turkish I do not know;
How I wish if her tongue would have been in my mouth.

- Amir Khusrau
(via Yousuf Saeed's EXCELLENT site on Khusrau)
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The Invisible Hand

Labouring in Chinafrica


WHILE wonks argue Sachs verus Easterly versus Collier over brie and chianti, and Angelina, Bono, Oprah, and Madonna fall over each other to raise awareness about the importance of raising awareness, the Chinese have set about actually rebuilding (or building for the first time) much of Africa's economic infrastructure.

According to Akwe Amosu, an Africa expert for the Open Society Institute, "over 800 Chinese companies, the vast majority of them state-owned, are operating in 49 African countries." They are drilling for oil, extracting minerals, and building roads, railways, hotels, and factories.

China's willingness to support some of Africa's worst regimes in exchange for special access to African resources raises a number of serious worries, such as those laid out last year by Joshua Kurlantzick in The New Republic. One such worry (or hope, depending on your angle) is that increasing Chinese heft might reduce the power of African labour unions to negotiate stricter labour standards. An oft-overlooked aspect of this story is that Chinese companies working in Africa often insist on bringing their own workers. As Amosu reports:

It is a common complaint that when China contracts to deliver infrastructure projects in return for raw materials, it insists on the use of mostly Chinese labor, even in situations where African labor is abundant and desperate for opportunities to acquire new skills.

This may be a way for Chinese companies to steer clear of costly conflict with native unions. It may also be a way for African leaders to accelerate development while hoarding more of its spoils. If a prudently predatory autocrat has a way of increasing wealth creation in his domain without at the same time enriching potential political opposition, he will probably try it. But the explanation may be far simpler: Chinese companies prefer Chinese labour because it is more productive.

In an article this February in the Guardian, Lui Ping, the general manager for China's largest construction company in Zambia, is quoted as saying:

Chinese people can stand very hard work. This is a cultural difference. Chinese people work until they finish and then rest. Here they are like the British, they work according to a plan. They have tea breaks and a lot of days off. For our construction company that means it costs a lot more.

This may be sheer cultural bias, but it is also consistent with the sure-to-be-controversial thesis of Gregory Clark's forthcoming A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World. Mr Clark argues that differences in modren economic development are rooted in differences of labor quality. That is, rich countries are rich because their workers are better. This is one reason why offshoring may be an overblown worry: it may take so many additional lower-wage, lower-quality workers to produce the same product as a single, more expensive domestic worker that there is ultimately no savings. If Clark's thesis does in part explain African underdevelopment, then importing higher-quality labour, even if it is only slightly higher quality, may be crucial to setting Africa on a path to growth.

Mr Clark is perhaps wisely circumspect in his (non-)explanation of the underlying causes of differences in labour quality. He rather unhelpfully posits that "economies seem, to us, to alternate more or less randomly between relatively energetic phases and periods of somnolence." Whatever it may be, China these days seems to have acquired some of that economic élan vital. Whatever our well-placed worries about Chinese support of African illiberalism, if imported Chinese labour helps jolt Africa from its somnolence, it will have done more than fifty years of Foggy Bottom five year plans.

From here - http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2007/07/chinafrica.cfm
Image from - http://worldnews.about.com/od/majornewsstories/ig/Top-10-World-News-Stories/China-in-Africa.htm
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Slam Dunk


I fail to see why this is news. Everyone was in on this, Mr.Tenet is just trying to sell books I say.
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The Future of Car











The BMW Concept CS, unveiled at the Shanghi Auto Show. I think this "four door coupe" looks far more satisfying than the Mercedes-Benz CLS.
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Zeitgeist
Don't you just love Web2.0? Ublog now sports my LibraryThing, Last.fm, Flixster and Flickr widgets!! Oh so much fun it is to share exactly what I'm reading, listening to, watching and photographing :)
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Happiness


I've been mulling over a post on the inherent inconsistency of the concept of paradise but haven't gotten around to putting my thoughts down on paper yet. Meanwhile, Cato Unbound has an article on the futility of trying to achieve a state of continuous bliss. This is broadly my own view - I don't think it is possible for us as human beings to stay ecstatic for very long periods of time, for, it seems to me that happiness is relevant in context and vivid only when it is juxtaposed with periods of calm or even suffering. The Cato Unbound article discusses this issue at length and I'd recommend reading it in full. A selection follows.

[...]
Thus, one of the most striking developments in Western societies over the last several hundred years is the steady expansion of the hope and expectation of happiness in this life. Concomitant with this expansion has been the steady erosion of other ways of conceiving of life’s purpose and end. If other ways of doing so have not been entirely abandoned — there are those who still live for virtue, honor, one’s homeland, or family name — in a world that places a premium on good feeling and positive emotion, these other ends have nowhere near the power to channel and constrain our choices that they once did. The same may be said of religion — long considered the ultimate end — but which today, even in places like the United States, where religious observance remains strong, is more often than not treated as a means to a better and happier life. The American author of the 1767 True Pleasure, Cheerfulness, and Happiness, The Immediate Consequence of Religion was undoubtedly ahead of his time.[10] And yet only decades later, that famous observer of the young republic, Alexis de Tocqueville, found it difficult to be sure when listening to American preachers “whether the main object of religion is to procure eternal felicity in the next world or prosperity in this.”[11] Today, when not only Protestants, but Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, and Muslims regularly offer their faiths in America as effective means to earthly happiness, it is more difficult still to discern religion’s main object. In a sense, they too serve the greatest of the modern gods, the most uljavascript:void(0)
Publishtimate of ultimate ends: the god of good feeling, who now reigns here below.
[...]

Note Photo from at DaveWard at Flickr

Update 1, April 6 2007 The article link to CATO Unbound no longer seems active and I can't find the essay in the archives either. I'll update the link if I can find it.

Update 2 April 7 2007 The mysterious disappearance of the The Pursuit of Happiness in Perspective has been explained. Thank you Will!

Update 3 April 9 2007 The article I was referring to in this post is now available.

Labels: 2007, cato, happiness, libertarianism, psychology

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Book Review: Forbidden Colors by Yukio Mishima



Yukio Mishima was one of Japan's most prolific writers in the past century and is well known for his The Sound of Waves amongst other works. I've just finished reading Forbidden Colors in a translation by Alfred H. Marks.

Forbidden Colors is the story of Yuichi Minami, a young Japanese student whose beauty overpowers everyone who sees him, irrespective of their sexual leanings. Yuichi is gay and harbors a deep hatred for the strictly heterosexual culture he finds himself in. With the encouragement and guidance of Shunsuke Hinoki, a retired novelist, he marries Yasuko, a young beautiful woman Shunsuke was involved with before she met Yuichi. Yuichi's beauty allows him to carry on simultaneous (asexual) affairs with several different women while also enjoying the indulgence of practically every gay man he meets at Rudon's, an underground gay bar.

Shunsuke's relationship with Yuichi and the young man's overall personality is reminscent of Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray, and like his victorian counterpart Yuichi is a difficult character to feel any sympathy for. Even though Yuichi feels frustrated about the constraints he finds himself in he never exhibits any tenderness or love for anyone at all. Throughout the length of the book he continues to exploit everyone around him, from Shunsuke, who believes he's using Yuichi to avenge the affronts handed over to him by younger women, to Yuichi's silently suffering wife Yasuko.

If you've enjoyed The Picture of Dorian Gray then you'll probably enjoy Forbidden Colors. I certainly did. Recommended.

Labels: 2007, book review, forbidden colors, yukio mishima

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H-1B Cap For FY2008 Reached In One Day
The USCIS announced today that the H-1B cap for FY2008 was reached on the first working day that applications were accepted, Monday April 2nd 2007. From the notice posted on the USCIS site -

As of late Monday afternoon (April 2), USCIS had received approximately 150,000 cap-subject H-1B petitions. USCIS must perform initial data entry for all filings received on April 2 and April 3 prior to conducting the random selection process. In light of the high volume of filings, USCIS will not be able to conduct the random selection for several weeks.

This is incredible, they received a 150 thousand applications on the very first day, and they will randomly select 65000 from the total received on April 2nd and 3rd, which means the probability of getting a work visa is less than 30%. Where are all these applications coming from though? From the various mailing lists I'm on I get the impression a huge percentage of these applications will be filed for contractors. The contractor system is something I've completely failed to grapple with so far. Most big firms hire short term contractors for specialized projects, paying hundreds of dollars per hour for these supposedly highly skilled engineers and analysts. The ground reality however, is quite different. There is an entire ecosystem of contractors and sub-contractors called dallas (slang for pimp) who train fresh graduates for a few months on tools like CrystalReports and Documentum, then create resumes showing several years of experience and get these graduates placed. Amazingly, this crackpot system works - the engineer ends up getting a tiny fraction of the actual billing rate and the rest gets distributed amongst the layers of dallas he's had to go through to get the job. There is no doubt in my mind that the deluge of applications received by the USCIS is driven in no small measure by these very unscrupulous firms.
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