Clock Radio For Sale: Cheap
My ex-pat war story doesn't quite begin with getting one's news the high tech way, that is, access to BBC World on shortwave radio or the low end route--finding a 2 week old Herald Tribune left behind by back packers in a 2 dollar a night Himalayan hostel, but I worked with people in the mid-90s who began their English as a Second Language teaching careers in the 1960s and 1970s who came to the profession to avoid Vietnam, routing their draft lottery chances through the Peace Corps, who did get news of the outside world in dribs and drabs over a period of days or weeks or months.
However, when I first worked in Kuwait there was no satellite access where I lived, only Kuwait TV One (Arabic) and Kuwait TV Two (English). I had a clock radio that picked up armed forces broadcasts of feeds of both NPR and Rush Limbaugh. And my Herald Tribune was usually only a couple of days behind.
A couple of years into my ex-patting, some person whose name escapes me now, offered to drive me and Ken Shabby, a three-legged cat I'd adopted, to the vet on a Thursday morning, the first day of the weekend, but first she had to go into work and check her Hotmail. That morning I first heard about this thing, this E. Mail.
It would take another year of armed forces broadcasts, phone bills capable of cashing out a month's salary, the occasional fax sent and received in a copy shop in Kuwait City and regular old letter writing before a co-worker sneakily took me by the hand and showed me our department's lone innernet-capable computer. One computer online in an engineering department that must have had fifty dozens of instructors and professor's of various rankings--that's why the sneaking. Then and there I tapped information into boxes, agreed to receiving a truckload of digital magazines and agreed to the terms of service for my very own Hotmail account.
Following 13 years of one sea change after another in that area, I wonder now why I'd expected that other stable builds would be passed over by worldwide evolution.
Back then, one traded in basic human rights and the voodoo magic of zip codes for tax free salaries which would eventually bankroll retirement in some cost effective heaven on earth like Thailand--where three bedroom bungalows near the beach went for ten grand and where people spoke a language that had more words for blow job than Eskimos have for snow.
Relatively speaking, the cost of a 3 bedroom house, though it may have gone up 600% since 1996, is still quite affordable. But what about all these other sea changes and quantum leaps? No way is democracy an American export worth killing of our kids in uniform to force upon the dirt dog poor of the world.
What about the death knell of US auto manufacturers? What about. . .what about. . . what about. . . .
We move on from the beach to the mountains soon to check out investments and maybe pull some stupid stunts on a raging river.
Oh. And another given that's gone--discounts. Turns out, those people in the developing world we'd heard were hit worst by the economic downturning never had much cash on hand anyway, so it makes them no never mind if I go white water rafting or not--so long as I pay full price. Same thing goes for the housing market here. Discounts? Shit. These people can live on rice and mangos, and most still do. If you want to own a home here, you're paying full price. And if you can't afford it, and nobody else wants to pay full price, they'll wait us out, snacking on our frozen rice and mango treats, diddy bopping through life from bj to bj.
However, when I first worked in Kuwait there was no satellite access where I lived, only Kuwait TV One (Arabic) and Kuwait TV Two (English). I had a clock radio that picked up armed forces broadcasts of feeds of both NPR and Rush Limbaugh. And my Herald Tribune was usually only a couple of days behind.
A couple of years into my ex-patting, some person whose name escapes me now, offered to drive me and Ken Shabby, a three-legged cat I'd adopted, to the vet on a Thursday morning, the first day of the weekend, but first she had to go into work and check her Hotmail. That morning I first heard about this thing, this E. Mail.
It would take another year of armed forces broadcasts, phone bills capable of cashing out a month's salary, the occasional fax sent and received in a copy shop in Kuwait City and regular old letter writing before a co-worker sneakily took me by the hand and showed me our department's lone innernet-capable computer. One computer online in an engineering department that must have had fifty dozens of instructors and professor's of various rankings--that's why the sneaking. Then and there I tapped information into boxes, agreed to receiving a truckload of digital magazines and agreed to the terms of service for my very own Hotmail account.
Following 13 years of one sea change after another in that area, I wonder now why I'd expected that other stable builds would be passed over by worldwide evolution.
Back then, one traded in basic human rights and the voodoo magic of zip codes for tax free salaries which would eventually bankroll retirement in some cost effective heaven on earth like Thailand--where three bedroom bungalows near the beach went for ten grand and where people spoke a language that had more words for blow job than Eskimos have for snow.
Relatively speaking, the cost of a 3 bedroom house, though it may have gone up 600% since 1996, is still quite affordable. But what about all these other sea changes and quantum leaps? No way is democracy an American export worth killing of our kids in uniform to force upon the dirt dog poor of the world.
What about the death knell of US auto manufacturers? What about. . .what about. . . what about. . . .
We move on from the beach to the mountains soon to check out investments and maybe pull some stupid stunts on a raging river.
Oh. And another given that's gone--discounts. Turns out, those people in the developing world we'd heard were hit worst by the economic downturning never had much cash on hand anyway, so it makes them no never mind if I go white water rafting or not--so long as I pay full price. Same thing goes for the housing market here. Discounts? Shit. These people can live on rice and mangos, and most still do. If you want to own a home here, you're paying full price. And if you can't afford it, and nobody else wants to pay full price, they'll wait us out, snacking on our frozen rice and mango treats, diddy bopping through life from bj to bj.
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3 Comments:
Technology has grabbed us by the balls and now everyone is connected. The rice and mango eating people have life to the fullest, we live vicariously through others via the Internets!
Sage is just saying that because I've been getting all my entertainment from HER twitters. :):) (No, but really ... what's vicarious even further removed by a 140 character limit?)
ANYWAY. I enjoyed these observations, thinkings very much.
The price of connectedness was SUPER extraordinary in the former satellite countries.
But I liked that because it was a constant reminder to measure the worth, the relationship. While it was sooooo easy for the fund managers to talk about democracy when what they were really doing was taking advantage of virgins in free markets, those of us who struggled to pay the same frickin' ghastly prices as the locals had ... well, not leverage or bargaining power, but currency. Yah. Currency in a conversation and project.
And that mattered. Still matters.
Sage--that's xactly what they do, push their frozen rice and mango carts onot a street corner, family dog and a coupla babies in tow and sit there from early morn to midnight watching the foreigners go by. If they were smart, they charge 25 cents for a chance to pet their dogs--which everyone does as they pass I'd pony up the money.
Booda, bi-planes at airshows will always remind us what God has wrought
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