Robbing Peter to pay Paul, or is it simply your turn?

With the "Obamacare" bill now before the Supreme Court, the rhetoric is heating up. I like to read the comments on various news articles to get a feel for the sentiment on both sides of the argument, but in this case I will confess that my mind is already made up on the healthcare issue. It has been my considered opinion for decades, after I had carefully thought it over and looked at various opinions and realities, that any nation worth its salt should, if it has the resources, do for its citizens three things: ensure that nobody goes hungry, that the sick are treated and that education is not hindered by poverty. And I don't think that any substantive argument exists to show that the United States does not have the resources to do all three.

The current "Obamacare" bill, or the Affordable Care Act, is a carefully crafted centrist bill designed to mollify President Obama's constituents concerned about universal healthcare, and to pacify the conservatives who believe that universal healthcare would necessarily mean that the lower 50% who allegedly pay no taxes would become grifters helping themselves to enormous slices of free healthcare while pretending to be broke. In truth, it does neither. It is not a universal healthcare bill, in that it requires even people who cannot necessarily afford it to buy coverage, based on arbitrary income guidelines. What a specified income gets you can vary considerably from one county to the next, let alone various regions of the country. Secondly, it is not the free-market system that the conservatives insist upon, for the simple reason that it compels the buyer. Both sides want to see this fail, to re-start the debate and get what they want.

I, too, want this to fail, because I see this as a cave-in to the insurance companies, who will add enormously to their profits, and because it will cause additional hardship to those already suffering in a declining America. The United States is already spending approximately one-fifth of its GDP on medical care, and about a third of that is on Medicare/Medicaid. The insurance companies collect about three-fifths of all health-care related expenses as premiums, and unfortunately, the substantial profits which they make are also lumped in as "healthcare costs" in this debate. Contrary to popular perception, Medicaid costs are not incurred by the indigent elderly. These are mostly for very poor families(quite a number of whom actually vote Republican), and temporarily indigent people. As for the procedures typically attributed to the elderly, such as hip and knee replacements, I am seeing more and more of these being done for relatively young people, in their 40s and 50s, and some even in their 30s. So accusing any one group of patients/insured for disproportionately and indiscriminately using services is somewhat ill-informed.

I've observed, over the last three decades, a slide in the conservative mindset to a very selfish outlook. While the poor have never really been the focus of right-wing sympathy, at least one could argue that conservatives still had real national loyalty that worked to the benefit of the poor. Even that has eroded to almost nothing now. The argument on the conservative side pretty much runs to "Let the free market work". I submit that it has been the free market working thus far- except for the Medicare/Medicaid programs, and it has been found wanting, much as using wolves to guard flocks of sheep. True free markets are akin to anarchy, and it benefits individuals at the cost of the well-being of society. That's why we have anti-trust and anti-racketeering laws.

It is not just Medicare/Medicaid which has driven up the costs of healthcare, but equally the general healthcare system, a substantial measure of which are the insurance companies' ever-rising premiums. When numbers are bandied about on healthcare spending, as a percentage of GDP or per capita, it includes premiums.  Another major factor is how Big Pharma is ripping off the American consumer. In no other country in the world are pharmaceuticals as expensive as in the US, and the rationale for that is that American pharmaceutical companies(which are no more "American" than any other MNC) need to recoup the enormous amounts they allegedly spend(and more of it overseas now than ever before) on developing each drug, and they successfully lobby both to keep out generics and competitive products as well as to overprice their product. My question, then, is this: why do Americans have to pay up the cost of developing medical drugs while the rest of the world gets the same drugs at far lower prices? And what happens to the alleged concern for the operation of the "free market"?

One commenter on an NYT story on today's SC proceedings says, "Send the bill to the person who uses the service and not the taxpayer, just as utility bills or credit card bills are send[sic] to the user of those services." Perhaps he doesn't realize that virtually nobody pays directly for medical services, as most are covered under some sort of insurance plan, and insurance is actually socialist, in the sense that risk is shared. If that commenter had to pay out of pocket for catastrophic care for himself or a family member, I'm pretty sure he would be handily bankrupted. The same goes for other forms of insurance, such as automobile or home insurance. How many people who have lost homes to tornadoes, earthquakes, fires and floods would be able to rebuild if it weren't for the millions of others with firmly standing homes who are paying into an insurance pool? And yet nobody asks that the whole insurance business be repealed, and that people should pay as needed and according to their ability.

The same silly argument, of "free markets", is being bandied about regarding the public school system. The argument, which I've heard and refuted for years, goes: why should I have to pay school taxes when I have no kids in school? Why should I pay school taxes when I send my child to a private school? The reality is that school taxes do a lot more than just send your kid to school. It subsidizes the education of other kids when your kid is done, just as others did when you were going to school. If you happen to be fortunate enough to have been so successful as to send your child to a private school for $60,000 a year, it doesn't take away the fact that, most likely, your own education was subsidized by others who had no children in school and you should thank them for their magnanimity. School taxes are also a form or insurance, insuring that all children in the school district can go to school regardless of their parents' income. And, not least of all, a good school district props up your home's value.

Conservatives swear by religion, and most US conservatives profess Christianity. The distinguishing feature of Jesus' teachings is empathy for those less fortunate. This should be the hallmark of the conservative movement. Unfortunately, it is the least of it. Universal healthcare is not some Robin Hood scheme. It is not different than any other form of socialism that many don't complain about: police, fire brigades, public schools, freeways, public water bodies, public libraries, public parks, the military(yes, that's socialist too, because it protects you and your property from foreign raiders without you paying as you go), and on and on. Most of the volunteer firefighters I've met are from lower-income families, as are most of our fighting men and women. You and your forefathers have benefited from these and many more, with others subsidizing your costs before you were able to afford them. Now that you no longer need these subsidies, it's your turn to help others out. Go on, be an American again!

No dog food for me, thank you!

On previous visits to India, I'd noticed that the domestic help made demands/comments that would have merited instant firing in earlier days, but I didn't pay much attention because I was on short visits, and with the mindset of an expatriate, I was willing to let it go because it was a short-term issue. This time, being here for a longer duration, I must endure and alter, if I can!

The first thing I observe is the demands for raises, sometimes within a month of the original hire. This is made for various reasons: "The house is much bigger than I thought", "Auto fares have gone up", "My husband lost his job", "I have to move out of my mother-in-law's house", "My rent has gone up", "Food prices are soaring", and so on. All perfectly valid reasons to ask for a raise, except for the last one, which came from a young man who ate all his meals here and therefore was not in the least impacted by the soaring price of food or, for that matter, rents or auto fares. What sours me on these demands are two things: One, a month is not a sufficient period to warrant demanding a raise, unless you were hired conditionally. And two, demanding a 20% year on year raise is, to my mind, unreasonable- especially when I've myself rarely seen over a 5% raise. I'm paying a part-time maid twice what I recall paying a full time cook 5 years ago. And they all eat here(very well, I might add), so that's a bonus for them.

Then there are the "food requirements":
Nescafe or Sunrise only, please, none of that nasty Coorg coffee that you drink.
Coffee/tea on demand all day long, with at least 50% milk and as much sugar as I want. (There seems to be a virtual epidemic of hypertension and hyperglycemia among young domestic workers.)
Liquid soap to wash hands[which I don't mind if they wash their hands appropriately without using up the whole darn bottle in two days]; regular soap dries my skin.
Whole-wheat bread is not kosher, we prefer a whole loaf each of sweet white bread, preferably from Koshy's.
If dosas are for breakfast, then it should be 4-6 masala dosas each, or 6-8 plain dosas(" I don't know how you live on 1 masala dosa or 4 slices of toast, but I can't").
Toasted bread(and even French toast) must be accompanied by dollops of Amul butter and Kissan mixed fruit jam.
Meat in some form should be on the menu every day for lunch and dinner.
Fish that costs less than INR300 a kilo is too cheap to be worthy of eating, we're not dogs.
Rice three days in a row is unacceptable, and must be substituted by chappatis or parathas.
Nothing left over from yesterday, not even the sambhar or vegetables, and especially not yesterday's rice, we're not dogs.
No "dry" rotis or bland curries, we're not dogs.
What's this "macaroni"? Give us rotis instead, we're not dogs.
 Eggs at lunch or dinner must be supplemental to the regular meat dish, not a substitute. We're not dogs.

And requirements from the live-ins: Gillette Sensor razors, Dove soap, moisturizing cream, hair conditioners and tonics, real fruit juice(they love apple juice), cookies(Dark Fantasy seems to be a favorite), etc.

Okay, so those were demands from different people, but it's amazing how quickly bad habits can be transmitted. It seems like the "old" workers instruct the newer ones on what to demand and how to get away with doing the least. There was a muted hint at wanting bottled water like I drink, but I nixed that on the theory that drinking the boiled Aquaguard-treated water seems to have worked fine for them until I showed up. [Note: I have now myself transitioned to the Aquaguard water, without boiling(one must be conservative with gas use now, with the 6 cylinder limitation), with no apparent ill-effects.]

Now onto work habits. Again, the best way I can present this is to just pass on their comments:
If you want me to vacuum, I can't clean the toilets.
I'm the cook, I don't cut vegetables and I don't do dishes.
I cut the vegetables and do the dishes. I don't make coffee.
I wash clothes and mop the floors. I don't make coffee.
If you want me to water the plants, pay me another 5,000(and I still don't make coffee).
I'm leaving early today(and I don't need to ask you, I'm telling you).
I'll clean the upstairs tomorrow, I vacuumed downstairs today.
I don't do ironing(there's an ironing lady down the street if you need it). And I don't make coffee.

Somehow, the idea that you are hired to work for an x number of hours does not seem to have entered the consciousness of the domestic worker. Right now, I'm down to a live-in housekeeper(en famille, and said famille enthusiastically reprises the role of food critic) and a part-time maid. The maid was hired to work from 9 AM to 2 PM. but she's whittled that down to roughly three and a half hours now, occasionally throwing in a bonus hour, and manages to eat breakfast and lunch in that time. She also shows up anytime between 8 AM and 10 AM, depending on her mood,  or perhaps some other job. The housekeeper does her job, which consists mainly of looking after her own family, but will make it seem like she's putting in enormous effort solely on my behalf.

For now, it works. Even if I'm the only one drinking pure Coorg coffee.

 

Why Indian engineering is below par

Bangalore has gotten hotter, and much sooner in the year, than I ever remember it. It's gotten so I find it hard to get to sleep at night without air-conditioning. As an interim measure, since I don't know how long I'll be here, I decided to get what is euphemistically referred to as a "room cooler". In point of fact, such devices do not cool the room, but do provide a cooler air flow in a swath a couple of feet wide and about 10 feet deep, using the principle of evaporative cooling. You can set it to oscillate, which means you get about 3 seconds of cool breeze for every 10 that it is on. Evaporative cooling works best in low-humidity weather, such as Bangalore has at the moment, but the benefit diminishes with rising humidity levels. So, right now, it's best to use it with the windows open, and when the humid weather gets here, to leave it off altogether.

Anyhow, I bought a Bajaj room cooler, which is a brand well-known and respected in India, and the manufacturer of the Bajaj Pulsar motorcycle, which is one of the better motorcycles in India, designed by the British-born Glynn Kerr. I unpack it, and read the instructions, which are pretty basic. The first thing I have to do is fill the receptacle with water, pouring it into an opening at the top of the machine, until the "built-in water gauge" reads full.

So I'm filling it carefully, watching the gauge. It looks like it still has a bit to go before it's full. At this point, I see water pooling on the polished tile floor, which is not something I like to see, having slipped in one such puddle and broken my wrist. I start swearing, and quickly get a towel to mop up the seeping water.

Muttering to myself about the possibility of a cracked water tank, I take a closer look and find a label helpfully pointing to the source of the leak:

Really, Bajaj? Overflow? But your *#%@ gauge said it wasn't full yet! And if you knew this was where it was going to overflow, why didn't you design in a catch jar, or something, so it wouldn't start spilling right away on the smooth-as-glass polished tile floor that most Indian homes seem to have and make me slip and break my limbs? Even better, why didn't you put in a Plexiglas window in the tank where I could actually see the water level instead of relying on your *#%@ gauge(which has a Plexiglas window in front of it)?

As trifling as this may seem, it points to why Indian design still has a long way to go to, if it ever will, catch up to western design. The problem, as I see it, is a failure to consumer-test or "de-bug",  a term that should be familiar to software-centric India. De-bugging involves product testing in real-world settings- or settings simulated to the real-world as closely as possible- and consumer clinics and such. I see many examples of such unacceptable design failures in Indian goods, construction and services every day, which is one reason why they fail to make headway overseas unless it is the result of overseas collaboration, such as with the Hyundai i10 or the Suzuki Swift, or even the prodigious software that is produced to the design parameters, specifications and oversight of western clients. Even Indians dismissively refer to poor-quality products as "local", reinforcing the mindset that anything produced locally does not have to be made to a superior(read "western") standard. It is a careless inattention to detail and finish, enabled by the "local" mindset.

Anyways, my towel is now drying on the floor while the Bajaj "room cooler" produces a swathe of relatively cooler air that will hopefully lull me to sleep tonight! That is, as long as the power doesn't conk too frequently...........

UPDATE: This room cooler thing just didn't work for me, often resulting in a humid room by early morning, unless there was enough of a breeze to clear the room. It was a p-i-t-a to keep the thing topped up, since it usually depleted in 8-10 hours. Moreover, the sediment in the city water was a big problem, turning everything that the water ran over a muddy brown color. And that's without even getting into biological hazards in the water. So I ended up doing what I should have done to begin with: bought an energy-efficient air-conditioner, which has run pretty much non-stop since I bought it. And I'm sleeping well once again.

This was what the water in the holding tank looked like after about 10 days of use



Postscript: I think I will occasionally add things that I come across that pertain to this Indian under-engineering issue. Yesterday, the hose on a water-heater("geyser") split, and I discovered four things. First, the heater had no non-return valve to prevent back-washing of hot water through the cold water pipe, especially when pressure drops on the input side. This, of course, leads to energy loss. The second thing I found was that the shut-off valve was on the hot water outlet side, which meant I could not shut off the incoming cold water to the heater without shutting off the water for the whole house. Way to go! Third, the heater unit(V-Guard, Krystal series) did not have a watertight electrics compartment like it should have, given that these things are installed usually right by the shower area, so when the hose split it spewed hot water(since it had never shut off due to wiring issues) into the electrical compartment shorting out the electrics and setting the plastic bits on fire. The fourth thing was that the power outlet's electrical wiring was so messed up that power was flowing to the heater with the switch in the off position, which resulted, unbeknown to me, in the heater operating for months while I thought it wasn't being used. There is no color-coding whatsoever used in the wiring, and as a result the outlets are rife with ground-faults. I've opened outlets in which all the wiring was black, or all white, or all brown. The golden rule seems to be, just run what ya brung! That wiring needs to be color-coded- and with good reason- seems to be something Indian electricians are blissfully unaware of, and apparently just as blissfully overlooked when certificates of occupancy are given.

April, 2013: My handheld shower sprung a leak on the back of the shower-head, something I have never seen in 3 decades of using hand-held showers. This is a relatively new unit, just over 2 years old, and fairly expensive as Indian bath fixtures go. My guess is the chrome was plated over a substandard core which either already had a pinhole, or developed one because the material was not meant to be used in this application. In any case, another fail for Indian engineering. Is it unreasonable to expect that a shower fixture should function as intended for at least 10 years? I can just see a product engineer saying, "That's good enough for local use!" before signing off on production.

Conflicting economic headlines

I feel like I needed to rant today about how we are bombarded every day with conflicting "news" and opinions. Yesterday, for example, Bloomberg carried "Asian Stocks Rise on China Hope" and "Europe Declines on China data".  Then we have reports on "Stocks Cheaper Now Than Two Years Ago- here's why" juxtaposed next to "Stocks Not So Cheap Now". And we have the interminable "Why you should invest in gold" and "Why gold is not a good investment" battle.

I realize that you can find a contrary opinion on just about anything, but when the same source(e.g., Bloomberg, CNBC, Reuters, etc.) simultaneously or in close sequence publish or air them, as they have been doing for years, it provides no insight to the reader/viewer. Which I guess is the whole point of it: plausible deniability and plausible credibility. But what the financial media were doing was minimizing the import of actual news and events, while playing up the contrarian content which served to keep the people where they wanted them. On many days, the content was eerily similar across networks, down to the language being used, like someone was feeding them the talking points for the day.

Prior to the market bottom, every little up day was trumpeted as heralding a recovery, and people were discouraged from selling off.  For almost the entire bull run of the stock markets after the bottom on March 9, 2009, retail investors- meaning people who invest for themselves, in their IRAs, 401(k)s, etc.- were told that there was an imminent return to that market bottom, because it "has to be re-tested in order to be confirmed", even though there was no historical basis for such  a stance. They were thus discouraged from buying in at the market lows. Jim Cramer and CNBC were particularly guilty of that asininity. Cramer's accuracy record, by the way, is worse than a coin toss. See this and this. When the Dow began approaching 9000 again, the mantra changed to "Is it too late to get in the market now?". The result was that people sold off their holdings at or near the bottom, and then sat on the sidelines while the markets rose(or, more accurately, were driven) to unrealistic highs. At that point, when it seemed reasonably clear that the market could not be pushed higher without retail participation, the little people were invited to jump back in, and buy their stocks back on the sound investment principle of "sell low, buy high".

To the best of my recollection, the only person who called the March 9, 2009 bottom was the late Mark Haines, not a week or a month later, but the very next day. He was not an economist or a finance guy, but by whatever methods he used to arrive at it, he made the right call, and was the only high-profile media person to do so as far as I can recall. As a result, that market bottom came to be known as "the Haines bottom" on CNBC. They should have booted Cramer and given Haines his own show on the strength of that!

My opinion on the markets today is that the high levels are completely unwarranted, given the tremendous uncertainly about all sorts of issues, from the European recession, to the Chinese growth contraction, to the uncertain American growth, political and military uncertainty around the world, and the continued trade deficit. And then we still have the overhang of millions of unsold bank-owned homes, the fact that the reduction in US unemployment has come at the expense of wages(thus further reducing purchasing power), and the gigantic US national debt which can only be made manageable through high inflation for many, many years. We are certainly not at that point back in 2007 when optimism built upon completely fraudulent data and assurances seemed to support record high prices for stocks. I foresee an American future when the nuclear family consists of at least 4 adults, because 2 adults cannot survive on their own. That cannot be good for America, and what's not good for America is usually not good for the world.

Postscript:

Why does the market keep its unwarranted optimism, but on a day to day basis seems to show so much uncertainty? Because it is manipulated on the macro as well as the micro level, as this recent(September 2012) chart of the DJIA shows:

 

 Control on this scale, generating hundreds of billions of dollars in guaranteed profit every year, requires enormous capital as well as total control of market makers and market moving news incorporated into a realtime total awareness information handling system which rivals and probably surpasses anything US intelligence services have. Literally perhaps only a couple of dozen people(or private entities) possess the resources to put this together and keep it running.

 

 

Do India's rich live in a bubble world?

I was prompted to make this post after reading, and pondering over, the story that Abhishek Bachchan, the movie-star son of movie super-star Amitabh Bachchan, has "booked" a new Audi A8 for his 4-month old baby daughter. Not quite sure what that means, since I'm sure that Baby B(or Baby A, as the rumors have it- Amitabh, Abhishek, wife Aishwarya[Miss World 1994], so Baby A looks quite likely- I feel sorry for odd-one-out Jaya who cannot pack the family-monogrammed towels and toiletries) will not be ordering her chauffeur around from home to playdates to ice-cream parlors, or pack it with her baby friends for a joyride around town. But it has made headlines here in India, and mostly admiring ones.

[Update: I'm not sure what happened to the "booked" Audi A8, but Abhishek Bachchan has now apparently bought Baby Aaradhya a new red Mini Cooper S for her first birthday. I'm sure she'll have a ball driving that around town.]

It's not that the Bachchans, senior or junior, lack for luxury cars in their stables. The senior Bachchan was supposedly gifted a Maybach by a friend, and then he allegedly gifted a Bentley to his son, and now junior Bachchan allegedly gifts a $300,000 Audi A8 to his infant daughter. But all the super luxury cars aside, the stables do include a fair number of luxury cars like BMWs, Mercedes, Range Rovers, etc., which means they have a decent complement of "status" vehicles to be seen in(which, after all, is the whole point of luxury vehicles, which have such a low rate of return on their inflated prices that they are really quite a joke). So why buy a car for your infant daughter(rather than for yourself or your wife) that costs the equivalent of 300 years' earnings of the average Indian?

Normally, I couldn't care less who bought what car or what palatial home. But India is different. There are people who own $30 million apartments in Mumbai(and one whose "family home" is a $500 million 27-story monument to bad taste) who encounter the worst sort of poverty that exists in the whole world as soon as they get out of their gilt-ceilinged homes and the high-speed elevator of their climate-controlled high-security super-luxury apartment buildings and into their million-dollar chauffeur driven cars. This isn't some hedge-fund manager taking a tour around lower Manhattan in his new Lamborghini Aventador, which would actually be a rather enjoyable experience. But when you make your money a dollar per off of people who make a little more than a dollar a day, it would be more appropriate to be less conspicuous in your consumption, and perhaps a little more conspicuous in your charity. Nero is excoriated for allegedly playing the fiddle while Rome burned(thus displaying a contempt for the conditions of the citizenry). Is it any less worthy of censure when wealth is flaunted in the face of excruciating poverty?

The funny thing about super-rich Indians who own exotic cars, especially the ones capable of close to 200 mph, is that they cannot even drive them out of their own garages. They need to flat-bed them to the nearest new toll highways, which have the only road surfaces in all of India that would not scrape the catalytic converter off the underside of your exotic $1 million supercar. So realistically, you spend that enormous sum of money on a "status" car, in one of the poorest societies on the planet, so that you can spend perhaps 2 hours a month driving it in the company of your fellow profligates at "invitation only" show-off parades.

In the entire city of Bangalore aka Bengaluru, there is not a single road- and I mean this literally, not one single road- where you could drive a Chevy Corvette at the legal maximum speed(just under 40 mph) without doing serious damage to the underside. Ditto for the euphemistically-named "highways" which are not toll-access. Digressing for a moment, the "highway" from Bangalore's CBD to the new international airport is one of the worst roads I have ever encountered, with no marked lanes, full of potholes and sudden "diversions" that appear at the last second, and they have the nerve to have begun collecting tolls without even having resurfaced the road, let alone having marked lanes!

Getting back to the point: I find that rich people in India don't give a rat's tail about anything that doesn't directly impact them. Example: (Since I'm in Bangalore at the moment, my examples will tend to be from Bangalore!) Church Street in Bangalore is known as "restaurant row", and there is no doubt that a good number of restaurants located on that street do very good business indeed(i.e., they make boatloads of money). And yet these restaurateurs(and the other businesses along the street) do not seem to consider for a moment that they should band together and "do up" the street. Often, when I walk along Church Street, I am struck by the thought that I could have a thoroughly satisfying meal at any of the several "upscale" restaurants along that thoroughfare, and then promptly disgorge the expensive contents of my stomach upon coming out onto the street. The stench that permeates the entire length of the street has to be experienced. Most of it seems to bubble up from the unpiped sewer that runs under the poorly sealed sidewalk. Why do Indians have such tolerance for violations of basic sanitary rules? And if you can afford to do something, whether on your own or in concert with others of means, what keeps you from doing something about it? Especially if it will contribute to better business? Sheer apathy, is my conclusion. I will not patronize a restaurant on Church Street again until it is cleaned up.

My point is simply this: if you've made a fortune off of poor people, give back. And if you don't- and even if you do- don't flaunt it like you don't have a conscience. If you do flaunt it, you obviously have more money than you deserve, and less class than you think.

P.S.: I'd have liked to have had some pictures to go along with this post, but I don't have any handy just now. I will add some later. In the meanwhile, as I was Googling for related content, I came across this, coincidentally published today!

Middle-class Bangaloreans are trying to do something about cleaning up the city: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=m8fikwv3Obg

The little banana-cart girl

I'm going to transplant and consolidate the story of the banana-cart girl, which got my niece clamoring for me to blog, from Facebook to blogger.com, and update it as necessary.

___________________________________________

February 24, 2012

I was out for a walk today, and at about 5 PM, I spotted this girl. She had gotten out of school at 4 PM, and was spelling her mother at the family banana cart, selling bananas at 6 cents each- and doing her homework. I gave her some money,... and she beamed a beautiful smile at me. No matter how difficult we think things are for us at times, others are having it much tougher- and not complaining. Instead, they work with their situation to do the best they can. God bless her dear little heart!

 

February 27

The little banana-cart girl. She was quite shy to pose for the photo. I gave her some notebooks, pens, pencils, erasers, glue sticks, glitter pens and a geometry box. She was thrilled!

We complain about all sorts of things, and use them as excuses for why we don't do stuff. It looks like the poor girl doesn't even have a change of clothes. She's wearing the same shirt she had on when I last saw her. I'm going to see if any of the brat's kiddie clothes are lying around here.

February 27

 Actually, she does have a change of clothes! She had pink on before, but that was some sort of dress top, not the shirt she has on here. Still, I'm sure she could use some of the brat's hand-me-downs!

March 10

The little girl's name is Laxmipathi Geetha("Geetha"). I gave her a bunch of the brat's old clothes, some of which have never been worn. She was wearing the same shirt as in this picture. Met the mother, brother and little sister today. Hopefully will put up a picture, sometime next week, of her in her new duds.

Poor and sick people have life too

There's a story today about a couple with a Down Syndrome child being awarded $2.9 million for misdiagnosis. The couple say that they would have aborted if they had known the child would have DS. Predictably, that has brought out the pro-choice and anti-abortion protagonists, as, for example, in this from the NY Daily News: http://tinyurl.com/6t5w7gj

Now, I'm not for or against abortion, per se, and I think each instance should be considered on its own merits. There are many factors to be considered. But what really amuses me about the anti-abortion crowd, besides the fact that they tend to vote almost solidly Republican, is that they are not as concerned about the "right to life" after a child is born. The same people who get hysterically violent violently hysterical when issues like this story come up are usually the ones who oppose- among other things-  health care to the indigent(or indeed health care as a right), financial support for poor young parents or a single parent, "free" quality education regardless of financial ability as many advanced nations(and some not so advanced) do for their citizens, environmental protections in areas and neighborhoods mainly populated by the poor(think "NIMBY"), minimum wage support and unemployment/social security benefits.

The concern for life should not end after a baby is born. The quality of life, access to needed healthcare, access to a decent education, the right to live in as unpolluted an environment as any other community, a working wage sufficient that parents can provide their child with adequate nutrition, clothing and uncontaminated housing, access to health care for the parents themselves so they can continue to take care of their children: these are also part of the "right to life", and I find it entirely hypocritical of the right-wing to trumpet their "pro-life" stance when their post-birth views stand in dire contrast to the very cause they claim to champion. I recall that when Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul whether a sick 30-year old with no health insurance should be allowed to die, the audience- comprised mainly of Tea Party Republicans- screamed "Yeah!". Is the right to life contingent on income? Does the income-independant right to life end after birth?

Getting a bbq grill in this town

Okay, so my niece(who I love dearly) has been getting on my case about writing a blog rather than Facebooking all my comments, so here I am, dusting the cobwebs off this neglected blog and hopefully putting in more time at it!


Lately, I've been looking high and low in Bangalore for an inexpensive barbecue grill. My preference was for an LPG grill, because it's clean and convenient. But the only one I was able to even glimpse in Bangalore, outside of the expats' homes, was a Weber priced at INR65000(about $1300). A Weber dome charcoal grill is INR13,000 plus the necessary addons which bring it up to about INR20000($400). I was able to locate a guy on eBay who was selling a sort of knockoff for much less, about INR4000, but he apparently has run out of stock. So here I am, hankering for a home-grilled burger or chicken drumstick, with my least expensive option seeming to be the Weber charcoal grill.

So in searching for alternatives, I came across a Sears page in the Google results, with the perfect sort of basic LPG-fired grill(see pic below) that I want priced at an unbelievable INR6433($129)! And the page said that Sears ships internationally, and that there are no hidden costs.

Now I'm thinking, if I can get this bad boy here for under INR10000, complete with the little LPG tank and piezoelectric ignition(Look, Ma! No soot!), we're in business! So I go to the checkout, which redirects me to an outfit called FiftyOne, which apparently handles Sears' overseas transactions and logistics. At checkout, I find out that my little $129 gas grill will suck out more cash than I'm willing to pay to get it:

All told, it seems that the INR6433($129) would balloon up to just a shade over INR20000($400) if I wish for the privilege of outdoor gas grilling in Bangalore. Still seems like a bargain when you look at the other alternative, the $1300 Weber, but I just can't get my head around paying $400 for a $129 grill.  Oh well, back to the search!

UPDATE:

I bought a charcoal grill(like the one pictured above), and messed around with the charcoal and the much-touted Weber fire-starter and Weber briquettes. After a good deal of frustration- and swearing and hand-washing- I decided to abandon it. Don't know whether it's the quality of the charcoal or something I'm doing wrong, but I just couldn't keep the coals alive. Finally, I was able to locate a gas grill(Trade Links Corp., 79 SJP Road) at the reasonable price of Rs. 7500(lava rock, gas regulator and other accessories extra). I have been able to grill on it several times, less than I would have liked to but for the gusty monsoon breezes which dissipate the heat, but am happy with it thus far. It's big enough to grill for half-a-dozen people at once, and light enough to carry indoors when necessary. I need to find a waterproof, UV-stable cover for it, though.

UPDATE: Weber seems to be selling smaller gas grills here now. I spotted one at a place in Indiranagar called MK Ahmed on CMH Road, between 100 Ft Rd and 80 Ft Rd. It's similar in size to the one pictured above, with a cast iron grate and a stainless steel burner that runs in a square ring around the bottom of the pan, which is nice, because it eliminates the cold spots typically found toward the outsides of the cooking surface plus it minimizes flareups from dripping fat.  It was priced at approximately INR26,000. A bit pricey still, but not too bad for Weber quality, and definitely a bunch more affordable than their bigger grills.

P.S.: I'd often had difficulties finding computer parts and equipment in Bangalore, and finally my go-to place became The Computer Warehouse at Barton Court on MG Road. But even they didn't always have what I needed(sometimes an archaic part like a fax modem), and besides I like when there is a little competition. You get better prices when it's not the only store for miles around. Recently, I located a whole street full of computer stores in the KR Market area which has just about anything you might need. It's a street called Sadar Patrappa Road(Google Map), but be prepared to deal with the full range of dirt, trash and stench as you navigate your way inland from the main road. Any port in a storm, as the saying goes!

Sadar Patrappa Road