TECHMAN Chronicles-The Bangalore Zone

Today we had a couple of hours to kill in the afternoon so we went down to an area called Commercial Street ("I used to like this area before they sold out and became so commercial, ha ha"). We went to an area which turned out to be the Muslim quarter. I have to admit I was a little nervous walking by the mosque as Friday sermons were beginning.

Like always there were plenty of pushy vendors but I learned that those are mostly in the street. If you go into the stores some of them tend to be less pushy-but they will talk your ear off trying to tell you why you should buy their product.

I did see a couple of interesting things but they were basically just tchotchkes so I didn't buy anything, and I have absolutely no interest in silk, so I began to grow a little bored. I went ahead on my own, albeit a little apprehensively, but I became more confident as people seemed to leave me to myself for the most part. I decided instead of taking a taxi/rickshaw I would take a chance and try winding my way back to the hotel, knowing full well all I had to do was make eye contact with a taxi and they would take me to the hotel if I couldn't find it.

Then I saw the weirdest thing. There were four men who, for lack of a better word, were Hindu transvestites. They were asking everyone for money-not just westerners like me but everyone. They were really spooky but after they finally passed me (after asking me for money of course) I felt sorry for them. Talk about untouchable! I think even here they were pretty much freakshows. I sort of felt like maybe God was trying to tell me something.

I kept walking back to the hotel and noticed the building in the picture below. You don't see too many churches here so I decided to take a picture. Afterwards I saw a young man walking by and decided to ask him where the Chancery Hotel was. He didn't seem to understand, which was weird because most people speak English here. But there was an older man walking behind us and he pointed it out to me. He began to talk me up a little bit so I figured he probably wanted some money, but he just seemed so gentle and nice that I decided I would talk to him a little while and give him 10 or 20 rupees for the favor of telling where the hotel was. As we were talking, a constable walked by and began to eye us warily. I think he was going to shoo the man away but I nodded to him that it was okay.

The man said he was from Madrassa and be had come here looking for work, but that the only work was for young men with computer skills. True enough I knew. He was 54 years old and mostly only knew farming. He began telling me about his children and how he was trying to keep them in school. I knew it was a pitch but it also seemed like the truth. As he was talking about his kids and his frustration with not being able to find work his voice cracked and his eyes teared up.

If you're a cynic you could say this was all part of an act but I don't think so. I think the man was just tired, hot and frustrated with his life, and was happy to unload some of his frustration on another human being (he had no family or friends in the area). He said every day he prays to God but nothing seems to happen. If you know anything about Hinduism you know there are literally thousands of gods so I asked him which one he prays to. He reached into his tunic and showed me a necklace with a cross on it and said "Jesus."

Now, you have to realize that when people talk about religion in India you usually hear something like it is 90 to 95% Hindu and only 5 to 10% Muslim/Christian/other so this is pretty rare. My eyes brightened up and I told him I too was a Christian. I asked if he faced any extra persecution in this country for being a Christian but he said no, which actually in my mind blended even more credibility to his story. If he was just scamming me, and I had just admitted being a Christian too, he would have played up the persecution angle to gain some empathy. I also asked him if his kids were in Christian school and he said no but it was a private school. Again, a con would have probably lied about that and said yes they were in Christian school.
I decided I needed to give this guy the 20 bucks I could have easily spent on junk souvenirs. I don't say this to brag-if I were a better Christian I should have given them more. If you can't tell already I'm pretty cynical about these little Christian stories people occasionally e-mail you so I am hesitant to over-spiritualize things like this. But if you call yourself a Christian and believe what the Bible says then you know that God is in control of everything and nothing happens by chance.

Then I remembered where I had started talking to the man. Across the street where I had stopped to take a picture of the Indian Bible Society. Cue the "Twilight Zone" music please. And if you think of it when you say your prayers tonight throw one up there for Antoni and his two children.

Bangalore Traffic

I didn't actually take this video but it is very representative of the bus rides we've experienced here so far!
Next time I find myself complaining about DC traffic I will watch this.

TECHMAN Chronicles Part One-Alaska from the Air

Sunday, May 20-roughly 7 p.m. EST.

Many of you know that for the final part of my Technology Management program at George Mason I am traveling to Bangkok Thailand and Bangalore India. Incidentally one of the topics we will look at in Bangkok is the application of technology to help the poor, so even though this is strictly a secular trip perhaps it is in one sense a missions trip.

I had just finished watching the movie "The Pursuit of Happyness" with Will Smith and his son (incidentally named Jaden). It was a tearjerker showcasing the sacrifices a father made, both for financial success and for his son. Needless to say I was feeling rather homesick missing my family. It reminded me of how precious they are to me and how I want to cherish every second with them when I come back.

This past year and a half has been a sacrifice for my family especially my wife who has been unswervingly supportive of me being gone not only every Saturday but one to two nights per week, meeting with study groups and doing homework. This trip is the culmination of the program and then my family can have me back (if they will still have me!)

At this point we're only about half way through the 13 hour flight so I went to the back of the plane to stretch my legs. I noticed someone taking pictures out of one of the back windows of the plane. I looked out to check out the view since I was sitting in an aisle seat and had been oblivious to the scenery below. Stretched before my eyes was a panoramic view of the Alaska Mountains including beautiful blue glaciers. At this point we're going all most 600 mph at an altitude of 32,000 feet. We have flown roughly 3100 miles. These pictures don't even begin to do justice to the view but they will have to suffice for now.

Blogging from Bangalore

Well here I am in Bangalore, India on my residency for my GMU "TECHMAN" program. For 170 rupees I get one hour of Internet time (that's about $3.50).

We left Dulles Airport Sunday around noon and arrived in Japan 13 hours later. We had a three hour layover and boarded our seven hour flight for Bangkok Thailand. The last two hours of that leg of the trip were the worst.

By the time we got our luggage and took buses to the hotel it was past midnight local time. We had been traveling for 24 hours straight!

We flew on All Nippon Airways and the service was excellent. Every seat had its own television set so we could watch movies. I alternated between reading, watching movies, getting up and walking around to stretch my legs, talking to my classmates, and taking catnaps. Even so it was grueling.

Bangkok international Airport is beautiful and has stores in it rivaling Tyson's corner galleria, complete with stores selling $400 silk ties. Yes, that's 400 US dollars! Good thing I had already picked out a Father's Day present for for my dad :)

Monday morning we made an excursion to The Grand Palace which was quite impressive. I hope to post some pictures later. Monday evening we all regreted having to fly again-- our itinerary calls for four days in Bangalore before coming back to Bangkok. However most of us simply wanted to stay in Bangkok. It was less than three hours flying time though, which was a walk in the park compared to what we had been through yesterday.

It's quite a contrast to Bangalore. It was crowded, filthy, and chaotic. The traffic here makes the Beltway looks like child's play. It's every man for himself-dog eat dog. Literally. There are scrawny, ferrel dogs everywhere, alongside the "holy" cows.

In Bangalore we will hear several lecturers and make site visits to some of the large IT companies here. This morning speaker talked about many of the infrastructure challenges faced by the growth in Bangalore. In the afternoon we visited the Jack Welch Research Center (GE).

As I am writing this blog the power went out-only for less than 10 seconds, but it shows that this really is a Third World country... despite the high tech companies abject poverty is never far away.

Still our hotel is quite nice so we can't complain. Tonight is my first night to really just relax and hopefully will be my first full eight hours of sleep. Anyway I will try to post an update as soon as I can.

New Pix!!!

Revenue collections hit record in April

Once again: Cut taxes, raise revenue:

Revenue collections hit record in April

Birth of Jayden

Jayden Samuel Harper arrived April 27 at 8 lbs 4 ozs, 21 inches at 8:14 am!  

Jayden Samuel Harper

George Bush - Malaria Dance

I love this video! Maybe this will improve his approval rating???

All My Tears

Pastor Neil recently talked about the importance of worship through music as a way to connect with God. My favorite time to do that is often in the car on the way to work, and one of my favorite artists to facilitate that is Jars Of Clay. If I could pick a song to play at my funeral (don't panic I am not dead but one day I will be), it might be this:

Album: Good Monsters
Song: All My Tears
When I go don't cry for me, in my Father's arms I'll be
The wounds this world left on my soul will all be healed and I'll be whole.
Sun and moon will be replaced with the light of Jesus' face
And I will not be ashamed, for my Savior knows my name

It don't matter where you bury me, I'll be home and I'll be free
It don't matter where I lay, All my tears be washed away.

Gold and silver blind the eye, temporary riches lie
Come and eat from heaven's store, come and drink and thirst no more

It don't matter where you bury me, I'l be home and I'll be free
It don't matter where I lay, All my tears be washed away

So weep not for me my friends, when my time below does end
For my life belongs to Him, who will raise the dead again.

It don't matter where you bury me, 'cause I'll be home and I'll be free.
It don't matter where I lay, all my tears be washed away

Oooh, it don't matter.....Oooh, it don't matter

New Jersey School Criticized for 'Christian' Terror Drill

The Burlington Township High School in New Jersey along with the local police and fire departments are taking heat for a fake hostage drill conducted on school grounds last month.

The drill, aimed at testing the reactions of faculty and first responders during a simulated attack, included an imaginary scenario that has some Christians up in arms.

During the simulation, two mock gunmen from a fake right-wing fundamentalist group called the "New Crusaders" — a group that does not believe in the separation of church and state — stormed the school. The idea was that they were angry that one of their daughters was expelled for praying before class.

[TheoCon's Note] Upcoming drills will include other likely scenarios including a takeover by magical fairies, a "dirty bomb" attack by gremlins, and an assault by Nappy-headed Ho's.

Rant of the Day

Why will San Fran Nan meet with avowed enemies of the U.S. like Syria and Iran but won't meet with their own President??? Wow.

The Mozambique Miracle

The Mozambique Miracle
By MATTHEW KAMINSKI
April 7, 2007; Page A8

MAPUTO, Mozambique -- In the Hulene quarter of this former Portuguese colonial capital, private minibuses swerve around holes carved in seas of mud. Metal sheets provide shelter for thousands packed in without electricity or sanitation. Illiteracy and HIV rates are shockingly high. The stench and deprivation take the breath away.

Mozambique is one of the world's poorest countries. It's also an African success story. Here, such things are relative. To the immediate west, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe misrules his country toward calamity. Nigeria, Ivory Coast and others are beset by civil conflict and corruption. But Mozambique, scarred by 16 years of civil war and Soviet-style economics, turned itself in the right direction on its own. Optimism, however guarded, and Africa do sometimes go together.

For all the debates over development strategies, the secret to Mozambique's recovery is simple. "We opened our markets and dropped the centralized economy," says Miquelina Menezes, who chairs the country's association of economists and runs a fund devoted to bringing electricity to rural areas. "If you want to join the world, you have to change. We needed to rebuild the country and to rebuild confidence."

The elite never experienced an ideological conversion. The main drags in Maputo, once dedicated to Portuguese worthies, are still named after Mao, Lenin and Kim Il Sung. ("It's our history, not our present," laughs Ms. Menezes. "They won't change them again.") But hyperinflation and a stagnant economy forced leaders of the neo-Marxist liberation movement, Frelimo, to shift their approach. Starting in the early 1990s, the ruling party cut subsidies, opened to outside investment, privatized firms nationalized after independence in 1975 and got a grip on borrowing and the budget. An independent central bank brought inflation into single digits. According to the World Economic Forum's competitiveness index, Mozambique has reformed more than any sub-Saharan African country.

The payoff is the highest average growth rate, at 8% over the last decade, among the continent's non-oil exporters. GDP per capita is a still tiny $320, but that's compared with $178 in 1992. Since 1997, poverty rates decreased more in rural areas (from 71% to 55%) than in urban (62% to 52%), according to the World Bank. Child mortality has declined to 152 per 1,000 live births from 235. And primary-school enrollment has risen to 71% from 43%. Once a leading recipient of food aid, Mozambique now exports maize, with 5.6% average yearly growth in farming in the last 15 years. Banks, telecom and tourist firms, many from neighboring South Africa, have come in.

"[Economic and political] stability has been the key factor" to reviving the country, says Thiago Fonseca, who runs the Golo advertising agency here. His challenges: A lack of skilled workers and HIV/AIDS, which has claimed the lives of a couple of his employees. The nation's HIV prevalence rate is 16%, which will reduce life expectancy to age 36 by 2010, from 40 today.

Appreciating the change for the better takes some imagination. Like many of its neighbors, Mozambique went from colonialism -- under Portugal, still a developing country itself -- to a Cold War-proxy conflict that claimed a million lives (out of 20 million) and left a generation uneducated. Few of the paved roads have been worked on since the Portuguese left 32 years ago. "A lot of [the growth] is catch-up after war," says the World Bank's man in Maputo, Michael Baxter.

But neighbors in similar straits haven't put in place Mozambique's fixes. Inflation in Zimbabwe is 1,700%; nearby Malawi and Zambia, their economies distorted by subsidies on commodities, are growing haphazardly. "You need political will" to get it right, says Mr. Baxter. "Starting from a low base" or "being a former colony" -- oft-heard excuses for Africa -- has little impact on economic performance. What matters, as regional dynamo Botswana also shows, is governance.

A "donor darling," Mozambique doesn't obviously squander the more than $1 billion a year in Western aid, which accounts for half the budget. Experience here suggests that a commitment to economic opening ought to be the litmus test for aid recipients.

No country in this part of the world is assured of staying on track. Erratic "Uncle Bob," as his deferential neighbors call Zimbabwe's 83-year-old Robert Mugabe, is a useful reminder that local politicians pose the gravest threat to Africa's future. In each of the three general elections since the 1990 constitution, Frelimo has won by wider margins amid accusations of fraud. Absent any peaceful turnover of power in Mozambique, Frelimo and the state are increasingly becoming one; nearly all jobs are reserved for party members.

What if it lost elections? "We'd have a serious revolution," says Fernando Lima, publisher of Mediacoop, the largest independent press group. While the government is publicly committed to free speech and democracy -- to keep donors happy, at least -- Mozambique's civil society is hampered by state domination of media, low penetration of radio and television, and weak institutions such as the courts. "Every country in Africa says it's a multi-party democracy," says Leon Louw, director of the Law Review Project in Johannesburg. "It doesn't mean it's so; it only means it's better than it could be."

In the meantime, having done the so-called first generation of market reforms, the government is dragging its feet on legalizing land ownership, fighting corruption and loosening a restrictive labor code to bring in more investment. "Now they're stuck," says Mr. Lima. "There is a strong socialist background here. If we want to perform, we need to be different."

The road ahead for a place like Mozambique is staggeringly long. About 93% of its people lack access to electricity. Half can't read; half are undernourished. But Africa needs to start somewhere, and Mozambique shows how

Leslie Carbone: Peace Hypocrites Burn American Soldier in Effigy

Leslie Carbone: Peace Hypocrites Burn American Soldier in Effigy

Townhall.com::Democrats fear Fred Thompson...and should::By Mark M. Alexander

Beyond the field of announced GOP candidates with questionable conservative pedigrees, there is a potential suitor on the horizon who could close the wide breach between Republicans and conservatives. Fred Thompson, the former Republican Senator from Tennessee, is perhaps America's brightest and most capable prospect for President in 2008.

Townhall.com::Democrats fear Fred Thompson...and should::By Mark M. Alexander

Townhall.com::The Essence of Liberalism: Embracing Life's Losers::By Michael Medved

Townhall.com::The Essence of Liberalism: Embracing Life's Losers::By Michael Medved: "What constitutes the essence of modern liberalism?
Conservatives will return to decisive victories only if we come to terms with liberalism’s visceral appeal. The best way to overcome our ideological adversaries is to understand their approach to major issues."

Townhall.com::Why Fred Thompson Should Run::By Mona Charen

Townhall.com::Why Fred Thompson Should Run::By Mona Charen

Slide Show!

Voicemail Comedy from My Brother Jon (note-don't tell him he is on the Internet or he won't leave me any more funny voice mails)

Gabcast! TheoCon #8

Marketplace: EU like it's 1985

Schadenfreud!

A report out today from a European commerce association says stacked against a number of yardsticks, the E.U. economy is decades behind the U.S.

Marketplace: EU like it's 1985