The Lair

For pretty much as far back as I can remember; whenever something wasn’t going too well with the country – someone would always pipe up and say “but look, there is a war on. We can’t be expected to fight an insurgency and do things that make economic sense at the same time”. And this was completely true. This type of war doesn’t make economic sense anyway (OTOH, if we invaded the Maldives and got into a war there, now that may have made some sort of economic sense).

But so it goes.

In the past 20 odd years (really, the mid/late 80s didn’t count too much – economic liberalization really started trickling down in the early 90s), we were the subject of many casual conversations and head scratching by economic types. Usually, you see, other countries with this sort of debilitating civil war tend to do a lot worse than we did. Oh, which isn’t to say that we had it all good – but the relative isolation of fighting to a section of the island (with only the occasional spillover) meant that economic activity could continue.

But there was always this shrug of the shoulders and “Yeah, we’re fighting a war” as an excuse to not even pretend at bridging the deficit, make populist subsidies and the like. How many times has the war been the single biggest electoral issue? I think the last time it wasn’t a serious issue was in 1990/1991.

Which brings me to my main point – there are no more excuses.

In the space of 12-14 months (yeah, I know the offensive started earlier – but May 2008 is as good a point as any), we have been transformed from a case of economic curiosity into yet another common or garden mismanaged third world economy. One with a massive budget deficit, a crushing amount of public debt and a horrifying trade imbalance. And we still have one of the largest cabinets in the world. I don’t mean the sort that you store ornamental porcelain in either.

And I guess everyone thought the hard part is over.

Blood is the price of victory

There are people who love being read to – that is, someone else sits down with a book or magazine or newspaper in front of them and reads aloud. I know several people who like this.

I’m not one of them.

I have often wondered if my childhood had anything to do with this (it probably did, we are all influenced by our childhood in some way or the other). My parents never read aloud to me. Not that I feel the lack at all, I was always given a book – or found myself one – and read it. There was never a question of someone else performing the labour intensive activity of actually reading to me, I’d read it myself thank you very much.

Why is this a problem now? Because I am completely unaccustomed to someone reading an entire book to me now. I simply cannot concentrate on the contents of the book, nor does it make it easy for me to visualize what is going on when I have to concentrate on the next words being read. When I am reading text off a page (or a screen), it’s easy. I read at my own pace. When someone else is going the reading for me, it’s pure torture. It’s always either too slow or too fast or just plain “uh. yeah, what did you just say? because I wasn’t listening”.

Which is a pity – because in my seemingly unquenchable thirst for new things to read, I have discovered that an mp3 player and a podcast directory, or an audiobook directory or two can be very useful assets. For most. For me? Well, I don’t have the patience to listen to podcasts. Not even when I’m driving and stuck in traffic. Give me a transcript any day.

Perhaps it’s an acquired ability.