Bangalore first impressions

I am pretty tired and I didn't do anything else than going to work but lots of things, details or not have already striked me.
First thing last night, here you cannot rent a car without a driver, so waiting for me in the middle of 200 other drivers was mine, with a sign stating Mrs ... yeah he was expecting a girl :), what disappointment :). It is still quite exciting to sit on the front left of the car and seeing no wheel, especially in India style traffic. But I have to say that driving is not as wild as Cairo.
Second this morning, a few signs in the bathroom explaining how many litters of water various things like cleaning a towel were using, and that huge plastic basket in the shower so you can reuse water and consume less.
The view from my appartment is really nice, towards the countryside, I ended up in a very high end apartment complex because all the hotels were full (nothing special, just the fact that high tech industry is growing here faster than they can build hotels).
At work I noticed lots of efforts about hygien, lots of signs in the bathroom explaining in what order to do things and so, at the cafeteria, the fact there are lavatories on the way to get out so you can not avoid to wash your hands, you directly sort your trash between plastic, paper, food, and cleanable. In the US they tend to try to do the same kind of things to promote a better work enviroment, but here it is done far better and much further.
Tonite, coming back to the hotel I chatted with my driver and we ended up talking about living standards. I have rarely felt so guilty of earning my life well, probably because in other poor countries people I talked with were too shy to ask (and obviously I do not tend to start the subject). So to summarize, my driver makes 100$ a month if he works the default hours which is 12h/day. Yes you can eat for less than a dollar, and you can get a small 1 room appartment for 40$/month, but in the end he has to work overtime (over the basic 12h/day) to make ends meet.
Outside of that, the contrast between the people living in tents on the side of the road, right next to high tech buildings that are pretty similar to the silicon valley ones is strange and shocking.

Flying tonite

Tomorrow i'll be in Bangalore for a week. I'll try to post pictures and news once there.

[edit] I finally arrived after a pretty long trip, appartment is nice, tea is good, I feel like in another world, weather is beautyfull (33 degres forcast today), and I still don't understand Indian accent.

Dick Cheney tire sur ses amis

Dick a loge un plomb dans le coeur de l'un de ses amis de 78 ans pendant une partie de chasse a son ranch au Texas. Cela a bien entendu declenche une vague de blagues sur le sujet dont certaines pas mauvaises du tout.

Pourquoi, alors, a-t-il tiré? «Dans le monde de l'après-11 septembre, les Américains s'attendent à ce que leurs leaders soient décidés. Ne pas avoir tiré dans le visage de son ami aurait envoyé aux cailles le message que l'Amérique est faible!»

Merci Dick pour tonaction militante pour le "Gun control" ;)

Lebanon - 1 year

There was half a million persons in the streets of Beyrouth yesterday, for the 1 year anniversary of Rafic Hariri's assassination. 1 year after the Syrian influence they were protesting against is still there despite the disengagement of the Syrian army. The 3 main leaders of the opposition were in the middle of the crowd and among other requests were asking the pro-syrian president Emile Lahoud to leave and the Hezbollah to disarm.
The U.N. probe on the assassination is currently stalled as the main witnesses retracted their testimony against Syrian security officers. Now they are looking at an Al-Qaeda driven assassination which looks to me like a decoy to lower the tension between Syria and the west.

Tension

In the past weeks the tensions have been raising all over the middle east. The Hamas that won the Palestinians elections is still not governing it and the Fatah armed wings are preparing their future political failure by resuming terrorist activities.

A few bad drawings published 4 months ago were used to start unrest versus western europeans interrests. Most of the manifestants burning embassies never even saw those drawings, and destroying humanitary infrastructure over those was not the most clever thing to do either. In western countries there are legal ways of protesting versus diffamation and insults and you do not ask governments to excuse about private newspapers, you just ask the justice to force the newspaper to do so if it is justifyed. The sad thing about all this is not the embassies burnt is that there has been over 10 deaths already.

Iran-Europe talks about nuclear activities have reached a dead-end and despite not being against the development of civil nuclear energy in Iran like the NPT allows them to, I start to fear what the US and Israel have been repeating for years, which is that the reason why they want to do Uranium enrichment themselve is because it will allow them to build nuclear bombs.

And in Israel the government and the army are struggling between a massive restart of terrorist activities which they answered to by a massive number of targeted assassinations, and evactuation of extreme right illegal outposts that turned violent (in Amona). Obviously all this results in the closure of the territories.

So currently in Palestine:
-humanitary workers leave because of cartoons violence
-taxes money is not coming in because Israel didn't want to give it to Hamas
-territories are closed so no export and no jobs out
-airstrikes and raids almost daily to capture militants with common collateral damages
-humanitary help money decreasing because of Hamas fear.

All this does not let me see a bright near future...