Newsflash: I'm pissed about this. Why don't we appreciate the importance of mass transit in our bass-ackwards country? From atrios:
An effort in the Senate to increase federal subsidies for the beleaguered Amtrak system failed to pass Wednesday... The amendment, offered by Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., would have added $1.04 billion to government financial assistance for the system. It failed on a 52-46 vote
While waiting at the Bangladeshi embassy, I was struck by the importance of paperweights (secondary to the importance of ceiling fans) in indian society.
Jumpin' jeebus! It has been sooo long since I used one. Maybe in the summer of 1986, in the office of the Osborne Transformer Corporation before I skipped out in the afternoon to go windsurfing (I was a teddible employee). Paperweights make the world go round in every office we've found ourselves. Paperweights! Without them, the ceiling fans would send a cyclone of documents and scribbled notes out the windows and into the crowded streets. I could'nt begin to imagine a paperless office, and at this point stickynotes seem a waste of good glue.
Tomorrow morning at 5:00AM we will travel by bus to Dhaka. I wish that we could go by train, but alas a route does not exist. Once there, we'll hit the rivers on highspeed paddlewheel boats carrying thousands of passengers. Don't worry, we'll have lifebouys, and the boats called "Rockets!" Our train schedule cum india travel bible will have to stay at the bottom of the bag for a few weeks.
