My Family Moves to India

Every since I was a child, I've enjoyed reading the newspaper. I think it stems from watching my dad read the news every day. TV news I find too distracting - all that jabbering, plus the text scrolling across the bottom....I like more control of what I chose to take into my brain, so I read instead of watch. After today, I think I'm going to rethink my entire strategy. Perhaps a literal take on "no news is good news" will become my mantra.

Here in India I practice being a Good Mother and Concerned Citizen by reading two local newspapers. This helps me keep up with whatever the latest crisis is, although I have noticed that things like tsunami warnings, rising temperatures, and certain other items are kept noticeably quiet. Recently the local news has been mostly politics, which is confusing enough in America, let alone India. It is helpful, however, to know that Sonia Gandhi is scheduled to visit Chennai the first week of May - it will be a good day to keep off the streets. If they tell us the actual day.

Today the news was particularly impressive in its depressiveness. I learned that if the world survives the global economic meltdown (caused, BTW, by greedy Americans, as per the news), we will all most likely die (or wish we had died) of something called "Mexican swine flu" (which pigs do not actually catch, hence the name). As humans we may survive both, but never fear, your PC might have CONFICKER! (No one explained how they came up with this moniker.) Conficker is "infecting millions of computers and turning them into "slaves" that respond to commands sent from a remote server that effectively controls an army of computers known as a botnet." (Reuters) I can only assume, from this language, that soon my slave computer will join the botnet and I am doomed. At least in the ethernet.

Also, you definitely should not bother with college since virtually no recent graduates have been able to find jobs. They are mostly back to living with their parents and serving ice cream at the corner store. Forget grad school because that alternative is flooded with applicants, all hoping to add a few more letters after their name while waiting out the recession.

Turning to more local news, I was also informed that the LTTE (Tamil Tiger) leader is expected to abscond via a submarine or partially-submerged aquatic vehicle of some sort (the paper was a little vague), heading to India. (Americans, if you look at a map, the reason will become obvious.) They have also found his son's birth certificate, but why that is important, was not noted.

Back to the main point. This explains the airplanes flying at low altitudes over our house. Usually they fly over us in the mornings, but this week they have been flying at night also. It also explains the extra security at the hotels and hospitals. It does NOT explain why all the local dogs were barking last night, but they could be related. Or not. At any rate, with our top-notch security staff, I'm sure any Tamil Tigers could not get past the main floor, um, house. Yeah. Especially since they recently tore down the remains of the locked gate that leads to the beach, to shore up the chicken coop, which looked perfectly fine to me, and which now looks like a pile of junk with some small peeping sounds coming from the middle. At any rate, I should definitely instruct said personnel to periodically check for periscopes.

Enough. I'm going to bed and pulling the covers over my head. Denial, denial, oh sweet denial....