Sitting on the dock of the bay

Just returned from a dinner with Susan of Bucuti that I am absolutely certain will remain the highlight of my trip. When I stayed at the Tara Suites which she kindly offered me she was too busy for us to sit down for any length of time but this evening at Marandi we managed to have a great conversation in beautiful surroundings. Actually, that is not entirely correct as it started when I got in her car and ended only after she dropped me back at Amsterdam Manor. We are from very different backgrounds but share many similar thoughts on life and the planet. The fact we are what Dubya  would categorize as bleeding heart pinko liberals only helps matters and now that Obama is going to be president of the USA I believe we are on the A-OK list.

Susan has had a fascinating life and learning about her life process was anything but dull listening. You just know that anyone who has a story about falling afoul of Israeli border police in her youth will have me tuned in. I also realize now that being of a similar age can make a meaningful conversation much more relaxed as there are points of reference. I don’t have to explain who Nixon was and she didn’t have to explain to me what Thatcherite Economics was all about. Off the top of my head a few of the subjects covered were, the internet, DOS, US Politics, New York, London, Aruba politics, the hotel business, relationships, cutting dog toenails with a device that looks alarmingly like a vibrator and the environment. As to the details of any of those conversational topics..well..I am keeping those close to my puny chest. I am just glad that I came to Aruba a year ago and connected to someone who is truly a citizen of the world.

In other news…well…let’s see. I was up early and then surrounded by flies, mosquitoes and other airborne wildlife , in what seemed to be an outtake from The Exorcist as i waited to get on a horse. My request for an aged equine that had been tranquilized was turned down as was my request for a valium IV. The horse I was asked to mount ( and how decidedly vulgar those words look in type) was laughingly named Excalibur. What the snorting brown creature had to do with Arthurian legend I cannot tell you but it may have been some inside joke. I got on with little problem and shortly after the whole posse of 8 of us started off on a pee and manure peppered trek through the wilds of Aruba’s landscape. All I can say is that while I know the horse was instrumental in the development of the US West and of European civilization they must all have had sore asses. I can see now why they invented the car and I promise I will kiss my misbehaving Mondeo when I see her next.

We finished that ordeal adventure and proceeded to the Westin for lunch with Patrick Donovan the Marketing Guy. I managed a fair cleanup of the dust on my face thanks to my ever present St. Ives blemish fighting wipes .It was nice seeing him again and I have to say that I am impressed with the changes at the Westin Aruba. They inherited the current property from another hotel and they have finally succeded in de-Wyndhamizing it and making it their own. Patrick is a great conversationalist and along with my ATA pal Ricardo we had a lovely lunch at their Asian restaurant Blossoms. I loved my General Tso chicken but honest to Abe those portions could have fed a Vietnamese family for a week. I am not a fan of high-rise hotels but if I had to pick one on Aruba the Westin would be it.

Upon returning to my hotel I ran to the shower to wash off whatever horse and dust remained on me but as I proceeded to disrobe …and I apologize for the lack of delicacy here Dear Reader,…an insect lodged in my clothing bit me on the ass. It hurt about as much as a bee sting and I got an immediate welt. Susan told me in the car it was most likely a scorpion and she has survived being stung by one. The life of a Fodor’s writer is not as pretty as it seems I can assure you.

I also ventured to the local supermarket area with the ostensible aim of getting some extra coffee and maybe suntan lotion at non-hotel prices. I did eventually get those items but somewhere along the line I also got a lovely pair of deck shoes, a shoulder bag and a decidedly non-Vern pair of Puma Fluxion II training shoes. I hope this serves as a cautionary tale to all that it is never safe to think “Oh look a shoe shop I wonder if they have sports socks?” because the next words you say will be “Do you have these in a size 10?”.

Tomorrow I am on a submarine which should be most interesting and, at any rate, will not result in any scorpions in my underwear.

Shaking the foundations.

 

It has now become transparently obvious to me that to blog more frequently I am completely dependent on my powerbook Tinkerbell. It isn’t that the iMac I am now using is flawed in any way or even her big sister Sybil, the dual processor PowerPC sitting next to her with the impressively large flat screen display it is just that I like sitting on the couch and blogging. I am a multitasking kind of person I need to blog, while watching something on TV and reading an economic treatise. It might not be the ideal concentration situation but it works for me so I am counting the  days till Harry replaces her hard drive and I can pack her for my upcoming trip.

 

Speaking of my upcoming trip it is nice to see that things are slowly coming together because the logistics are headache inducing. Planning a trip of a limited number of days but still managing to see as many hotels, restaurants and sights is not an easy business. Arranging accommodation alone is a major task since no hotel can reasonably host a travel writer for more than a few days and not the duration of a visit. I am really looking forward to Bucuti in Aruba as my pal of last year ,Susan, has graciously offered to host me for a few days. Having a chance to experience a hotel that seldom has a vacant room and that takes style and environmental consciousness to a new level is going to be one of the highlights of this expedition. Still, I can’t help hoping that the global economic downturn will not take a toll on the tourism income of the ABC islands that rely on visitors.

 

The world economy has been one of my major focuses these days both for work and personal reasons. I have long love the magical science of economics and have been boning up on as many studies that I can so I can seem semi-literate when speaking to both economists and politicians. It is a complicated business but, ultimately, economies have cycles of ups and downs and no amount of intervention can stop them. The world will pull out of this slump once we establish a nadir and inevitably we will, after months or years, start the upward journey again. 

 

Here at home the main problem is inflation heavily fuelled by massive government spending on non-productive projects. Sure, there are a few areas that may spur productivity such as infrastructure but tall government buildings and unnecessary stadiums i shardly likely to bring a return on investment. They don’t seem to have studied the whole FDR New Deal thing properly. Inflation has now reached a worrisome 14.8% and is almost certainly likely to climb. This is the headline inflation  but food inflation is the especially troubling part. Newsday condensed the Central Bank’s analysis of the situation :

 

“Food price inflation, considered a key driver of the headline inflation rate, was recorded at 34.6 percent in September. This represents an increase from 30.2 percent, as a result of increases in bread and cereals (63.2 percent), fruits (38.4 percent) vegetables (42.4 percent) and fish ( 25.1 percent). “

 

For people living on the edge such price rises can lead to catastrophe and for some I am sure it already is. Governments have two ways of dealing with rising prices one is curtailing demand and the other is addressing supply. Clearly, as the figures are not measuring caviar prices, it is impossible for people to cut back on consumption if they are already having a hard time affording food to feed their families. On the supply side government has been proposing that people start small gardens which is hardly a useful suggestion in a largely urban country. It has also been pushing the import substitution agenda saying that we should substitute local things like eddoes ( taro) and cassava ( manioc) for imported potatoes. Great suggestion except last time I checked both local items were a lot more expensive than potatoes. Things must really be desperate in their “Vision 20/20 heading for developed country status”world if they have to dredge up unworkable solutions last employed by underdeveloped nations in the 1970s.

 

The other budget “initiatives” involve a “new” agricultural thrust calling for everything from mega-farms run by Cuban farmers to improving access to rural areas. It is like a tired and fading echo now. They have been promising such things for years and nothing has been delivered. I wish they would just get sense and let the private sector do what it does best – get results. Offer meaningful incentives for people to grow food crops. If they want to make it more attractive than long hours slogging in the hot sun and fearing floods then make it more attractive and modern. The simplest solution is to promote things like large-scale hydroponics and aquaculture. Offer potential farmers a $200,000 grant ,a $500,000 interest free loan and a 10 year tax holiday to undertake such projects and I can guarantee that we would be overflowing with food in a matter of 6 months.

 

On the other hand, we can keep making misguided halfway efforts to do things the old way and hope the population doesn’t finally get fed up.