The other day, while Christy and I were just lying in bed, she said "I'm so lucky."
"Why?" I asked her, assuming she would tell me it was because she was married to the greatest man on earth. :)
She went on to tell me that, when she was growing up in Taiwan, she would have to walk outside if she wanted to use the bathroom. When she was little, her parents didn't even have a bathroom! Their toilet consisted of a ditch buried in the middle of their backyard. When she got older, her parents eventually built an outhouse where one could go to do their business. Ditch or outhouse, she still had to walk outside, in often raining or extremely cold weather.
She also pointed out how miserable it was to drive a scooter in the rain. I know this first-hand, as she used to give me rides all the time on her scooter. I always thought death was right around the corner when I would ride on the back of her scooter.
So...yeah...I can see why she feels she is lucky to be living here in the US, where even poor people have the luxury of having a bathroom under the same roof as the rest of their house (or apartment). And even poor people can drive a car here, maybe not the best car, but still a car. I rarely see anyone riding scooters here in the US, and when we do see someone on one, we will say "Whoa! There's someone riding a scooter!" That's how rare it is.
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I'm continually amazed at how smart Sara is turning out to be. She's been in the "Gifted and Talented" program now for over a year. Her latest report card was straight A's. She's able to solve Suduko puzzles, and she's even figuring out how to play chess. I couldn't be more proud of her. I'm really crossing my fingers with Kyle at this point.
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Well, it looks like the gravy train for internet leeches who like to steal music has ended. File sharing services like Megaupload, Filesonic, Fileserve, UploadStation, etc have all closed, or they no longer offer download services. I can't really complain. Music is not that expensive anymore. The days of $20 cd's are over. If there's some new music I want, Amazon usually has it for $3.99 the first few days it goes on sale. There is a website that is listed to the right of this column that still offers "bootleg" recordings of concerts. Apparently it's still legal to share fan-recorded concerts, just not the studio recordings. Whatever.
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If I vote for any GOP candidate in the upcoming primaries, I've decided it's going to be for Ron Paul. Obviously I wouldn't vote for him in the general election, but he's got my vote in the primary. I've watched most of the debates, and Ron Paul always makes the best, common-sense comments. He continually states that America needs to stop it's "empire building" in the middle east, stop the unnecessary wars (especially the one ramping up for Iran), and focus on repairing our own country, rather than "coddling the world, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people." I particularly liked his comments in the last debate, where he criticized the GOP candidates for calling themselves conservative, for wanting to cut food stamps for the poor, but spend billions on national defense. He said that logic doesn't make sense, and I agree with him.
But, don't get the impression that I've become his supporter. I haven't. I just think that, of the remaining candidates left, he is the most honest, and that's saying a lot. I've already known for years that Newt is a hypocritical, unscrupulous liar, and the more we learn about Mitt Romney, the worse it gets. I don't see how a guy who is so out of touch, and thinks that $370,000 is "not much money" could ever get support from the middle class. Here's a video from Bill Maher talking about why Americans don't like him:
Your wife is lucky because, even though she lives in Texas, at least she does not live in Taiwan.
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