Here's hoping tomorrow will be better than last week. What started off as a wonderful week turned into the most surreal event in my life.
Spending 3 days in Dosa with Kingfish was awesome. Nothing like Migas, mountains and 36 hours of gambling to start a week.
Monday was a student holiday. I had a meeting to attend early that morning which finished early. Needing to purchase some adapters for my China trip, I popped into a Radio shack to check out the goods. It was a blustery day in the Hub, so much so, I had to open the door the the store for this little elderly lady. After asking the hired help where the adapters were located, I proceeded to look over my choices. I hadn't noticed that someone else had entered the store.
Getting back into town late the night before, I had a chance to catch the late local news around 11:30. I had seen a story about a Radio shack in town that had been robbed on Saturday while I was out of town. Being in the situation I was now in, that had entered my mind but it just didn't seem to click. My attention was raised when I heard a voice at the counter say, "GIVE ME THE MONEY!". I looked up, noticed that there was someone at the counter with something in his hand...what I thought was maybe a cordless screwdriver. Since I was close to the door and had not noticed anyone else enter, my first thoughts were that this was an employee from the back playing around, joking about the other store being robbed over the weekend.
This all changed. I had actually looked away from the situation when all of a sudden I hear a loud "POP"! I immediately turned back to see the person with his hand raised in the air, gun pointing upwards. I dropped to the ground behind the self where I was looking for the adapters. I was actually behind the robber so I could not get a look at him. But a million things began racing through my head. Could I make it to the door? Do I need to let him know that I am there? I don't want to startle him. Would anything I do make it go from bad to worse? Could I get to him to stop what was happening? Would he kill us all?
It seemed by the time that I tried to process all of those things, he was out of the store. As I rose up, I noticed that the elderly lady that I had helped in the store had been no more that 3-4 feet away from where the guy had shot the pistol. She was not looking so good. As I approached her, she said that she couldn't hear anything. The police and EMS arrived quickly as did the wife, who had been just across the street at the meeting I had just left.
It appeared that the same guy robbed a cleaners on Wednesday and was apprehended that afternoon.
I leave for China on Thursday. It's weird, but I somehow feel as though I will be safer there than here.
About Me
- Helmut
- A should have been Hippie. Me and my posse roll in the huboplex where we eat my homemade salsa, love the Red Red Raiders and dish out smack about everything and everyone. No soft skins allowed! "Basically a religious person but with some clear obedience and discipline issues." - M. Leach
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Monday August 22, 1:11 PM
China's widening income gap threatening social stability: government
China's rapidly widening income gap has reached dangerous levels, risking social instability by 2010 if the present trend continues, a government report warns.
"China's growing income gap is likely to trigger social instability after 2010 if the government finds no effective solutions to end the disparity," the Ministry of Labour and Social Security warned in the China Daily.
Su Hainan, president of the ministry's income research institute, found income disparity in China had reached the crucial "yellow" stage -- the second most serious in a scale of four defined by the institute.
The situation would deteriorate to the most dangerous "red" stage in 2010 if no effective measures were taken within the next five years, he said.
Violent protests and riots have become common among Chinese frustrated by soaring social inequality, massive corruption and illegal land requisitions, sparking government fears of triggering mass-scale social instability.
The institute found the income gap in China had been expanding quickly since 2003 despite a series of government measures to raise the income of the impoverished people. President Hu Jintao's government took power in 2003, vowing that eradication of poverty was one of its top priorities.
Su was not optimistic about bridging the urban-rural gap as urban incomes were growing nearly twice as fast as rural incomes.
Incomes in Chinese cities were growing at eight to nine percent annually but rural incomes only grew four to five percent yearly, the institute found.
Last year, the average rural income per capita was 2,936 yuan (362 dollars) -- less than a third of the urban income of 9,422 yuan.
Even within the rural community, there was still a yawning gap between the better-off and the poorest farmers. The average farmers earned 3.39 times as much as the government-defined poor farmers last year, compared with 2.45 times in 1992.
Nor was the situation better in the cities: incomes of laid-off workers there have been dropping rapidly while "the wallets of private business owners have been fattening at incredible rates," China Daily said, without giving details.
The income gap has become increasingly worrisome for the government of once-egalitarian China, especially as low- and middle-income earners are increasingly quick to accuse officials of pilfering state assets in the country's dash toward market capitalism.
The National Bureau of Statistics said in June that 10 percent of the nation's richest people enjoyed 45 percent of the country's wealth while the poorest 10 percent had only 1.4 percent of the nation's wealth.
Like I said...I can't wait to get there.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/08/washington/08pardon.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
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