At first the voice is harmless, although rather irksome for both Harold as well as the audience, continuously describing Harold’s every action in meticulous detail, with a sophisticated eloquence and a rich repertoire of words. Then one day it indicates that he’s going to die. This worries Harold and send him to the office of  shrink, then a literature professor, played by Dustin Hoffman.

In the other story, Karen’s publisher has sent an assistant to make sure the final draft of her great opus is   not delayed any further by reveries of suicide, daydreams of tragic car accidents, or the occasional trip to the emergency room to watch people suffer and search for those about to die.

Back in Harold’s world, he and his new companion are trying to decipher whether his life is meant to be comic or tragic. To aim for comic, the literary professor suggests Harold try to ignite a romance with a woman who can’t stand him. After an initial failed attempt, Harold’s told to try just living each day as if it were his last. He does so. And for the first time he begins to enjoy life. He even wins the heart of a quirky, young woman who used to hate him. Things are going well, until he hears Karen on the news. As his literary  companion informs him, Karen only writes tragedies. To make things worse, after tracking Karen down and getting a copy of her unpublished manuscript, Harold realizes that the death she has in store for him is the most poetic death one could hope for. Should he accept his fate, or should he try to take control of his own life? That he the question he must face.

Now if this seems like an interesting premise to you, I cannot disagree. The script has a Charlie Kaufman type feel to it along with Charlie Kaufman-esque philosophical questions. The cast and the director are first rate. And the potential for dark humor is endless. But, there’s a problem. The film doesn’t take full advantage of its dark potential. For the first hour or so of the film, we primarily only see Ferrell doing a toned down Will Ferrell romantic comedy routine (think Bewitched) occasionally interrupted by a much funnier, much darker, much more interesting character storyline involving a perpetually depressed, death obsessed genius. After the first hour, I must say the film does improve, and once the worlds collide we get some truly great scenes in which we see an author meet one of her characters and several people weighing the meaningless life of one man against what may be the perfect tragic end that will not only give meaning to that man’s life, but also give the perfect ending to what just may be the greatest novel of our time. Will Ferrell even proves that he can be taken seriously as an actor in these scenes (not quite the Oscar nomination worthy performance I am convinced he will before the end of the decade, but another step in the write direction). The only problem now is that the film failed to consistently play from the darker side from the beginning.

Rating:***

In Lady in the Water, Shyamalan has created a fairytale incarnate–an intentionally far-fetched bed-time story that tells itself beautifully. The story begins when a stuttering apartment caretaker named Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti) apprehends a mysterious woman, Story, swimming in the complex’s pool after hours. Cleveland learns that Story is a messenger from the so-called Blue World, sent to inspire a young writer (Shyamalan) to create his masterpiece. He also soon discovers that a deviant creature is bent on stopping her.

While the story’s plot does indeed become progressively fantastical, it’s exactly the fantasy that gives the film more substance than anything else in theatres this summer. A winning (and often dichotomous) combination of humorous moments, beautiful camerawork, and the suspense for which Shyamalan is known best ensures the delivery of exactly what every good fairytale must have: a pertinent moral, in this case one that the story’s audience just might not want to hear. Add in brilliant performances by Giamatti and Shyamalan, a poignant score, and some striking social commentary, and the film is easily palatable to anybody with the imagination to remember the uneasy pathos of childhood innocence.

Maybe I was just being Naïve. Coming to India this summer, I expected things to be different. All I had been hearing is how fast India was becoming the next China.

When I was here six years ago, I was amazed at the high level of poverty and corruption that existed throughout the country. Going from city to city, it was all the same. The basic necessities like food, water, and electricity were scarce. In many of the smaller towns, trash collection was non-existent. My most vivid memory of that trip was visiting the village where my grandfather grew up. He showed me the tree next to the lake he used to sit under to keep cool in the summer. Since then, the tree had been cut down and the lake had dried up and been turned into a landfill.

So you can understand why I would think things would be better, given the country’s impressive 8 % annual GDP growth rate.

What doesn’t show on paper is how few people are actually affected by this growth rate. In India alone, almost 400 million people still live in extreme poverty. That means that over 1/3 of India’s population lives on less than $1 per day. Why aren’t these people benefiting from this incredible growth? Its not that the money isn’t there, it’s just going to all of the wrong places. Let me give you an example. A family friend tried to pay her taxes on her property so she could sell her house. When she approached an official about the matter, he offered to waive the charge in exchange for a small “gift”. She refused, but he still wouldn’t give her the proper paperwork. She had to bribe him just so that she could legally pay her taxes!

It is important to note, however, that the growth rate is so high despite all of the corruption and poor infrastructure. How can a corporation run efficiently enough to compete with the rest of the world in a country where you are lucky if you have power 20 hours in a day? How can you find so many intelligent, motivated people in a place where over 1/3 of the population can’t afford food or clean water, let alone go to school? Yet despite the overwhelming odds, India still manages to grow.

There will be a day when every Indian is given the opportunity to compete in the global playing field. But that day isn’t today. The money that is pouring into this country must go to building up the infrastructure, not the vacation homes for a few government officials. An 8 % growth rate cannot be sustained forever under the current conditions.

Maybe the world isn’t quite as flat as you think, Mr. Friedman.

This water bridge/canal now crosses over the River Elbe in a small city near Berlin called Magdeburg. The project was completed to aid in the transport of passengers and freight between East and West Germany, as part of the reuinification effort between the two regions. One question though: Did the bridge’s design consider the additional weight of ship and barge traffic, or just the weight of the water?

Walking into the hospital lobby, I wondered if I was hallucinating. The place looked like the Ritz! Marble floors, large glass windows, and a beautiful receptionist with a big smile greeted me at the front desk. The whole experience was totally painless. Within one hour I had visited the doctor, had a blood test done, picked up my medication in the in-house pharmacy, and was out the door. And the best part? The whole bill (not just the co-pay) for the checkup, blood test, and drugs was under $30!

Welcome to the rapidly growing Indian private health care sector. The “Max Super Specialty Hospital” is one of many new private hospitals popping up all around Delhi. Low costs for medical care coupled with a rising middle and upper class have caused the industry to boom. But the real market for these hospitals aren’t Indians – It’s Americans.

An increasing number of people from around the world are beginning to travel to India to receive health care at a fraction of the cost of what they would pay at home. This new phenomenon is known as Medical Tourism, and its only going to get bigger as health care costs continue to grow in the US.

So the next time you need a heart transplant or even a face lift, think globally. I know I will.

I’m sorry it took me so long to get an email out. I havn’t had internet access for the past week and a half, and I finally found an internet cafe. Thanks for everyone who wrote me, and I’m sorry I don’t have time to write individual responses.

First off, I would just like to say, IT IS HOT. It gets over 100 degrees and it is humid! Right now I am in a small town called Auroville on the coast of southern India. The town was developed about 45 years ago by the UN and the Indian government to try to create a place “free of national boundaries”. The whole idea is that the city belongs to no country and that they can make their own rules. I’ll write my own impressions on it later, but for now I’ll just say that it is definitely a cool place to be. I am taking this two week course on arches, vaults, and domes with this crazy french architect who is obsessed with vaults. I sleep in a vault, I eat in a vault, and I take classes in a vault. The man’s house is even a vault! There are about 20 students in the class, most of whom are Indian. There is 1 other American, 2 Canadians, and 2 Frenchmen. The class itself has been amazing. The work is challanging but fun, and a lot more engineering and math intensive than I expected, considering that almost everyone here is an architect. The first week was all theory, and we each designed our own free-standing vault. (I never knew so much went into designing a vault – It took me three full days!) This week we have been actually building arches and domes. Today we went to the site of one of the buildings that the architect has designed. It is a temple right on the beach. The previous temple had been destroyed in the Tsunami, so it was pretty amazing to go out there and see it.

The past two weeks have been very emotional for me. It has been a while since I have been to India, and I had forgotten about the level of poverty that exists here. Travelling to the worksite today, I saw how a majority of the 900 million people are living. The saddest thing that struck me was not the condition of the houses that they live in (which is terrible), but the fact that there is no trash collection. It’s difficult to concieve, as we take advantage of things like this, but just imagine if all of the streets around your house were covered in trash. Dried up lakebeds are used as trash dumps. It is hard to walk anywhere, as you are literaly walking on garbage. Another thing that we take advantage of is animal control, which they don’t have. And there are animals everywhere! There are cows, oxen, chickens, hens, goats, and stray dogs roaming around everywhere, even in delhi. Imagine seeing an ox crossing the road in the middle of a major city. The other day I was in a town outside of Auroville and I saw a goat that had rabies (I think). It was just standing there completely still, foam around the mouth, and its eyes were rolled back in its head. It was one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen. I sleep in a room with 4 other Indians, all who are in architecture school in Mumbai.

There are no showers – we just have a bucket and a faucet. There are also no toilets – just holes in the ground. And no one here uses toilet paper, which has been quite difficult for me! I actually got pretty sick last week. I have been drinking purified water, but I don’t think the purifier we have is good enough. Auroville has a central purifier that is about a 5 minute bike ride from where I am staying, so I go there now to fill up my bottles. To get around, we rented motorbikes. Ok my time is almost up, but I would just like to say that despite my rather negative email, I have been having an incredible time here. I will just close up with a funny story – I have already been electrically shocked twice since I have been here! Both times were when I was taking a shower at the place I was staying at in Delhi. When I approached Raja (my father’s cousin) he said, “don’t worry about it, we’ve gotten used to it!” Its definitely a different way of life here. Anyway, I hope everything is well, and I will email you when I get back to Delhi on Sunday!

Jayson

PS: My cell phone company texted me a free joke after I activated my cell phone:

A young child wrote a letter to Santa Clause that said, “Send me a brother.” Santa Clause wrote back, “Send me your mother.”

Many of us aren't old enough to remember the period in the early fifties when Senator Joseph McCarthy, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, and their cronies engaged in a series of witch-hunts, suspending the rights of countless Americans who they accused of communism. For those who can’t quite remember that section of our nation's history class from high school, I can only suggest you read up on it. Those of us who are familiar with McCarthyism, even minimally through films like Goodnight, and Goodluck, however, can't help but recognize similarities between the actions of our government's intelligence agencies then and those of their modern counterparts.

This morning, the New York Times published two articles, one on an ACLU challenge to the NSA's eavesdropping program and one on the CIA's refusal to confirm or deny its involvement in the detainment suspected terrorists. The articles document only the most recent of events in a long chain of consolidation of power by top officials, one which even seasoned republicans admit is rather troubling.

As always, however, most of us are unconcerned with consolidation itself but rather how officials use such power. The similarities to McCarthyism are striking. In the 1950's, the FBI engaged in a series of illegal wiretaps, burglaries, and even murders; today, the NSA conducts covert operations, spying on American citizens without warrants. In the 1950's, Senator McCarthy conducted a series of witch-hunts, accusing many Americans of communism but refusing to offer proof because he claimed it was classified; today, the CIA holds accused terrorists outside of the United States, refusing to acknowledge that it does so or to offer proof of their guilt.

While many claim that such agencies would only spy on or detain those who are guilty, I can only plead, "read up on your American history." The screams from the witch-hunting of the 1950's, which harmed some of America's greatest heroes–names like J. Robert Oppenheimer, Arthur Miller, and Charlie Chaplain–echo in the actions of today's intelligence community.

I asked my dad about World Trade 7 and its collapse. He was working on search and recovery at the base of the building (the North Tower’s debris pile was at 7′s lobby). World Trade 7 held a civilian evacuation before any collapses at WTC occured (as did the Millenium Hotel, the World Financial Center, the Deutsch Bank Building, and the other auxillary buildings of the World Trade Center Complex). Smoke was heavy, he said, as fires from the north tower ignited fuel tanks near 7′s basement. The basement was inaccessible from the outside, so the fires continually burned until the structure’s collapse (and then continued on for days, under the rubble). About a 1/2 hour before the building came down, a structural engineering team advised search and rescue to evacuate; the building was deemed structurally unsound and under risk of collapse. Sure enough, the structure collapsed 1/2 an hour later. A team of engineers was on site within an hour of the first plane hitting the WTC. This is why Mayor Rudy Guiliani’s command headquarters was moved from Vessey Street prior to collapse, and how he survived. The engineers predicted a collapse and advised the mayor’s team to evacuate. They also advised search and rescue for months during the cleanup as debris shifted and as other collapses occured. During the 12-hour shift that my father was at ground zero, he said he witnessed near 6 collapses of auxillary structures and of remnants of other buildings at the site.

A poll recently released by 911truth.org stated that near half of Americans believe there was a federal coverup (or conspiracy) after 9/11; of course this is biased information. The polls make complete sense, considering the education of the American public on the subject. Many people didn’t know World Trade 7 collapsed (or even existed) because media coverage was extremely low (by the time it collapsed only search and rescue and military personell were allowed below canal street). If you search, there are only a few actual videos of the structure collapsing, and they’re from a fairly long distance. Many also don’t know that the northwestern corner of the north tower of the WTC collapsed 40 minutes after the structure’s initial collapse. The “spire” as they call it was shrouded by smoke for its lifespan and then slowly fell into the pile, no doubt killing search and rescue members as it came down.Many Americans also don’t realize that when the planes struck the buildings, enflamed jet fuel poured down the elevator shafts, severely buring and disfiguring many people waiting for elevators in the lobby. The first responders at the WTC worked for minutes extinguishing these initial fires before they even attempted climbing the stairwells. One conspiracy video asks why debris was thrown up to 70 meters from the WTC as it collapsed, and why didn’t the debris simply fall straight down. The answer: because the World Trade Center Towers 1 and 2 did not collapse straight down. The upper floors (above the jet impacts) severely leaned toward the jet entrance wound before collapse. When the structure began coming down the entire upper section of the tower is seen leaning over and twisting (staying intact all the while) on its way down. A Marriot Hotel was located on the West Side Highway and was completely destroyed during the towers’ collapse.

There are countless things that the American public does not know; things that are very clear and not open for debate or conspiracy. But, no less, the American public loves a conspiracy: the DaVinci code is my exhibit as the story is based in fiction and based on an actual document hoax in the mid-1950s by a deranged man who planted forged documents (called “the secret papers” – how very original) in the Paris public library (he was quoted many times believing he was King of France). Alot of Americans are taking this story as fact and are travelling to Europe to see places of interest in the story. I rest my case. Americans are mostly unintelligent and do not understand the pure logistics and mechanics of the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11/01. The event was almost too simple to explain, and frankly, Americans want more. They want to know that their husbands, wives, and children died because of something more complex. It’s a sad but simple story. I realize, since most of you are semi-intelligent (since we go to a University in the top 30), you love debate and “intellectual stimulation.” Knowing most of the facts of 9/11, I can say there is no debate here. There is a debate in the politics of the matter. There’s a debate in the response to the event. There is debate in the construction of the buildings, since the 1970s was an economic disaster and the structures were erected cheaply and quickly. There is no debate, however, in the event itself and the mechanics of the “disaster.” Please, if any of you have questions, ask me. I have an eye-witness living in my house. Also, take me off the “9/11: AMERICAN CONSPIRACY!” email list. I can’t afford to be stressed out. Thanks.

Sincerely,

Jared T. Rodriguez