I am still alive... and thinking

It's been a while since I posted because I haven't moved terribly far beyond my last lot of thoughts

I've identified more of what I am thinking about - kind of seeing more of what I am looking at.

Starting with the obvious... life in Bangladesh and Kolkata is different to NZ. Things that strike you when you are there: The people in rags, the smell of human waste (at times), the life that happens on the pavement, the fact that the pavement looks like it was built in the 17th century, the vehicles passing the pavement that look like they should be scrapped, the scrap and rubbish between the pavement and the vehicles that piles up, the rats that go thru the piles of scrap at night

But then I get to the less obvious (until now) That a large number of people CHOOSE to dress that way, that the relieving yourself in the street is as cultural as picking your nose and kissing (or not) in public, and so are the street vendors who are actually working, and the collision of old and new is actually quite exciting, and that Auckland streets are only clean because the infrastructure here is better and corruption is lower, and not even the Bengali people like the corruption, but people in NZ litter just as much it's just that we have people we pay to hide that from ourselves...

But there were some things that were not just different...

Young teenage girls 'standing in line', refugees raising families far from homes they can't go back to, a caste system, a pervading mentality of superiority and inferiority, a house for the dying destitutes...

There are others I could comment on but I have already shown myself to be a bigot and an ignoramus probably even in this post...

So this is where I have been and still am...

peace