Welfare sent Suzanne to look around in my apartment the other day because the chemistsaid I was using a larger than usual amount of medical supplies.
I was, indeed: The hole that has been surgically cut to drain urine had changed size and the connection to my urinebag was leaking.
While she was taking notes, my phone rang and Suzanne answered it. The caller was a state senator, which scared Suzanne a little.
Would I sit on the governor's committee and try to do something about the thousands of welfare clients who, like me, could earn part or all of their own livings if they were allowed to do so, one step at a time?
Hell, yes, I would!
Someday people like me will thriveunder a new system that will encourage them, not seek to convictthem of cheating.
They will be free to develop their talents without guilt or fear—or just hold a good, steady job. Unit_passage_english_b
It was late afternoon when the chairman of our Bangkok-based company gave me an assignment: I would leave the next day to accompany an important Chinese businessman to tourist sites in northern Thailand.
Silently angry, I stared at my desk.
The stacks of paper bore witness to a huge amount of work waiting to be done, even though I had been working seven days a week. How will I ever catch up? I wondered.
After a one-hour flight the next morning, we spent the day visiting attractions along with hundreds of other tourists, most of them loaded with cameras and small gifts. I remember feeling annoyedat this densecollection of humanity.
That evening my Chinese companion and I climbed into a charteredvanto go to dinner and a show, one which I had attended many times before.
While he chatted with other tourists, I exchanged polite conversation in the dark with a man seated in front of me, a Belgian who spoke fluent English.
I wondered why he held his head motionless at an odd angle, as though he were in prayer. Then the truth struck me. He was blind.
Behind me someone switched on a light, and I could see his thick silvery hair and strong, square jaw.
His eyes seemed to contain a white mist.
\ \
\
My guest walked ahead toward the restaurant with newly found friends. The blind man and I followed.
My hand held his elbow to steerhim, but he stepped forward with no sign of hesitation or stoop, his shoulders squared, his head high, as though he were guiding me.
We found a table close to the stage.
He ordered half a literof beer and I ordered a grapesoda.
As we waited for our drinks, the blind man said, \but it has charm. Please describe the musicians.\
I hadn't noticed the five men performing at the side of the stage as an introduction to the show. \seated cross-leggedon a rug, dressed in loose white cotton shirts and large black trousers, with fabricaround their waists that has been dyedbright red. Three are young lads, one is middle-aged and one is elderly.
One beats a small drum, another plays a wooden stringed instrument, and the other three have smaller, violin-like pieces they play with a bow.\
As the lights dimmed, the blind man asked, \
\
As I lowered my voice further and spoke close to his ear, the blind man leaned his head eagerly toward me.
I had never before been listened to with such intensity.
\
\below hers.
They're motionless, waiting for the performance to start.
It's the perfect living portrait of childhood and old age, of Europe and Asia.\
\
A curtain at the back of the stage opened.
Six young girls appeared, and I described their violet-colored silk skirts, white blouses, and gold-colored hats like small crowns, with flexible points that moved in rhythm with the dance. \ centimeterslong,\ \
He smiled and nodded.
\—I would love to touch one of those golden nails.\
The first performance ended just as we finished dessert, and I excused myself and went to talk to the theater manager.
Upon returning, I told my companion, \
A few minutes later he was standing next to one of the dancers, her little crowned head hardly reaching his chest.
She shyly extended both hands toward him, the brassfingernailsshining in the overheadlight.
His hands, four times as large, reached out slowly and held them as though they were holding up two tiny birds.
As he felt the smooth, curvingsharpness of the metal tips, the girl stood quite still, gazing up into his face with an expression of wonder. A lumpformed in my throat.
After taking a cabback to the inn, with my Chinese guest still with the others, the blind man patted my shoulder, then pulled me toward him and embraced me tightly. \ \
Later I thought: I should have thanked him.
I was the one who had been blind, my eyes merely skimmingthe surface of things.
He had helped me lift the veilthat grows so quickly over our eyes in this busy world, to see a whole new realmI'd failed to appreciate before.
About a week after our trip, the chairman told me the Chinese executive had called to express great satisfaction with the trip.
\ \
I was not able to tell him that the magic had been done on me. Unit_passage_english_a
A transformation is occurring that should greatly boost living standards in the developing world. Places that until recently were deaf and dumbare rapidly acquiring up-to-date telecommunications that will let them promote both internal and foreign investment.
It may take a decade for many countries in Asia, LatinAmerica, and Eastern Europe to improve transportation, power supplies, and other utilities.
But a single opticalfiber with a diameterof less than half a millimetecan carry more information than a large cablemade of coppewires.
By installing optical fiber, digital switches, and the latest wireless transmissionsystems, a paradeof urbancenters and industrial zones from Beijing to Budapest are stepping directly into the Information Age.
A spider's web of digital and wireless communication links is already reaching most of Asia and parts of Eastern Europe.
All these developing regions see advanced communications as a way to leap over whole stages of economic development.
Widespread access to information technologies, for example, promises to condensethe time required to change from labor-intensiveassembly work to industries that involve engineering, marketing, and design.
Modern communications \give countries like China and Vietnam a huge advantage over countries stuck with old technology\
How fast these nations should push ahead is a matter of debate.
Many experts think Vietnam is going too far by requiring that all mobile phones be expensive digital models, when it is desperate for any phones, period.
\expert.
Still, there's little dispute that communications will be a key factor separating the winners from the losers.
Consider Russia.
Because of its strong educational system in mathematics and science, it should thrive in the Information Age.
The problem is its national phone system is a rustingantiquthat dates from the ls.
To lickthis problem, Russia is starting to install optical fiber and has a strategicplan to pump $ billion into various communications projects.
But its economy is stuck in recessionand it barely has the money to even scratchthe surface of the problem.
Compare that with the mainlandof China. Over the next decade, it plans to pour some $ billion into telecommunications equipment.
In a way, China's backwardness is an advantage, because the expansion occurs just as new technologies are becoming cheaper than copper wire systems.
By the end of , each of China's provincialcapitals except for Lhasa will have digital switches and high-capacity optical fiber links.
This means that major cities are getting the basic infrastructureto become major parts of the information superhighway, allowing people to logon to the most advanced services available.
Telecommunications is also a key to Shanghai's dream of becoming a top financial center.
To offer peak performance in providing the electronic data and paperless trading global investorsexpect, Shanghai plans telecommunications networks as powerful as those in Manhattan.
Meanwhile, Hungary also hopes to jump into the modern world. Currently, , Hungarians are waiting for phones.
To partially overcome the problem of funds and to speed the importof Western technology, Hungary sold a % stakein its national phone company to two Western companies.
To further reduce the waiting list for phones, Hungary has leasedrights to a Dutch-Scandinavian group of companies to build and operate what it says will be one of the most advanced digital mobile phone systems in the world.
In fact, wireless is one of the most popular ways to get a phone system up fast in developing
countries.
It's cheaper to build radio towers than to string lines across mountain ridges, and businesses eager for reliableservice are willing to accept a significantly higher price tagfor a wireless call—the fee is typically two to four times as much as for calls made over fixed lines.
Wireless demand and usage have also exploded across the entire widthand breadthof Latin America.
For wireless phone service providers, nowhereis business better than in Latin America—having an operation there is like having an endless pile of money at your disposal.
BellSouth Corporation, with operations in four wireless markets, estimates its annual revenuper average customer at about $, as compared to $ in the United States.
That's partly because Latin American customers talk two to four times as long on the phone as people in North America.
Thailand is also turning to wireless, as a way to allow Thais to make better use of all the time they spend stuck in traffic.
And it isn't that easy to call or fax from the office: The waiting list for phone lines has from one to two million names on it.
So mobile phones have become the rage among businesspeople who can remain in contact despite the traffic jams.
Vietnam is making one of the boldest leaps.
Despite a per person income of just $ a year, all of the , lines Vietnam plans to add annually will be optical fiber with digital switching, rather than cheaper systems that send electronsover copper wires.
By going for next-generation technology now, Vietnamese telecommunications officials say they'll be able to keep pace with anyone in Asia for decades.
For countries that have lagged behind for so long, the temptation to move ahead in one jump is hard to resist.
And despite the mistakes they'll make, they'll persist—so that one day they can cruise alongside Americans and Western Europeans on the information superhighway. Unit_passage_english_b
Are you too tired to go to the video store but you want to see the movie Beauty and the Beast at home?
Want to listen to your favorite guitar player's latest jazz cassette? Need some new reading material, like a magazine or book? No problem.
Just sit down in front of your home computer or TV and enter what you want, when you want it, from an electronic catalogue containing thousands of titles.
Your school has no professors of Japanese, a language you want to learn before visiting Japan during the coming summer holiday. Don't worry.