Coming to an end

Well, apparently, I have spent the last several days in a sort of black hole of modern technology in Munnar. Munnar is up in the mountains on the western border of Kerala in a range called the Western Ghats. It's essentially a region that is blanketed in tea plantations. It's really quite beautiful. We visited the tea plantations and sa how the families that work the plots live, etc. The plantations used to be owned by the Tata Corporation but now are owned by some other conglomerate. The main reason we visited was to see how the Tata folks were promoting education and health. They have a corporate hospital set up that offers a wide array of medical and surgical services that are free to the workers and their families. Others may use the hospital for a nominal fee. The hospital manages to deliver high quality care to about 50,000 people for about $1 million/year. they get a pretty good value for a relatively small amont of money. We saw the hospital as well as the satellite clinics in each various tea estate. They are not funded through the same soures but manage to coordinate care fairly well. I cannot post pictures at the moment but will soon. Very cool.

However, when we were in Munnar, apparently the internet just "doesn't work sometimes" (like for the 3 days we were there). Also, I exerienced a ell phone failing to get a signal in India for the first time in all my trips here. Bizzare. I did eat some really strange fruits in a market and manage to escape uncontrolled dumping of my guts. So, you win some, you lose some.

Right now, I'm in a seedy internet cafe by a train station in Ernakulum. They have me sequestered in a little booth with a closed door. I can't decide if I should confess my sins or masturbate. More later when I have real internet and computer access.