It seems to be cooler now than it was a year ago. Last year, I only wore a jacket 2 or 3 times in total. I have already started to wear it regularly. I also have found myself cold at night even with a blanket. I’m not sure if it’s actually colder or if I’ve acclimated to the weather here and become a local. I’m guessing that the temperature drops into the mid 40’s at night. My Brazilian friend Giane once mentioned that the coldest that she had ever been was in Rio despite the fact that she now lives in DC. That was because the houses in Rio were made to be cool and they didn’t have any heating. So when it got a little chilly, it was as cold inside as outside. I think there’s a similar thing going on here. The houses are built to stay cool for a long time. The walls are a foot and a half thick and made of stone or other masonry. During the day, the sun is pretty hot but if you go into the shade you can really feel the difference. I might actually bring back some sweaters from home since all I have is a hooded sweatshirt and a jacket right now. I wonder how I’ll be when I go back home in December!
Month: November 2007
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Oil refining companies
The results are coming in and oil companies are posting lower profits this year than last year. Oil is at an all time high, so how can they have lower profits? it’s pretty simple, oil companies are subject to economic forces. It turns out that supply and demand still hold true, who would have thunk it? The conventional wisdom is that people will pay “anything” for gasoline, so any increase in oil prices are passed along to the consumers in full. If it costs an extra 85 cents per gallon to manufacture the gasoline, they’ll just tack it on the price at the pump and people will buy it. The obvious question is if people would have bought the gasoline for an extra 85 cents a gallon, why didn’t those “greedy” oil companies do it before the costs went up?
Here’s the scoop, gasoline, like any other product, is priced at the highest price it can be and still be sold in the quantities that the company needs. What that price is is determined by the combination of consumer demand and how much product the company has to sell. That’s it, the cost of manufacturing is only tangentially related to the quantity that the company has to sell, but the customers really don’t care what it costs to manufacture. The higher oil prices are cutting into the companies profits because they cannot arbitrarily raise the price to cover expenses (or for any other reason). They have to offer the gasoline at the price that consumers are willing to pay if they want to sell it. So the difference is taken out of the profits in order to keep the price where it needs to be.
The punchline here is that gasoline is just like any other product, as prices go up, people buy less of it. The oil companies can’t get around this, so when faced with rising costs, their profit goes down. They are not magic money making machines, they have to offer a product at the prices that people want in order to make money. Things have been good for them in the recent past, not so good in the more distant past (1980’s-1990’s) and now things are starting to get back to where gasoline is the lower profit margin item that it was before. I’ve written about the demand side of the equation here, one of these days I will put up a simplified version of the supply side of things…
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I have a job!
Woot! I went down to the school today and worked out most of the details. I’ll be teaching everyday from 3-6PM. That’ll get me about $600 a month. Doesn’t sound like much (it isn’t really) but it is way above what the average Yemeni can make, even the English teachers. I shouldn’t have any trouble living off of that. I’ll have a maximum of $200 a month in rent (with any luck it’ll actually be $100), and another $200 a month for living expenses, and that’s living well. I could get it down to $100 a month if I made some effort… My Arabic lessons will cost about $600 or 3 months worth, so that works out. Anyway, this is cool because it means that I can stay for another year! I knew going in that getting where I want to be in Arabic in just one year wasn’t going to happen, I’m sure glad that I can do this properly.
If I am able to arrange some private lessons (and that’s a big IF) I could squeeze another c-note or two out a month. That’ll let me travel a little. It only costs $100-$200 to go to places like Ethiopia and Syria. This also means that all of you will have another year of chances to get over here!:-) It’s a cheap vacation and I guarantee that you’ll never forget it…
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Roommate goings on
Karl has come back! He’s one of the cooler roommates I’ve had and now he’s back for a second tour. Last night karl, Henry, Michael, Denato, Tami, and I all went out to dinner. Henery is also one of my favorite ex roommates, and Michael is a current and previous favorite. Denato is a current one. All I needed was for Luca and Nollaig to be here and I’d have a collection of all of my favorite roommates. Dinner was fun and when we got back to my (our?) place, I broke out my bottle of cognac and we finished out the night with lot of fun conversation. Denato was sharing some of his cigars, we got several comments to the effect that they had not expected to finish the night in Sana’a with cognac and cigars, but that they were glad that they did.
Michael will be going back home tomorrow (although I might see him sometime in Jan. in the States) and Karl will come back to this building after him. It’s people like this that make me wonder if moving into my own place is a good idea. Luca and Nollaig made me sure that I had made the right decision when I moved in, and I’ve met a handful of other people that I’m glad I’ve met in the meantime. Of course I’ve also had to put up with some not so pleasant people as well. In the end, I think that I will move out, for money reasons if nothing else. I’ve never had my own place before, and the thought of not having to wait to take a shower, wait to do my laundry, or wrestle for space in the kitchen (and deal with other people’s dishes) makes me smile.
I’ll enjoy the company of Karl and Henry until the end of the year, then (In’shalla) I will move out. Karl and Tami will be here for a while. We’ll see what I think of my idea after they leave…
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Q’uran tidbit
It turns out that you can’t buy a Q’uran. You can buy a book with the words of the Q’uran in it, but not the Q’uran itself. You see, the Q’uran is the word of God, it is the words. A mushaff is the book that contains the word of God. You can buy that of course… This makes sense from a theological standpoint, but it does make me wonder about the reactions people here have about abusing the mushaff. A little while ago, there was a riot in Shebwah province that started with the rumor that a Frenchman had drop kicked one. There were over 1400 people involved and they did millions of dollars worth of damage including burning a helicopter. it turns out that the drop kicking incident never happened. If the word of God is eternal, and the book itself is a work of humans, then why get so upset when someone does something to the book, like put something else on top of it? Once again, the theory and practice seem to be at odds here, at least as far as I see it…
Tami and I were talking the other night and she happened to mention how she makes sure to go to Citgo gas stations when she’s at home. Citgo gets it’s oil from Venezuela either mostly or totally. I cringed visibly and expressed my hatred for Chavez and his policies. I really do believe that Chavez is going to run that country into the ground and cost millions of people their lives or at least the chance to climb out of poverty. She had a response that was very straightforward, logical, and surprisingly I had never thought of it before. “So it’s better to give money to the Saudis?” Hmmm, now that’s an ugly choice, a Marxist dictator or an autocratic monarchy. Come to think about it, none of the major suppliers of oil are exactly upstanding places. Venezuela, KSA, Iran, Nigeria, Iraq, Russia, etc.
If there were a way to pick where you were going to get your oil from, and there’s only one place, Citgo, that allows you to do that, I’d have to go in the following order. From best to worst I’d say it’s Iraq, Russia, Nigeria/Venezuela, Iran, and then KSA bringing up the rear. I still think that Chavez is awful, and dangerous, but he’s not as evil as some of the other options I suppose. Talk about a complex decision strategy, do you shoot for the middle evil in order to exclude the worst, or do you take your chances of funding the worst in order to have a chance of funding the better options? I think I’d have a tough time choosing a Citgo on purpose, but I wouldn’t feel as bad about it now if I had no choice.
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No nuclear power in Yemen
Hamdillila! The anti-corruption group actually did something! When details of the nuclear power deal came to light (see here) the anti-corruption authority requested all documents from the minister of electricity dealing with it. A month went by and the minister did not deliver the documents for review (surprise!) the board asked the prime minister to halt all dealings with the company (powered corporation) that was going to do the deal. The head of the anti-corruption board expressed surprise that the minister didn’t hand over all of the documents. If he really was surprised, he would have been the only one. In any sort of functioning government, there would be an intense investigation into the minister’s actions. Im willing to bet that since the corruption seems to have been avoided, nothing else will be done.
A British company is starting to do a study on the possibility of installing wind power in the southwest part of the country. It would generate 5 megawatts of energy (as opposed to the 100 each nuclear plant was supposed to make), but wind power has zero complications here. I hope they are able to make it happen, there’s a lot of places in this country that have no power at all, every little bit helps…
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It’s been one year
I got here last Nov. 1. The time has really flown by. I’ve actually been in this country for about 9 2/3 months, the rest of the time I was home, in China, Malta, or Greece. I’ve done a little over 6 months of class, 2 hours a day, 5 days a week. I didn’t have any class during Ramadan or Eid, and I’ve done various little trips around the place. There were also a considerable number of sick days early on and maybe an equal number of days that I just didn’t feel like going to class. My Arabic is decent, I’m pretty happy with how far I’ve come. I can say what I need to say, and I’m starting to read the newspapers. My weakest skill is in listening. I can tune in on a person, but it takes me several minutes. In the meantime, I have no idea what they are saying. Even then, dialect is totally foreign to me, and unless people are talking proper fusa I have a lot of difficulty. That doesn’t bother me much really. As long as I can get my ideas across, read and write, I’m happy.
I should find out about the hours I can work at the school this coming week. If all goes well, I’ll be able to stay another year and get my Arabic to the point that I want. I’ve found an apartment that I can move into in January, it’s quite nice… well by old city Sana’a it is. And it’s only $100 a month! If the school thing doesn’t work out (and I’ve got back ups in case this particular school doesn’t pan out) I guess I’ll be back in the states before too long. I’ve got enough money to stay for a couple of months in the new year. that’ll give me enough time to use up the hours I’ve paid for at the school. Inshalla, I’ll be able to stay the entire next year and then come back with a real marketable skill:-)
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The Russian club
I went to the Russian club on Halloween night. This is the infamous club located in “tourist city”, a walled compound that caters to expats. The Russian club offers alcohol, dancing, the occasional BLT (not last night though), and there are even prostitutes there. There are other prostitutes in other parts of the city as well, but these didn’t wear full nikab (hijab over the hair, veil, balto)… We got there a little early and the place was pretty empty. I felt like I was an off duty Soviet officer stationed in Estonia in 1983. I could almost imagine that Andropov was still in power and Reagan was saber rattling across the Atlantic. That impression left pretty quickly once the place started to fill up with Europeans and Americans. From then on out it was just another bar…
I don’t really like those types of places, there’s lots of drinking and smoking and deafening music. I was convinced to go by Tami. SIGH, I’ve been in Yemen so long that my resistance to women asking me to do something has really been worn down. This was the first time that I had ever been in a place and didn’t recognize the majority of the music. They were playing stuff that was aimed at the 20 something, nostalgic dance music from their adolescence, I felt a little old. Still, it was interesting to see the most haraam place in Sana’a, it was worth going to once.