Nothing to see here

It has been a very, very busy school year for everyone lately. That hasn't left me with much to write about (unless you really want me to explain how to diagram tariffs and quotas and calculate the resulting consumer and producer surpluses).

I don't have any new pictures. I still have a number of old ones stored on my other computer that I can use sometime. However, I won't be having any new photos anytime soon. That is because my camera was stolen.

Like most other minor misfortunes, at least I can milk a story out of it. Or at least a cautionary tale. A street thief got it from me in Shanghai. If I knew exactly how he did it, then I suppose that he wouldn't have been able to do it.

It is embarrassing really. I've traveled a lot of places over a lot of years, and never had anything stolen from me. That is because I always scrupulously followed my own rule, which was to never, ever put anything down. Last year, when I took a bunch of high school kids to Europe. I had coached them thoroughly about street crime. There is no way to be totally safe, but fortunately, not a single one of my kids lost anything. That was not true of the group of kids traveling with us, at least two of whom lost things to pickpockets.

To make a long story short: Lee asked to borrow my camera. I tried to hand it to her, but she wasn't ready for it, so I set it down next to my hip on a park bench while I used my cellphone. It was dark, there was no easy way to approach the bench from behind. Nevertheless, two minutes later, the camera was gone.

Oh well. One can't keep an unbroken record forever. On that note, traveling is a bit like riding a horse. If you keep riding horses, eventually one of them will throw you off. Likewise, if you walk enough public streets for long enough, the pickpockets will get you. They are professionals, and that is their craft.

Speaking of cowboy analogies, I suppose I can take solace that once, many years ago, they got my grandfather when he was in Paris. And that was no mere pickpocketing. They tripped him, and when he put his hands down to catch himself, they stripped bare his pockets. Big Don was, as the title implies, a very big, intimidating cowboy; and yet that didn't deter them in the least.

Then again, he probably looked totally lost in Paris, and that is all the opening it takes for those guys. I've seen the Gypsy gangs at work in France with my own eyes, and until you have seen them, you really can't fully believe how good they are at what they do. Even when you watch it, you can't truly see how they could clear someone out so quickly (and if anyone wants to call me a bigot for linking street theft to our Roma friends, then you haven't actually lived in Europe).

All in all, not a huge loss. Better than having them get my wallet or passport. It was just a two year old pocket camera. It did have some pictures on it I wanted, but nothing truly irreplaceable. I'll buy another one sometime, but I'm not looking forward to it. It is so hard to shop for electronics here. If you go to established stores, you are pretty much safe from the counterfeits. Still, it is hard to comparison shop, and the prices on anything Western quality are always just as high as Western prices (and often higher).

So no photos today.

We have had some extra teenagers staying in our apartment for the last three nights. They are here for a big athletic tournament, and the school was short on hosting arrangements. We were going to take two anyway, but we stepped in and offered to take four. A couple people have suggested that we are crazy for doing so. I reply that that may well be true, but it is only a coincidence.