Singapore and Tajikistan

One of the most efficient health care systems that we studied in Advanced Health Econ was that of Singapore. Bryan Caplan blogs about it here.

The Embassy has been rather busy this week...the IMF will be releasing a forecast of the Korean economy in the next few weeks. (Details on Korea's economic recovery coming soon!) Apparently, the IMF gets calls from other countries asking how Korea plans to recover from the financial crisis because Korea has been rather resilient in dealing with economic crises...

In other news: One of my housemates just returned from Tajikistan! He's in the army and was studying Farsi.

He told us so many stories about Tajikistan! Apparently, they have a lot of natural resources, but none of it is really tapped because it's as if the country is being run by the mafia. He pointed out that Tajiks are somewhat lazy in that most businesses are owned by Russians or Chinese immigrants. Of course, I argued that if property rights are non-existent and Tajiks are constantly afraid of expropriation, they would not be motivated to start businesses, etc. He agreed that Tajikistan's property rights are somewhat antediluvian. (GRE word, Jenn!) Apparently, if a man builds a business on a piece of land and gets killed, whoever gets there first (I'm assuming it would be the killer) could claim that piece of land. (To which I say, WTF?!) Jonny Steinberg mentioned that in Africa, there was a man who had a really successful store in the neighborhood and he told his neighbors that the store was owned by a white man because he was afraid of backlash from the neighbors, etc. Jonny said the man lived in constant fear that people would kill him out of jealousy. Maybe Tajiks have the same fear?

J bought a Russian fur hat in a store whose owner was on the losing side of the civil war. He had a whole bunch of fur hats of Russians that he had killed with pictures of their corpses...J bought the hat, but left the picture of the corpse at the store...

Also, if an American is shot by a Tajik policeman, the Tajik gov't shoots that policeman and calls it even stevens...

In another adventure, he was being driven up a path that had a rising cliff on its right side and a cliff edge on its left side. And if you looked over the cliff edge on the left side, you could see cars that had fallen off in the past. There were many...
Upon seeing these car-wrecks, his friend said, "why are we driving so close to the left?! I like the right side so much better!" Haha.

In Tajikistan, they eat something called "osh." Apparently it's served on a rug on the floor. It's a pile of rice and oil and onions. Everyone sits around the rug, sits on their left hand, and eats with their right. When J tried to wash his hands before eating, he was told that it was an insult because he was implying that the woman's rug was not clean. He got sick later that night.

Currently, J is enjoying his first real shower in 6 weeks. Apparently, the running water in Tajikistan is muddy, and he said he felt as if he were trading sweat for filth...

I hope he doesn't fall asleep in the shower!