My friend Ken told me I remind him of the character in "Lord of War" played by Nicolas Cage and allegedly inspired by the real life Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout who was recently arrested in Thailand. Having been mildly interested in the story of this person, and also having some sort of unexplained fascination with prison life, hearing this story sparked some sort of interest in reading prison stories...specifically stories from Thai prisons. My search led me to a book which I will have to add to my "must read" list titled "The Damage Done" about an Aussie heroin dealer who got caught in Thailand and spent 12 years in prison there. It also took me to a Thai prison blog, where I read one person's account of what is allegedly the worst prison system on earth. I chortled heartily when I read what seemed like a complaint about the shower:
"The water is turned on for 2.5 minutes for you to wet your entire body. Then it is turned off while you then soap yourself quickly. Then the water is turned back on for another 2.5 minutes for you to wash off the soap. You have to be quick because you don’t get a second chance."
And from what I gather, this is part of the daily routine. I just can't muster up any sympathy for him. Antarctica contains 70% of the earth's freshwater and 90% of the earth's ice. The B-15 iceberg alone, which made news in 2005, contains more than 1000 trillion gallons of water. That is an amount completely unfathomable to me, but by the estimation of leading glaciologists familiar with B-15, that is enough water to cover all of the land on earth with .5 inches of water - or 5 inches of water on all of the agricultural land on earth. And B-15 is but a sliver of the total mass of ice on the continent. Here at the South Pole, the ice is two miles thick and goes on for as far as the eye can see in all directions. The point I'm driving at here is that there's a hell of a lot of water in this "desert". Unfortunately, that water is locked in ice, and it takes heat to get it. It costs a great deal of money to generate the heat required to melt ice. Therefore, every person on station is limited to two two-minute showers per week. Believe me when I say that a two minute shower is very much less than satisfying.
My heart bleeds for you Mr. Thai Prisoner.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
...would no mention of equal "demoted" :-0
Post a Comment