Two Dummies in One Day

The publisher calls it the “dummy”. It is a rough layout of a book and I saw the dummy of my book today. It hasn’t gone to the design team yet. But, it was still impressive. But then, anything with my name on it looking like a book is going to impress me.  I am worried about some of the images. Some of the images on my site are very low resolution. Most or anywhere between 7 to 12 mp. But a hand full are only 1 mp! …and of course the publisher wants to use a few of those. Well, we will see.

Our flight out of Srinagar was delayed three hours. When we finally made it to Delhi there was organized chaos at the taxi stand. We waited our turn unlike many others and finally a taxi pulled up next to us. I opened the trunk and at the same time this guy opens the side door and gets in. That ain’t right! I informed him that we had the taxi first. The others, Steve and my wife all chimed in and we all explained to him that, yes, indeed this was our taxi and that he was standing in the line behind us and should take the next one. He insisted that he was there first. We all kept our cool, even thought it was 41º out side (105º for your Americans). But I will confess, after 11 years in India the one thing that pushes my button is what I call “VIPism” aka “Classism” and I lost it when he told the police officer that was standing near by that he was with the “Ministry of Home Affairs”! I shouted, “Who cares?” You need to understand living in Kashmir we get run off the road (sometimes quite literally) daily, by Ambassadors (a brand of cars the VIPs like to drive) with little red lights on the roof. Members of Parliament that think the average man is nothing more than a speed bump in the way of his motorcade. I guess it was many years of “giving way” that built up and came out at this man. I should not have lost it. It was not right. It was dumb. It was an “Ugly American” thing to do. I was wrong. Where ever you are mister Home Affairs man, please forgive me.