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No food, more expensive food, too much food

Snugly ensconced in my hotel room, I watched this BBC documentary about North Koreans fleeing their homeland by various ways and means through China. Imagine having to trek for more than 10 days in the dark of night, from North to South China, through Cambodia and into Thailand, all the while knowing you could die, get arrested (and deported), etc, any moment. It made me seem so small-minded to be relaxing in the hotel and complaining about not getting 'live' telecast of the French Open.

It puts the 'runaway' food prices I've been bemoaning in perspective. Elsewhere in the world, there are people with no food, people who can't afford food, people who have to risk their lives for food, etc...

So, let me re-frame that for myself. Prices here are 'rising' (not 'runaway'). We are in for some 'discomfort' (not 'disaster'), as the minister says.

Meanwhile, Nadal pockets a cool more-than-5-million euros for making Roger Federer's worst nightmare come true. Wow, 5 million euros. He can afford any runaway food prices anywhere in the world and still have (lots of) leftovers. And, with things as they are now, he is quite safely the King of Claydom for sometime, so he will very likely pocket the 5 or however many million euros for the next two to three years and afford even more runaway prices.

Well done, Nadal. (And Ana too). Thought it was very sweet (ha ha, when was this word ever used to describe him?) of him to 'celebrate' his victory in a subdued manner, saying later, "Today it was tough for Roger, I think, and I have to be respectful with one very good guy."


picture from here

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