How many ways to pay in DC?

So we recently took a quick day trip to Washington DC on a weekend to see some of the memorials and parts of the Smithsonian. Should have been a fairly quick drive to the outskirts where we were going to take the Metro into the city. We've done the trip before and it's usually a pretty good trip. However, on this trip, things went sour fairly quickly. We got to the metro station to find that it was having a problem and therefore non-operational. There was the option of commuting via bus to another metro stop and going into the city from there or driving in ourselves. The idea of having to take a bus to another metro stop (rather than into the city directly) and still having to pay the money to do so did not appeal to us but I didn't have a map to know where to go into the city - a city that I personally hate driving in because the city streets seem to have been laid out by a hyperactive schizophrenic with no sense of direction.

Yet I didn't have much choice. I recalled that L'Enfant Plaza is near the Smithsonian so just needed to figure out how to get there. On a Saturday, provided I could find a parking spot, I could actually avoid any parking fees and now I would be able to avoid the metro fees, too. Which is probably just as well since my taxes clearly weren't enough to help ensure the smooth operation of the metro in the first place - probably because they're being used to pay for the waste and inefficiency so endemic to the city and the government that it hosts. So, using my Android, got the address I needed and mapped out the drive which was only about another 10-15 miles beyond the metro station.

Once I got to L'Enfant Plaza, I received my next surprise - parking was no longer free in this area. If it had been, I'm sure that I would have fond no available parking spots. Instead, there was a plethora of spots available and, once I found a spot, realized that I had no spare change to put into the parking meter. However, in the spirit of the government, er, city finding additional ways of fleecing its citizens and visitors, they have now set it up where you can pay your parking fees using your smart phone. While I am normally a proponent of utilizing technology to create efficiency, I was simply annoyed that what used to be free parking on Saturdays was no longer and they were finding new ways of making people pay. While I have a smart-phone and can do this, there are still many people who don't and this is just another annoyance to trying to visit the city - a city that hosts the federal government that represents us all and for which we pay to maintain it with the taxes that it imposes on us. Yet, in order to visit it, we continue to pay in other ways.

Before I go too far into that rant, let me continue on with my little story. So, after spending 10 minutes setting up an account on  my Android, I find that I can only park for two hours in that location. If I want to stay longer, I have to move my car (again!) and then pay again using the same method. So, I could only go so far from the vehicle to ensure that I had enough time to get back and move it without being ticketed. Which meant that we would be unable to visit the Jefferson Memorial (which was the one thing I wanted to go see that day!) and could only spend limited time at the Smithsonian museums. So, we went to the Air and Space Museum and had a quick lunch before I took the kids to to looking at some of the exhibits. Then I took them back to my better half who went with them while I went back to move the car and pay for another two hours. And, two hours later, I thought I might be able to renew the parking without moving the car again - but couldn't connect to their application this time. So, instead of most of the day enjoying my day in DC, I spent it paying for a failed mass transit system and parking that previously had worked fine. Exactly where do my taxes go?

Maybe it's not such a big issue and this is just the way of things. Perhaps I am just being too demanding and should lower my expectations. It is possible that I am just blowing up a minor annoyance into something far more significant than it should be. However, I believe that there is a growing failure on the part of a leadership that claims to represent us and yet the evidence instead indicates only serves its own interest. But instead of whining about it here, I should spend more time looking for ways to help fix the problem. I just hope that others will feel the same way and there is yet a way to a viable solution for the entire country and not just the entrenched leadership.

And I'll stop my rant now...

Chinese History

I tend to hit the local library every couple of weeks or so because it's a lot cheaper than buying all of the books from the bookstore. Of course, the fact that I have no shortage of books at any time is not something that makes my better half happy at any time but it's one of the few vices (as she would see it) that I have so she's patient enough with them. And, in the last couple of weeks, I've found books on the Chinese in America by Iris Chang (just finished yesterday and an interesting read), Ezra Vogel's biography of Deng Xiaoping (just started and looks like it'll be informative - not to mention I've heard several good reviews of it) and David Cordingly's Pirate Hunter of the Caribbean, a story about the life of Captain Woodes Rogers who was what the title states. I also reserved a copy of George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones which I've heard a great deal about and of which there is a mini-series on HBO that I've not and will probably never see. Yes, libraries are a wonderful thing and I am certainly a great believer in them.

But I sometime have to temper my enthusiasm because the library does not necessarily carry all of the books I would like to read at any given time. As a matter of fact, I started thinking about the reading selections available as they pertain to China and Chinese history. If I were to use the library as my source of all information on China, I would only know the history of China mainly from the end of the Qing dynasty through to the current day and projections on the upcoming conflict between the US and China. While I've heard vague rumours about 5000 years of Chinese history, one would not know it from the books available on China in your local libraries. Even university libraries are hardly better in this regard - I had to look long and hard for any books that went much further into Chinese history beyond the Ming when I was in college not so many years ago.

So, now I will ask the few people who actually read my blog if they have any good recommendations for books on Chinese history that extend past the Communist-imposed history or the Qing dynasty? I am truly an avid learner on the subject but feel terribly inadequate in terms of my own knowledge. Oh, and the only real requirement is that they be in English - I am probably eternally a functional illiterate in Chinese. Any and all suggestions are much appreciated. Thanks.

Random Thoughts

Lots of things to think about.

The US election is coming up and, while it seems like President Obama and former Governor Romney have been running for the last four years already, those of us in the US still get to suffer through another several months of political lies, truth-twisting and partisan yelling from both sides with no decent chance of true leadership being the result. I always find it amusing when politicians claim to be public servants who are here to serve the public good. If that were truly so, would they be spending hundreds of millions of dollars to "serve"? Heck, if they have so much money to spend for the opportunity to "serve",  perhaps they could prove how good they are by simply giving the money to the public they claim to represent.

I thought this was pretty interesting. I have pointed out before that racism is real and it doesn't just belong with white people. In US politics, it's a given that Blacks (or should I use African-American - though you will notice I did capitalize Black, think I had this thought somewhere in a previous post) should vote Democratic because of course the Republican Party is comprised of overt white (should I capitalize White?) racists. But I really hate labels. I know Republicans who are not white racists and Democrats who are. What does it prove? Personally, I'd prefer we skip past the process of separating people and bring them together. But, then again, I am an idealist. It'd probably never work in the real world.

I found this to be a step in the right direction. These are the stories that need to be told and I hope that more are eventually brought to light one day. The truth is never easy but it is preferable to lies and cover-ups. It is living proof that the Chinese government cannot sweep away the seminal event that occurred 23 years ago. I only hope that these stories can one day be told by the people who lived them publicly instead of history books that have to be compiled secretly until some unknown date in the future.

Have you ever noticed how many commercials there are (well, at least in the US) for products to make people healthier or better looking? Why does the pharmaceutical industry populate so much our tv ad time? Or the beauty companies? It almost puts the political ads to shame at this point. Except that the political ads just run during an election year while we get stuck with pharmacy and beauty ads all the time. I do feel for those people who get suckered in by the belief that you must look better or take meds to make yourself feel better all the time. And note that I didn't even address the lawyers who advertise their services to drum up clients who should sue for car accidents or meds that may have had ill-intended side effects (OMG, medicines - advertised on tv - can have SIDE EFFECTS?!!!). Nope, can't do that or I'd have to start talkin' 'bout lawyers... Don't wanna go there...