I ride the short bus

On mornings like this one, for those of you in other parts of the world, it was raining pretty hard this morning, I bypass my morning walk and choose to take the shuttle from our apartment complex to the subway station. To give you a little background on the shuttle, it is basically a short bus and it is designed simply to take people from the apartment complex to the subway station and back around the rush hour times (7-9am and 6-7pm). So, on rainy mornings and evenings, I find myself riding the short bus. I guess for those of you who know me, this is not a far out stretch (that is, me riding the short bus), but let me tell you it does feel a little weird. I should also say that I will typically ride the 7:40am bus to the station and this time slot tends to be the "take the kids to school shuttle" as there are about 10 kids (between 5-10) that hope on the short bus (along with me) and the driver drops them off at school (on the way to the subway station). So needless to say, having the kids on the bus with me helps me to really feel like I am riding the short bus. Nonetheless, it also re-kindles my feelings of being a bully back in school (you know me, the big bully to all the nerds), so this ride tends to make me more wealthy as I am able to hold all the kids by their ankles while their lunch money comes pouring out of their pockets (yes Ghou Wan, you still owe me 4.5RMB for last Tuesday).

IN: Micro-Enterprise (banking/investment). For those of you who are so 2006 and have no idea what this is, micro banking/investment is a tool utilized by people in developed countries to help get proper funding to (mostly) agricultural entrepreneurs in developing countries. You see, in countries like India (where they have a cast system), a farmer who needs money to help fertilize land and grow a crop may take a loan out from a wealthy local, its just the interest on this loan is far too much for the farmer to ever be able to pay the wealthy local back, thus they fall farther into debt and essentially become the wealthy mans servant. In other cases you have banks that are not willing to give out loans to people with no credit or nothing to pledge and they are also not willing to give out low dollar loans like those needed by farmers to get started (loans with values less then $10,000USD). As such, there are organizations popping up all over the world that are opening lending institutions in these developing countries whereby these people can get safe loans that they can manage financial and be able to get themselves off their feet with farming and other entrepreneurial endeavors and the loans are essentially guaranteed by funding from the developed countries. What is so awesome is this is like a handout, but helps to benefit people in many more ways then just giving them money and let them do what they want with it. If you want to find out more about this you can check out Opportunity International's website here.

OUT: Matt says talking in third person is out. To all of you people still living in 1999 and 2000 when talking in 3rd person was really cool (wait, hold that point, I should have said annoying instead of cool), get out of it. Actually, psychologists believe that when a person is talking in 3rd person they are actually trying not to take responsibility for what they are talking about, as if someone else (even though they use their own name) has done something. This is seen when basketball star Ron Artest was apologizing for his domestic violence issue by saying, "Ron Artest once again is in the media for something other than basketball and I apologize." Do you hear it, he actually refers to Ron Artest as if he is another guy, this is his denial, he perceives in his mind that there is this violent and mean Ron Artest, then there is this basketball player Ron Artest when in fact we know him as one person. Anyway, crazy put aside, it is really stupid and my 2nd grade English teacher would be very mad at all of you 3rd person talkers. So let's all get together and start using proper pronouns again.