Getting used to the heat

So that Gala was on Saturday night and it was better than I expected. To begin with the venue was amazing. It was at a top hotel here in Bangkok and was held in their best ballroom. After several speeches were made dinner began. Dinner was a buffet with all kinds of food. Having not eaten western food in a little while, I found it to be very heavy and after an hour or so didn’t sit very well. It was delicious though. During and after dinner we were treated to cultural shows from dance routines to musical performances. It turned out to be a good night. I met a fellow Canadian and she has invited me to a kind of “get-together” held every last Thursday of the month for P2’s and P3’s. She said that even though I was a volunteer it wouldn’t matter. So that should be some fun and I’ll get the chance to expand my social circle.

Work was slow for about a week. My supervisor did not assign any work for me while he is away on a field mission to Nepal. I took the opportunity to do some research into PPPs, managing corruption in the area of infrastructure development, and have also offered to help out with the Capacity Development team in general if they would like a hand with anything. When my supervisor returned I had one meeting with him, on Monday and then a meeting today with the head of Public-Private Partnerships for Service Delivery (PPPSD) who flew in from South Africa and my supervisor. At this point we are in a sense asking permission to go ahead with this anti-corruption aspect of PPPs.

This Friday will be the staff Sports Day with a Halloween party in the evening. Although there is a prize for the best costume, I won’t be putting much effort into winning it. I’ve decided just to wear a t-shirt I bought back in Toronto before leaving that has a skeleton on it. I think wearing this would give me a good balance. It shows that I’m in the festive mood but not so overboard that I can’t also enjoy the evening which often happens with costumes that are far too elaborate.

Outside of work I find that I am constantly inundated with information on this global economic crisis and so when I came across a paper, while doing some research into capacity development and global imbalances, which predicted this crises over two years ago in July of 2006, I was shocked. Read the following excerpt:

“Hence, this paper presents a second more ‘realistic’ scenario. In this case, a severe slowdown in the U.S. economy, precipitated by an abrupt decline in household spending, is assumed. Based on such a slowdown, the world macro model delineates the varying impacts on regions of the world and major countries. This scenario assumes, however, that there is no major change in policies in the United States or in the governing international policy regime.”

It seems that this present crisis was not entirely unexpected and furthermore, more importantly, those who did know about it did not choose to do anything to avoid it. In the same article of the last excerpt there is a recommendation on how to avoid it.

“The third scenario assumes a more optimistic, but teasible, scenario – which we call a ‘Coordinated Growth Scenario’. Its feasibility is based, however, on major policy changes, such as 1) movements towards correcting severe current account imbalances among countries that run either a large current account deficit or a large current account surplus 2) progress in the transition in developing countries from the production of primary commodities to manufactures, buttressed by increased South-South trade integration and 3) increased energy efficiency (which we regard as essential to any optimistic scenario). This scenario represents, we believe, a ‘win-win’ option for both developing and developed countries, including the United States.”

As I watched the news last night I witnessed an economist at Walmart explain with no apparent unease that these things happen and can be forecasted. So the question really is, and people are naturally starting to point fingers, if people knew that this was going to happen why was nothing done? When I think about this I wonder if perhaps the next generation will ask a similar question about global warming.