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Auctions: Lecture Notes

Please feel free to use this for your classes. Just acknowledge my name. Thanks!

Auctions:

I am going to concentrate on one topic rather than doing a survey of the extensive literature that exists for this topic. You can see that many types of auctions exist, look here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auction

There are many topics here that are of interest for both serious theoretical and empirical research:

What are the optimal bidding strategies for each type of auction? How does it depend on the information that the bidders have about a. the value of the item, b. the value that other sellers place on the item and c. the real-time bidding process of the auction?

How do prices in the auction market deviate (or not) from competitive prices or oligopoly prices?

What is the role of signaling in auction markets? How do bids convey information to other potential buyers?

We will look at only one problem:

Assume only one object is being auctioned. The format is sealed-bid first price auction, the winner gets the object and pays his bid “b”. If the value of the object to him is v, he gains v-b if he wins, and zero if he does not win.

If there are two bidders, and they value the same object v1 and v2 respectively, and if  there is perfect information, and   v1 > v2, bidder 1 would bid v2 + e, when e is a very small number and bidder 2 will bid v2. Of course 1 would win and have a gain of v1 – v2 .

The problem becomes interesting if we assume that there are two bidders, but they do not know each other’s valuations. Without losing generality, we assume that ti is valuation of type i, and ti is known to be uniformly distributed over [0,1].

In a Bayesian Nash equilibrium, what would be the equilibrium bidding strategy of ti ? This is the question we answer:

If ti wins by bidding b, he gets ti – b if his bid is higher than the other bid, otherwise he gets zero.

Therefore, ti’s expected profit from bidding an amount b is

Πi = (t-b) prob(bj < b)

We manipulate the term prob(bj < b) a little bit. Assume that a player with valuation t will have an equilibrium bid b*(t). Since the game is symmetric, both players will use the same bidding strategy in equilibrium. Further, the function b*(t) is monotonically increasing, which means higher t will induce a higher bid in equilibrium.

Therefore prob(bj < b) = prob(b*(tj) < b) = prob( tj < ϕ(b)) when ϕ(b) = inverse of b*(t).

But then prob( tj < ϕ(b)) = ∫ ϕ(b) xdx = ϕ(b), because of our assumption of uniform distribution of valuations.

So, in equilibrium, player “i” with valuation ti will maximize

Πi = (ti-b) prob(bj < b) = (t-b) ϕ(b), by choosing his bid b

Therefore the first order-condition, described below will be met for every t

∂ Πi /∂b = 0 =  – ϕ(b) + (t-b) dϕ/db = 0

So, every t will bid according to above and in equilibrium every t will follow his equilibrium bidding strategy which implies that b= b*(t) or  t = ϕ(b*)

Therefore, for any b* we will have

– ϕ(b*) + (ϕ(b*) –b*) dϕ(b*)/db = 0

Since every b* will satisfy the above, we may think of this as a simple differential equation in b

A note on differential equations:

Solution of  a differential equation:

-y + (y-x)dy/dx = 0

Rewrite as

-ydx –xdy + y dy = 0

Or

(ydx + xdy) = ydy

Define a change of variables

Let z = xy, then dz = xdy + ydx

So we have, dz = ydy or taking integrals on both sides

 z = y2/2 or xy = y2/2 or y = 2x (done)

Finally we apply this to get ϕ(b*) = 2b or b = ϕ(b*)/2

Or b*(t)  = t/2

So every player, regardless of his own valuation, will bid half of his valuation in this game.

So, for example, expected profit of someone with valuation 75c will be

Profit = (3/4 – 3/8) prob(t <  3/8) = (3/8) (3/8)

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The American Dream: A Cliche? Part 4

The American Dream: A cliché? Part 4

Irshya’s curse

There is Hera, the goddess of Envy,  in Greek Mythology. There is Irshya, a sin in Buddhism.  I succumbed to both of them .   We all do, from time to time. So did Neil, our friend Nilubabu.  But Nilu actually put a curse on him out of jealousy. I would not go that far.

 Nilu’s   curse worked, kind of! It took about forty years, though!

Who is this person that everybody was jealous of?  It was Ashok  -who finally  overachieved the American Dream, but many years later!  Nilu  put a curse on him a lot earlier, when he was merely a student!

Let me reveal some details!  When I started teaching Economics at the KU economics Department, Ashok was a graduate student in Pharmacy. In the early eighties in the middle of America, there was only a handful of Bengalis, so I had to hang out with every single one of them! In my arrogant and obnoxious avatar back then, I didn’t like him much.  Neil, a math professor,  absolutely hated him! He never gave me a list of reasons why he would prefer an ugly gnome  to Ashok , but  I presume that such a  list would look like this:

Pharmacy was not even  a proper science subject (!)

Ashok had a pot belly! I mean a big one!

His   personal hygiene was questionable, at best.

He was stingy  as hell.

His apartment was dirty and smelly.

He was , ahem,  uncouth.

He had fat sideburns that went out of style in the seventies.

He was not  well-read and “cultured” as we were (we were both  Presidency college Bongs (Bengalis)),  conversations with him were strained and boring.

He talked and gossiped behind your back – a lot.

I agree with him being stingy! He invited me once and fed me a curry with chicken gizzards only! I mean, he didn’t even buy a pack of  regular chicken meat!  Gizzards are bought as fish baits by Americans!

However I will reserve my  judgment on the  other items on this list.

No one was jealous of Ashok at this time. He was just a poor Ph.D. student!

Once his thesis proposal was approved ,  he knew he was going to finish soon, and he went to India to visit his family. Rumors started floating that his mom would get him hitched to a girl. Rumor mongers were right.

Ashok came back with Shinjini. We all got to meet Shinjini. And our eyes popped. I mean, this was a hard pop indeed . Shinjini was very, very beautiful. Not  supermodel  beautiful like slender and tall but voluptuous, with a heart-shaped face like a Hindu goddess and a gorgeous smile.  And a fantastic , warm personality, gracious and charming.

OK,  OK, I will stop blabbering now.

This was a misfit that could only happen in an Indian negotiated marriage. The wives of ours were all jealous of Shinjini , but at the same time,  in a crooked way , happy that she got hitched to an apparent loser.  We, the husbands, sighed, and  maybe dreamed of her  at night .

Neil, the math professor,  romanced his Punjabi wife while he was doing  his Ph. D. and married her later, refusing to agree to an arranged marriage.  I think he saw the opportunity cost of love marriage personified here.

 He gave us lectures about how poor Shinjini’s life is destroyed  for getting married to this bozo.

“You will see” he would say, shaking his head,  “ She is too good for him. It is not meant to be. How can  she even sleep with him? Either she will ruin him or evil spirits will get him eventually!”

Notwithstanding the aforementioned curse, Ashok finished his Ph. D. on time and left town for his first post-doc job.

We met again about twelve years later and caught up. During these years, Ashok worked in a well-known university as a professor, applied for and received a lot of grants, and invested a lot of his money in mutual funds that paid off nicely. He was offered a job as a full professor in a university in Kansas city and  moved there in 1994. Shinjini was also working as a post-doc in his department.

But their house!! Two-income families usually buy big houses in USA, but this was over the top.,  What I liked was not the five bedrooms and four bathrooms, but a huge living room with a thirty feet tall glass window overlooking a small lake. And a huge family room in the basement, with a projection TV, a billiard table and enough  space for about thirty people to congregate and party!

The former bozo had apparently achieved the American dream !   Shinjini was a devoted wife, a mother of two boys. She worked full-time in the pharmacy lab and worked full-time at home cooking and cleaning at his huge house while Ashok relaxed in front of TV. She still looked beautiful and gracious. Ashok had become considerably fatter and had started wearing a disgusting hairpiece by then.

As often happens with Indian academics in USA, Ashok really was not assimilated with the mainstream American society.  He had only two lives – working in his pharmacy Lab, and hanging out with his Bengali pals in Bichitra, the local Bong (Bengali) club. As he became more powerful, he converted both to his fiefs. Ashok  ruled both  fiefs like a feudal lord. This was not supposed to go well, and it didn’t.  He actually comingled his two fiefs ,  which turned out to be disastrous.

Almost every weekend and on every social occasion, Ashok  had a party in his grand house. Either it was a meeting for Bichitra, or for watching a cricket match on his projection TV, or a musical recital.   Shinjini will cook a four or five course meal for at least twenty people. It was hard on her, doing this so frequently. So Ashok started asking the Indian students that work in his lab to help out with cleaning and serving. They were already at the meetings anyway! It kind of snowballed from there. Soon , he was asking the Indian students to attend all the meetings, and take care of  setting up the tables, serving the food and cleaning up afterwards. Some complied voluntarily. Some not so much. The vegetarian students from  South India did not care for Shinjini’s famous chicken recipes and particularly resented serving  their thesis supervisor at his every whim.  

Unfortunately, it did not stop there. Soon, Ashok asked his own Ph.D.  students’ help for mowing his huge lawn and raking the leaves in the fall. His lawn was about three acres, took hours to mow even with a riding motorized mower. His basement flooded about fifteen years ago, he asked the students to come and bail out the water with mops and buckets. No matter how revered the professor is, Indian students would definitely hate to do this. By this time, he was wealthy enough to hire professional people to restore his basement – it was a serious lapse of judgment to ask for the students’ help.

The Pharmacy  lab was more like a hotbed of politics and intrigue than a place for scholastic discourse like in a physics or Economics department.   Grants for pharmaceutical research are given by  government agencies and by Pharma companies. The research output is sometimes patented, sometimes sold by the university to private firms, sometimes used by the faculty to jockey for more grants.  You can smell the corruption perking up all over this place.

Ashok had  accumulated  grants worth multi-million dollars. Nobody in the department came even close! All the  Deans  over the years were  certifiable sleazebags, they were ecstatic about the 40% overhead kept by the university from the research grants, and ate out of Ashok’s hand.

Ashok became the department chair and a legit despot. He would bring droves of Indian Ph.D. students from India and worked them  as hard as possible in his lab,  tempting them with lucrative job offers when they finish. The American students were a notable minority that was  left out of Ashok’s carrot and sticks regime. He was  also totally dictatorial with the other faculty members, who had only paltry research grants.

At Bichitra, he was the roaring,  boasting president.  He did a lot for Bongs,  for sure. Parties with delicious meals frequently at his elegant house.  He organized many concerts and events in Kansas City where he brought really famous artistes from India. I know for a fact that over the last twenty-five years, he invited Biswajit (the Bengali movie star –remember him?), Sandhya Mukherjee , the iconic  singer, and very recently Sreya Ghosal and many others like them. His  record was impressive indeed!

All the artistes were housed with Ashok where Shinjini slaved for hours to fulfill their culinary  and other needs

Shinjini told me about the time a Classical Dance troupe of six young women were guests in her house. She liked their vivacious personalities, was  shocked at their frequent sexually  charged conversations,  and amazed at the voracious  appetites  of these  skinny women! She said they ate more than her teenage boys!

In return for his magnanimity, Askok  demanded absolute obedience .  Many  other Bongs were  established professionals too,  they were loath  to bow before him.

The fiefdoms would have continued long-term, but  there was one  big thorn!

Dr. Beeveeshon  joined Ashok’s faculty in early 2000’s and also  became a member of Bichitra. He was a Bong! Irked by Ashok’s many shenanigans, vengeful that he was, he kept quiet for six years until he got tenure which gives lifetime job security to American faculty.

 Beeveeshon  attacked on all fronts right after tenure. He argued bitterly with Ashok about his policies in the faculty meetings. Ashok threatened revenge.  Beeveshon then  rounded up ex-students of Ashok who hated him. Together , they complained to the Dean and the Chancellor about his illegal exploitation of students and  about the frequent threats he made to the students for non-compliance (“I will cancel your visa and throw you out of the department”  – he allegedly said this to many students unwilling to  do his chores. )

On another front,  Beeveeshon and another Ph.D. student accused Ashok about appropriating the results of a  particularly successful  experiment for treating eye infections. This was a “nano” drug that was applied in minute amounts by electronic methods to cure several eye problems. Although still not fully developed, a Pharma company bought  this from Ashok,  got a patent jointly in their name and in Ashok’s name and paid him more than a million dollars privately.  The complaint was that the university and the graduate student who worked on this drug development got duped and should have been compensated.

The complaints were lodged and received by the Dean and the Chancellor, who promptly ignored them (Ashok was the golden goose, and these people were sleazy as hell!).  Beeveeshon sued Ashok and the University in Civil Court and complained to the police and Human Resources. Pretty much nothing happened  with these.

Beeveeshon then submitted his entire dossier on Ashok to KCStar, the leading regional newspaper. They conducted several clandestine interviews with current and former Ph. D. students, and dissenting members of Bichitra and also Ashok’s neighbors.

Around November 2018, in two different  explosive  exposes in a month, KCStar revealed how an Indian-American professor treated his students as slaves and how he stole his students’ research duping the students and the university .  The sh**t had indeed hit the fan!!

The Chancellor listened now, so did the police and the FBI. The Chancellor suspended him with pay, promising  an internal investigation.  Things started looking ominous for Ashok with lawsuits already pending and more suits (possibly criminal!) hanging on his head.  

It is very difficult to dismiss tenured faculty from a university. Academic dishonesty or moral turpitude has to be proved rigorously to satisfy an independent university  committee , and its decision could be appealed to the university Regents,  then to the State High court and possibly beyond. If Ashok  was belligerent and litigious, he could have continued vigorously fighting this for about ten years. I don’t think  any charges could have been sustained besides the patent issue, which he could have settled out of court. So he could have worked and got paid for at least ten more  years , although his work environment would have been extremely hostile and lawyers would have taken a lot of his money.  But then again if the final  ruling turned out to be in his favor, he could have then countersued for wrongful and malicious action on the part of the university and asked  for some major compensation.

Nevertheless, Ashok was sixty-eight years old at that time, and did the right thing.  He resigned immediately  with full retirement benefits  and kept all his money. No charges were proved against him because all charges were dropped. The patent suit continued and he settled it in 2021 for  what I think was a relatively small chunk of money.

Financially, he ultimately did very well. All of the retirement funds, the royalty from present and future patents, and sales proceeds from past  research belong to him, they are beyond litigation after the settlement dues are paid.

What happened here is a rags- to- riches- to -public -shame episode. He lost a few more years of rule over his fiefdoms as well.

His wonderful wife is constantly cheering him up. Since he has no other social friends, she takes him  to Bengali social gatherings around his town. In 2019, the news was still relatively unknown, so half the people were talking to him normally, the other half was whispering behind his back.  By now, I guess everyone knows. 

I met Ashok in Kansas during Durga Puja celebrations in 2019. An Indian couple wanted to visit him ,  so I drove them to his house for lunch. Ashok is now almost obese, and still wears the same disgusting hairpiece.  But  Shinjini, in her early sixties,  still looks fabulous  with dyed hair and a little make up. The house is still spectacularly decorated.  The boys are in their thirties and live separately. I guess the weekly feasts at his home  have stopped for now.

To be fair to Ashok, it is not uncommon for faculty to ask their Ph. D.  students for favors.  Nor is it unusual for faculty   to claim at least partial credit or more for research that was done wholly by their students.  Ashok just way overstepped his bounds and became a tyrant and a thief.  

Now he spends his days alone  in his beautiful house, surrounded by very expensive knick-knacks from around the world. He and his wife will travel a lot now all over the world.  Shinjini will call me when they  come  to Kolkata next.

As I said before, the curse of Hera worked, kind of.  But Shinjini  really loved the  bozo in good times and bad,  as their marriage vows indicated.  I am really  proud of her.

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The American Dream : A Cliche? Part 3

The American Dream: A cliché?

Part 3

 From Gogoosha’s  Country

For the record, I personally do not know any  blond woman named  Gogoosha. And if I did, I will never tell you.

Gogoosha  (real  name Gulnara) had it all .  A Bachelor’s degree in international Economics, a degree in Design from New York Fashion Institute of Technology,  a Master’s degree in Regional Science from Harvard University (!),  a  Ph.D.  in political science from a university in Tashkent , and  on the side, a B.A. in Telecommunications.  She was the country’s leading fashion designer and displayed her creations in Europe frequently.  She owned  the biggest  company that sold fashionable clothes in her small and poor country. By the way, she also owned a monopoly of the only cellphone company  in her country and had a controlling interest in the country’s  healthcare and media sectors.  She was of course a Professor in Political Science and  a senior bureaucrat in the country’s government.  If this is not enough, she was an accomplished rock and roll artiste  and held concerts in Europe occasionally when she was not too busy. And did I mention that she had a hot body, and a great smile,  wavy blond hair and ample  natural endowments? She lived in many different mansions that she owned all over the world.

Are you saying WTF? Hold on!

The country’s name is Uzbekistan, and she is the daughter of its erstwhile first president Karimov. The degrees of course were obtained surreptitiously, the business ventures were acquired by appropriation  and extortion,  and you can draw your own conclusions about her other talents! She could be found swaying to her own music on Youtube – check it out!! Karimov was grooming  her and her husband for an eventual succession. BTW her net worth at its peak was about a billion dollars although I am skeptical about the valuation.

I never went to Uzbekistan although I taught in a private American style university in neighboring Kazakhstan, in a city named Almaty. My Kazakh students were rich kids, children of  the network that governs and plunders the Kazakh people. However, scholarships were offered to meritorious students  from average families from neighboring countries. So I came in close contact with quite a few Uzbek students. I mentored two of them  through undergrad and grad programs, helped them profusely with  studies, advised them  on personal matters and provided substantial financial assistance. There were many others, all men, that I hung out with, offering them different degrees of friendship and assistance  over the years.

 I would like to say that the Uzbeks  were nice, warm and honest people. They are , if you mingle with them superficially.  Underneath, for at least some of them,  there is a trait of religious and moral hypocrisy,  dishonesty and generally  opportunistic behavior.  Maybe I had  bad samples! Nevertheless, all my students, hypocrites or not,  were very bright and well-read. I learned a lot from them about Uzbek institutions, customs and their personal frustrations with the Uzbek society.

The Uzbek government and the network that controls the country, though, are  not nice and warm. They are certifiably vicious and nasty.  More about this later.

Unlike from India and Korea, there are three interesting  tiers of immigrants from Uzbekistan to USA.

Lets’ do some numbers first. Uzbekistan is a small country , with a total population of  35 million (India’s population is 1350 million!!). The total number of Uzbek  immigrants and ethnic Uzbeks who are US citizens is less than 100k. Ethnic Indians in USA  number about 4 million!  So we are talking about something of a much smaller dimension !

I never met any Uzbek immigrants in USA. However, I have met  many from Russia and Central Europe. So my diatribe is based on my experience with the above immigrants,   on  my discussions with Uzbek Students in Almaty, and on  an excellent informative article I read in the New Yorker a few years ago.  

The first group escaped the highly oppressive communist regimes after WW2. Many  were persecuted and ended up as refugees in USA , some came with some assets, some penniless.  Later, some  families  arranged a tri-lateral asset transfer and got out. They mostly started working as small businessmen.  Eventually they or their children became established professionals, some actually became very wealthy.   Most of them are now at least in their late sixties , many a lot older.

I met both working class and middle class immigrants from East Europe from this generation. What distinguished them from the others was their seething, intense hatred of the Soviet system . They hated everybody and everything associated with everything Soviet, with a vengeance.  

Perhaps  one single   example will prove my point. In 1977, when I was doing my Ph. D. in the University of Rochester, the chess club organized a simultaneous chess match with the ex-world champion, Tigran Petrosian from Soviet Russia.  This  was a time of my life when I had  quit playing chess temporarily,  but I went to see the match and enjoyed watching  an elderly Petrosian playing about 20 players simultaneously and kicking their butts in no time.  Apart from the students, there were a lot of older people in the audience, many of them were speaking in foreign languages.

The chess club organizers, mainly young graduate students,  wanted to act as  gracious hosts  and wanted to entertain Petrosian with food and drinks after the match. The problem was that Petrosian’s English was seriously limited to the chess vocabulary : he could say  “this is checkmate” or “mate in five moves”  but very little else.

 Undaunted, the organizers  made an announcement , asking for a native Russian speaker to volunteer  as his companion for the evening.  The response was a stony silence from the native Russian speakers! Somewhat desperately , the organizers then asked for someone only to translate a few questions for Petrosian about his personal preferences – it will take only  few minutes to do it .  Again,  a stony silence.  The young men then asked the Russian speakers personally to help. One by one they went to get their coats and left  the auditorium. All of them loved chess, but abhorred people like Petrosian who was assumed to be  a shameless proponent for the Communist regime!

The New Yorker  article corroborates what I had seen about  this tier one  immigrants from Uzbekistan and other formerly communist countries. The New Yorker found the older Uzbek immigrants mostly affluent, some very rich. Some of their children who  speak Russian or Uzbek have very rewarding careers in the military or in  US government (CIA, maybe?). They have their own enclave in swanky neighborhoods in New York and they never visit the ethnic Central  Asian  residential areas or their stores and restaurants. To them, the people that did not leave Soviet  Russia (or its Satellite countries) are all communist bastards and should be disgraced publicly.

Well , the Soviet Union collapsed  in the early nineties.  Uzbekistan and other “stans” emerged soon afterwards. The second  tier of migrants came during the 1990’s which was a period of some major anarchy in Uzbekistan. These people were mostly educated and took advantage of the relatively lax exit restrictions and currency regulations in Uzbekistan during the period of anarchy.  Their stories are more straightforward. They came, struggled with English, worked jobs below their skill level and finally established themselves as professionals and Business people.  Again, I met a lot of Russians with the same background in USA, I am guessing the Uzbeks would  have the same experience. One of my Russian acquaintances in USA was a chemistry professor in Russia. He worked minimum wage jobs until his English improved, then he enrolled in college to get a diploma in Computer science. Afterwards, it was a matter of time before he reinvented  himself as an IT professional  earning an  American middle-class salary (no, not millions!).   

The third tier of immigrants was created, unfortunately,  by the repressive government of Uzbekistan. Karimov’s rule,  after he consolidated his power in the late nineties,  was a major Kleptocracy. Every single economic activity was restricted , a license was needed to import bananas  or  computers. The network (Gogoosha and associates) owned the only major wholesale distribution  center for consumer goods.  Everytime in Uzbekistan,  if you ate  a meal or rode a taxi,  some money went to the network.  For a while, Karimov had the balls to order that schools will be declared closed when the cotton harvest is ready , so that high school students and teachers will pick cotton that  will be exported abroad  –  the proceeds  will go the network, of course! 

The Uzbeks are proud of Timur (Temir Lane). Timur’s  mausoleum stands proudly in Samarkand ,as one of the most famous sites in Central  Asia.  I always wanted to visit!

This  greatest tourist attraction, Samarkand, was also a moneymaker for the kleptocracy . A foreigner can only come to Uzbekistan  if he  was invited by an  approved travel agency who will make all the travel arrangements.  Technically, you could go  the  Uzbek embassy in Almaty and apply for a tourist visa.  That’s what I tried.  But you will never get your visa. I was told to come back three times before I understood the implied message (that the visa will never materialize!).  So every tourist  that visits Samarkand paid  money to an  approved travel agency which was owned by (surprise!) the network.  Now you know why I did not visit Uzbekistan.

Every major business sector  was also controlled by the network.  Human rights was a joke. Religious freedoms were  non-existent.   After the Boston Marathon bombing  where the killer brothers were revealed to be from Uzbekistan, the government practically destroyed  all kind of religious activity,  afraid that the society would turn into a breeding ground for Islamic terrorists. Of course, political freedom remains only  a dream for the Uzbeks. Their  salaries were low even by Central Asian standards. Not only plundering, the government itself was also slowly choking its citizenry.  During the last fifteen years,  millions of men  have migrated to Russia, Turkey and other countries to eke out a living.

Karimov, the despot ,  thankfully passed away in 2016. The group that replaced his ilk  paid lip service to reform and  freedom, but ultimately turned out to be the same kind of anal retentives  as the previous regime. So the plight of the Uzbek people continues to this day.

Some of these people managed to flee to  America. They were unskilled and ill-suited for assimilation.  Many of them came as students and then became illegals when they dropped out of college.  They work at minimum wage jobs in hotels,  restaurants and factories in New York, New Jersey and elsewhere.  Some illegals get paid less than the minimum wage and get brutally exploited by their employers. Some drive taxis, some are petty criminals. In New York City, they live in Brighton Beach, the Russian ghetto, with five people stuffed  in a one bedroom apartment, and wonder whether it is better here or back at home.  This tier of immigrants remains in a sorry state even today.

 The first and the second tier of immigrants are shocked at the plight and misery of the third tier. They call them riffraffs, losers, morons and punks. They will not help them with jobs or money. In fact they  will have nothing to do with them whatsoever.    Thus, unlike the Indian diaspora, the Uzbek immigrants remain a fragmented bunch with no respect for the later arrivals and no cohesion at all.

The New Yorker article brings out a valid point.  It mentions that culture and religion bind the immigrant societies together.  I would go to the local Durga puja  in USA and hang out with the brash IT millionaire in my town as well as the “students” who never seem to finish  their studies  (illegals – yes there are some from India as well).  Not the Uzbeks, most of whom have no religion.

Very recently ,  famous  entertainers form  Uzbekistan are touring USA, their concerts are well-attended by Uzbeks from all three tiers. Maybe this bodes well for cultural integration in the future.

Finally, what happened to Gogooosha?  She divorced her husband   in 2005, her father was not very pleased with it . Ultimately she fell out with her father who put her under house arrest. The successor government accused her of corruption, extortion and many other things. The governments of USA, UK and France and Switzerland followed suit, since a lot of the ill- gotten gains were subsequently used for business or personal projects in these countries.  To cut a long story short, she remains under house arrest till today, serving a ten year prison sentence, all her millions frozen in foreign banks. From time to time she sends messages to the  world media about  her plight.

My heart breaks at her misery! Maybe a young security guard at her house will take pity on her and her considerable endowments  and sneak her out  of confinement!  One can always hope!!

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The American Dream : A Cliche? Part 2

The American Dream: A cliché?

Part 2

The Curse of the Chickens

After the Second World War, America faced some serious labor shortage.  Yes ,  American soldiers fought and died  in Europe and the Pacific, so there were not enough men left  to work in the  mammoth auto, steel and chemical factories. Unlike today, USA was an industrial giant then, and the Government allowed  open migration from the Middle East.  Mainly Christians from Syria, Lebanon  and Jordan were encouraged to come to Detroit  and Pittsburgh to work in the factories.  They looked Caucasian, and their skin color was fair enough to pass as white folks.  English was a problem, but they were good workers in the humongous auto plants. Seventy years later, if you visited  Detroit , there would be   a large  Arab population in some of the suburbs. Detroit even had an Arab News Channel  (in English!). There are many Muslims, but the Christians are the majority. The Christian  “Arabs” have assimilated very well in the melting pot. Unlike Indians ,education was not a high priority item for their children, making money was the main goal.  In Detroit Metropolitan area,  these people   – indistinguishable from the white folks ( language was not a problem any more ) –  own most of the gas stations, convenience stores ,  inexpensive restaurant franchises , and many other retail stores.

I  taught in Wayne State University in Detroit for one year during 1988-89, and had many Middle Eastern  students in my econ classes.  Each of them worked full time jobs while attending college – they came to classes running from their jobs during the middle of the day and left immediately.  No, after graduation they were not going back to their factory jobs like their grandfathers (that’s what the American workers did,  the auto plants were super generous with salary and benefits  at that time).  Unlike the mainstream population in Detroit, which had a serious drug problem, these kids were clean, they were all going into business, mostly started by their fathers already. They had no intention to get a Ph.D. and become scholars, I tried to talk to some of them, they generally  laughed at the idea.  

The same scenario played out in Pittsburgh , Cleveland and other US cities that were industrial giants in the fifties.  The “Arabs” there are now part of the  main populace, except their middle eastern surnames, there is no way to tell them apart. They are business men, politicians,  policemen and lawyers. Oh yes, Detroit (and possibly Pittsburgh) had the best  Middle Eastern food in America , at par with New York City. Right outside Wayne State campus and  within a block of heavy duty illegal drug traffic, there was this small Lebanese place. There  was  fresh lamb, the goat cheese was superb and the baklava was pretty much worth dying for. I am sure several  years have been deducted from my lifespan for  clogging my arteries during  lunch during 1988 and lusting after the very attractive daughter of the owner who worked as a server. Oh well,  it was worth it!

But, as you know, the ancestors of these  people  had been traders for about a millennium ,  they were all over the Middle East and Africa . They traded spices , silk, slaves and  everything else with the Europeans, Chinese and Indians.

In America, some of these immigrants  got hit with a  trading virus. They left their factory jobs once they became US citizens, and took off with their cars. They drove to small towns and villages in the Midwestern states – an area half as big as India. They were called Lebanese  Carpet  Traders by the country folks. Yes, the main merchandise was carpets, but they sold  almost everything else that was on demand. In small towns and villages,  in those days,  opportunities for shopping were limited. If you wanted  to buy  appliances or fancy clothes (or carpets!), you would go to the sole Sears Department store in town, sit down with a sales rep and order your stuff by mail. Or you can mail order on your own from a tattered catalog that you have at home. Or  you can drive at least two hundred miles or more to go to a decent-sized town  with shopping malls. So the Lebanese traders did good., bringing  truckloads  of carpets and vacuum cleaners and leather handbags – and joy-  right to the villagers’ homes.

Most of these  men were single and very handsome, so  the red-blooded American farm  girls jumped on them (or vice-versa) and within twenty years their children were totally like mainstream American kids.  

Johnnny Shalub had his Lebanese grandpa’s last name,  he finished high school from a small Kansas town, had a lot of pimples on his face and no marketable skills.  An obnoxious alcoholic man gave him a minimum wage job in his gas station in Lawrence, Kansas. There were eight to ten pumps and a small convenience store. In the early eighties, credit  cards were hardly used for gas, Johnny went around the pumps where customers pumped gas themselves and collected money or sometimes checks. He managed the convenience store, while the old man sat at the cash counter , yelling obscenities at Johnny  (and sometimes at the customers)  in his drunken stupor. This old dude was too lazy to do repair work at the pumps or  inside the store, so he forced Johnny to do that too.  Johnny’s skill set improved somewhat , but he was still making minimum wage.

Soon, the trader’s grandson started hustling. He will buy his own supply of snacks and drinks and restock the shelves in the convenience store.  When young women dressed up to party, they hated pumping gas by themselves, so Johnny offered to do it for them for a fee.  Same with old folks who  had less mobility. Slowly,  money started coming. The old man hated all this, he started swearing more at him. At the end, Johnny’s snacks and drinks were over half of the store’s shelf space, and people came to know  that this was one of the two gas pumps in town where you do not need to pump on your own.  

The old man had a stroke – his swearing transformed into  babbling – but his heart changed. He helped Johnny buy the gas station .  The bank gave Jonny a mortgage , his savings covered  part of the down payment and the old man covered the rest. I guess he turned out to be not so bad after all!!

Johnny now was a business owner, he got married, his wife was chubby and very cute, later cute and pleasantly plump.

Johnny took his business a big step further! One day, when I went inside to pay for gas , I noticed a fantastic smell. Johnny  showed me his new dive: a little kitchen with a deep fryer and some golden brown fried chicken at the corner.

The chicken was astoundingly good! I don’t know what Middle Eastern recipe he used,  I could taste the spices but could not identify them. It was extremely flavorful but not spicy hot. Johnny turned  on the fryer around eight  in the morning , the prep work took one more hour prior to that. By late morning, the birds were ready for consumption. Only  fried chicken and potato fries  with a special sauce. There was no advertising , no flyers,  people who would come inside the store to pay for gas would smell the chicken and see the sign for “Johnny’s Broasted chicken”. The chickens  were in a heated display  case, it was self-service and  pay at the counter. Only two sets of tables, mainly takeaway.  I don’t know why he called it Broasted, but word of mouth spread rapidly and soon,  by  early afternoon, the shelves were bare. Soon,  Johnny started frying chickens in the afternoon as well.

 I took his chicken to several  multi-national parties and everyone was surprised to hear that it was from a gas station, not from a gourmet place. I guess I got him free publicity as well.

Johnny started  making boatloads of dollars. Did I tell you that the chicken tasted fabulous and everyone loved it? And he had no overhead costs for the restaurant!  A Mercedes was purchased,  as well as a nice home. The old pickup truck was now used for business purposes only.  His  wife stopped working part-time  at the store and stayed at home to raise their kids.  Johnny now had a roaring business,  he came a long way from pumping gas for preening young ladies and listening to verbal abuse from an old fogey.  

But this story did not have a happy ending.

 What messed up Johnny was too much hard work. Cooking twice a day all by himself, and running a full-time business at the same time was just too much work. He would not allow other people to cook his chicken and he was averse to hiring full-time help in his gas station. He was working  very hard , stressed  out all the time. Some buddies suggested a weekend trip to Las Vegas , closing the chicken store for a couple of days but keeping the gas station open with hired help. Johnny tried his luck at the good old Blackjack tables in Vegas. First couple of times he lost money, the third time was a charm – he came back home with 4000 dollars after expenses.  A good way to relax, or so he thought.

Johnny got hooked on Blackjack. Blackjack is a great game for the casinos. With correct play, the odds are about 45% in favor of the players. Not bad odds, huh?  But cards come in streaks. Sometimes a player wins many consecutive hands, but he can’t quit – he is thinking about winning big money ! Sometimes the player loses many consecutive hands, gets wiped out and gets more money and gets wiped out again and again! As the odds are almost even, the player bets on likely wins and keeps on losing although statistically it was just a bad streak  that apparently never ended! The human mind does not want to concede so easily ! And once you are hooked, you get  high playing blackjack in Vegas, I have heard of people playing for 48 hours straight in the casinos.

Initially, Johnny spent all his savings.  Then, once he started taking money from the daily sales (the business was almost all cash then), the downhill slide was brutal. He would take 6000 dollars from the cash register (his decent profit for one month) and blow it in Vegas during the weekend. If you lose your monthly income every week,  you are  not far away from financial ruin.  I noticed the chicken store closed  every week  for a few days. The convenience store started looking like crap, with bare shelves , and boxes piling up on the floors.

Once he defaulted on his mortgage, the end was swift.  He lost it all. The bank took the property. The vendors came and took away the unsold merchandise. The Mercedes was sold, his nice house was foreclosed by the banks as well.  It took  only about three  years from the first day he went to Vegas  when he had money to burn, lots of it!

Around the turn of the century, Johnny was staying at one of large apartment complexes in town where mainly college students lived. We called these Student Ghettos. The apartments were cheaply built, things were breaking down all the time. Johnny and his wife were in charge of all the minor repairs that needed  to be done every day.  In return, they stayed rent free. Their salary covered their living expenses, barely.  Johnny  was a broken man! He will never get back what he had! Damn, he still had pimples! Still freaking young!

Previously, USA had no legal gambling except in Las Vegas and in Atlantic city.

 It is ironic ( for Johnny) that the US Federal government and the States started allowing casinos to open up in special places in the nineties.   By late nineties, Kansas and the adjacent state of  Missouri  had casinos in Native American reservations  and on riverboats.  But in these casinos, there were limits and restrictions, so you can not lose a lot of money. You could play Blackjack for a dollar a hand but a max of 25 dollars per hand. There was a limit of about 500 dollars that you can lose every four hours. Vegas, though, was a free-for-all.

I always wondered  if Johnny  started his gambling a few years later, he will still be OK because he would go to the local casinos instead of taking the 2000 km trip to Vegas. Heck,  he would lose money  at a much  slower pace and maybe would come to his senses. But maybe not, maybe he would have lost everything after six years instead of three! Who knows!

There is a moral of this story.  What is it ?

Don’t gamble? Nope!

Unfettered capitalism sinks a lot of innocent people?  Nope!

To find the moral , read the epilogue:

Epilogue: The gas station survives , until today.  There is a counter and a kitchen for rent where the Broasted chicken used to be. For about twelve years , a long time, I noticed restaurants opening up, one after another in the same place. I sampled  the fare in each of those.

A Mexican  place-  Frozen food, microwaved by the lazy owner. Folded soon.

A Chinese place –  The food was great , but it was authentic Chinese. The  customers wanted more bland American-style food. The owner was obnoxious and stubborn, would not change his menu. Folded  after a while.

An Italian place-  The fat guy had no idea how to cook Italian food, or any food.  He piled up Cheese and tomato sauce on everything. Folded soon.

Another Mexican place –  Food was good, but only three items on the menu. Customers got tired after a few months. Folded.

A barbeque place:  Tasteless pork  with a sauce that resembled Ketchup. Didn’t last long.

I think there were a couple more. You do notice a pattern here, dont you?

In conclusion, the chickens gave up their lives for Danny, but their souls were angry at the capitalist system . They must have  put a curse on the place for perpetuity!  Only  a  shrine for the chickens will  remove this curse! Or maybe a penance with a Hindu priest!

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The American Dram: A Cliche? Part 1

The American Dream: A cliché?

Part 1

Dear reader, I know that clichés turn you off.  So, I am going to throw   a lot of clichés at you right up front, right now:

  America was, and still is, a land of opportunity.  When you go to USA  from a foreign country, the residents may not like your skin color or your accent, or your native customs or your lack of “culture”, but you can work or start your business  if you qualify.  When you work , you can acquire more skills,  make  more money and save money and  then make some more. You can branch out in your business   and explore new sources of income.  It is really as simple as that.  To an industrious soul, whether native or foreign-born, America does not disappoint. 

Okay, that’s enough for now.

That being said, there are clearly two generations of  migrants to USA from Asian countries. Take for example, South Korea.  The older generations fled a war –ravaged, corrupt country in the 60’s and 70’s. If you meet them, they are older folks now, you will be amazed at their simplicity, thrift and sometimes, severe cynicism. Until about ten years ago,   I would often  see  Korean  couples in their sixties, wearing crumpled clothes, shopping fervently at the cheapest discount store for generic  poor quality grocery items., then driving away in their old battered car.  If you follow them around,  you would have discovered  that they owned like ten  apartments as well as a successful  business  or worked as  research scientists  with million dollar grants.  The American society  made them uncomfortable,  the future made them paranoid, they stumbled through life with penury  and  humility.

Compare this with the recent immigrants from South Korea.  The first things  you will notice are their appearance and  attire. Yes, the couture is remarkable because they do wear $400 jeans and  carry Louis Vutton handbags  on their informal days. And men wear  pimp overcoats that cost  maybe thousand dollars instead of a $40 ski parka worn by their  predecessors.  And I have been to some  parties with Korean men, with rare aged single malt (which I drank) and 500 dollar hookers (which I could not afford!)

These folks left Korea in the 1990’s or later when it was already out of the poverty trap and on its way to becoming  an affluent society.  These migrants  work  hard but they spend their money and  have no humility complex  whatsoever.

It’s kind of the same for Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore as well.  

For India, after the economy opened up in the 90’s , it was possible for bright students to migrate to get a Masters degree in any tech related fields or in finance (as opposed to only Ph.D. programs  in hard sciences)  – they either financed themselves or got scholarships for the Masters programs, none of which was possible  twenty years prior to the 90’s. With the advent of new technology, these folks grabbed the American dream and hit it way out of the ballpark.  Forget a million dollars of lifetime assets,  people in top tech companies get paid several million dollars every year! In Wall Street, some of  these Indian venture capitalists  and traders  are worth a billion dollars.

 Even today, multinational companies hire the top  students right out of IIT or the Business Schools and put them on a high pressure  track that would get them many millions down the road.  If you heard of Satya Nadella, or Sundar Pichai, or venture capitalist Vinod Khosla or a little older rogue Rajat Gupta, you know the kind of wealth I am talking about. The second and the third tier of these new migrants are still doing very well, I have met some whose annual incomes are between five to  ten times my decent professor’s salary in USA.  Some of them are like the Korean new immigrants, some more balanced.

But I am not talking about these migrants in this blog.

We  migrated in the 70’s and the eighties for either Ph.D.’s in hard sciences or in Economics, or as licensed medical professionals.. We left a sorry state of abject poverty and social and political disarray in India where job opportunities were very few even for the talented people.  I can expound on how wretched living conditions were then, but no, that will be more clichés or non-credible babble from an oldtimer.

Mainly  we were academics or bureaucrats or medical professionals. We mostly did good, some of us are famous for our research or other accomplishments. We made good money,  although nowhere near the new immigrants.  People are different, so some of us are obnoxious NRI’s , some others are like the older Korean immigrants. 

Even in the land of opportunity, lives of men and women are not linear. We are not money-making robots.  The pitfalls on the way to riches are well known, and in America they are more intense. There are drugs, gambling, alcohol,  and con artists. Trust me,  the temptations rain on you harder here than in other countries.  Then  femme fatales and the magnificent crooks appear once  you are successful .    Then there are men and women who get bumped by serious relationship problems or domestic abuse.

 And luck, of course, the old lady luck sometimes destroys a perfectly good life  and sometimes rescues  a sinking  soul.

 So the stories I tell are of ordinary people with not so ordinary lives.  I lived in USA for forty years, so some of the lives I talk about span several decades.

From Vietnam to Kansas

In the late eighties, a couple came to Lawrence, Kansas from Vietnam – don’t ask me how they ended up in this small university town in the middle of the country, but they did grow up in Vietnam. Their English was awful, it was hard to understand them.  They had no marketable skills, they would not get a job in a factory or an office because of the language barrier. 

They rented one small room in a strip shopping mall with a kitchen at the back and opened up the “Golden Dragon” –simple Chinese food, American style. No ambiance, a few chairs and tables.

At that time , there were quite a few Chinese restaurants in town, they were engaged in  a bitter “buffet battle”.  Everyone of them offered a huge Chinese buffet with ordinary, inexpensive dishes . This was a battle of attrition where everyone lost money for  a while,  the battle continued off and on for the next twenty years or so.

Vince and Nancy (their American names) stayed away from buffets and  stuck to simple Chinese combos that cost a little bit more than a combo meal at McDonalds. Food was tasty, although I found it rather bland. People with small appetites or small budgets liked it a lot. Each of them worked for about fourteen hours every day and raised two daughters at the same time.

The couple started their day early – they were at the restaurant by 9:30 in the morning after picking up their supplies from different stores in the city. The lunch crowd was crazy, started from around eleven am.

Everyday, 3pm to 5pm was dead slow in the restaurant,  The lunch crowd was gone, the kitchen was getting ready with dinner prep. By mid-nineties, they have rented  an adjacent room and expanded their space by  putting in a few booths. I remember Nancy going home around  3pm and bringing her little daughters to the restaurant. She would  chop veggies or make dumplings sitting in a booth while talking or playing with her young daughters.  This was her only chance to spend quality time with them. Soon, she would send the daughters home and start working  again, going home around 11 pm when the daughters were fast asleep. A few years later the daughters would also help their mom- this was their bonding activity, not Disneyworld vacations, not watching movies,  not even road trips with mom and dad – just stripping string beans, shredding carrots and stuffing  mixtures into dumpling  dough.    Both parents worked both in the kitchen and at the counter, they would cook and serve food  and scrub floors and toilets if needed,  seven days a week, every day of the year.  The number of employees expanded from zero to about five over the years

Things improved gradually and consistently. The Golden Dragon statues appeared on the wall with other Chinese adornments, a liquor license was obtained (beer only with food orders, no hard drinking and no fighting) , the menu kept expanding  to include more fancy Chinese food.

After ten years or so,  more remarkable marketing strategies were implemented.  One person, then two,  were hired for home delivery only.  Several large TV’s were put up  on the walls. The booths became more fancy, the walls had glass paneling.  And yes, free WiFi.

Their menu kept on expanding,  culminating in a grand coup – a Chinese language supplementary menu without English translation. This one had the real Asian stuff – Chinese hot pot,  Vietnamese Pho,  Thai meat dishes with fish oil,  and all the good stuff that Americans will never order. The Chinese menu was available on request, the staff will translate  for you if you asked (with some disdain)!

 The place became a favorite hangout for Asian students, both foreign-born and first generation. They did not like the standard American bar food like chicken wings and mozzarella sticks. This was their favorite sports bar with Asian appetizers!

 Also, some of us non-Chinese people  went there  regularly and had Vietnamese Pho for lunch ( an excellent noodle soup with lots of meat and veggies).  I also  sampled some other stuff too from the Chinese menu.

 The Golden Dragon took off. It did roaring business for a few years.   Ultimately, as their fortunes grew,  the couple split up,  although amicably. 

Nancy, in her mid-fifties the last time I saw her around 2015,  still looks good.  Her skin glows, her hair is perfect – I suspect weekly visits to a fancy  spa and a beauty salon – I think she deserves it!! She drives a brand new Mercedes and wears diamond  earrings,  and  owns a couple of houses besides her own.  She still works about ten hours a day in the restaurant – and  yes, cooks and cleans herself if needed. The daughters  are going to college. Every evening ,  one of the daughters works  at the cash counter. Every summer,  both the daughters work at cash and serve food for two and a half months. This is their permanent part-time job, which ,  knowing Nancy, is unpaid except for a small allowance.  These young women didn’t get too much time to socialize and party unlike their non-Asian  friends, but I always found them happy and smiling. By now they have graduated from college and flown out of the nest, I am sure.

Vince has a brand new trophy wife ( why else would  you get divorced  in your middle age?), and a child from her.  His own car is a lipstick-red Jaguar convertible. He has sold his share of the Golden Dragon to  Nancy  and opened a real upscale Asian  restaurant. The prices are fancy, but you can sample Chinese, Japanese , Vietnamese and Korean food  – high quality, big on ambiance, and of course hard on your wallet.  Instead of unskilled people that Nancy employs at her place, Vince now hires polished professional servers. Every evening , he shows up to supervise, dressed impeccably in a suit and a tie. I have eaten here several times and was very impressed .

The problem, of course, is that Lawrence is a small town. With a population of only  about 100K including university students, a gourmet eatery will not get enough customers . I predict trouble in the future. Recently, I heard that Vince has sold the restaurant and opened another one in nearby Kansas City which has about one million residents. That would have been a  better choice for upscale Chinese places.  I hope he is doing well.

No, Vince and Nancy did not become multi-millionaires or anything like that (may be each has about a million dollars worth of assets as of now). But each of them came a long way, penniless from Vietnam, from four plastic tables and sixteen chairs in a bare room and a large plastic jug for iced tea on the cash counter.  Hard work and some great business decisions – that’s all it took to turn their life around.

Da Man

Manohar Raamlagan was from Guyana. His great grandfather migrated from India to Guyana to work on a plantation. His grandfather owned a small business and sent his kids to college. His dad had a Master’s degree in mathematics. He was no scholar, but good enough to migrate to USA on a relative’s sponsorship. He worked as a Math teacher in a two year college in a big city. Not affluent, but comfortable.

Manohar, (nicknamed Da Man) was a typical first generation American kid when I met him in the nineties. He was an economics major, slightly better than an average student, very polite and soft spoken. He was ready to find a job in the US corporate world after graduating. We chatted often about India which was his ancestral land that he and his forefathers had never seen.

 About three years after he graduated and left, he was back in my office, bitter and disillusioned!

 It took me a while to find out the full story. Apparently the electric utility company that he worked for as a junior executive made a lot of profit in one year. Three million dollars were given to the Research and Development (R&D) department as a tax write-off. As he was a part of the R&D department, he encountered firsthand a classic example of corporate greed and wastage. For one year he witnessed the senior people doing “research ” by buying extremely high-risk energy options and derivatives. It was research on “new trading strategies” – it was actually extremely high-risk gambling with fancy financial assets. The research meetings were mainly organized in nice and expensive  bars with lots of fancy food and alcohol and sometimes  female companionship – all on company money. The bets paid off nicely at first, resulting in an additional one million dollars of profit, but more high risk options were bought immediately. The outcome was as expected. When all was said and done, after deducting all the “business expenses”, about 20000 dollars were left of the three million dollars.  Nobody got fired or even censured, it was “R&D” – too bad it did not work out- this was excess profits anyways, What ticked off  Da Man was that they could have given the three million to charity if nobody wanted to do any serious research with the money Heck,  they could have spent 500K on their business meetings and still given away 2.5 million. But hey, this is corporate capitalism, they could show their money was  spent on valuable energy research and that’s what counts!!

Well, Da Man recoiled from this revolting ugly capitalism, and vowed never to work again for a private firm or the government. Easier said than done, right! He has kept his promise!

No, he does not steal or sell drugs for a living! He carved out a niche as a volunteer for numerous environmental or spiritual non-profit institutions. He started out making only his expenses, but after about twenty years gets enough money as an elite and experienced volunteer to support himself. Boy, he has had a lifetime of exotic jobs.

Building sustainable housing for tribes in the jungles of Peru. Teaching schoolchildren in the rainforest of Ecuador. Growing organic veggies in an expensive resort  in a  remote forest in Oregon for spiritual healing ( the guests pay a lot, he gets to live for free, and gets all the spiritual cleansing for free was well!). A cornucopia of priceless experiences.

He does not work regularly, maybe a few months in a year when projects become available. He has no job security. He is financially poor and will remain so for the rest of his life. He shares an apartment with two other people and   lives in boring small towns where rents are low. He could  never afford a new car. He can never get married and have children  unless he finds a rich woman who shares   her soul and her assets   with him. His standard of living is below American poverty line.

He is in his mid-forties now with a grey beard and a happy smile. Very  relaxed. Possibly with some choice weed!!

Well, I consider Da Man’s life to be a roaring success! He did not like the system, he said to hell with  it, yet the society gave him enough opportunities to pursue his ideals. The capitalist society took away his opportunity to be affluent, but he is otherwise immensely rich! I have been fortunate enough to  be a friend of Da Man over the years.

I want to write about remarkable lives of ordinary people. This was the first installment. More will come later.

Ciao!!