#3 - In Queenstown, New Zealand

• "The notion of what is a luxury and what is basic need has been upended in Bombay. Every slum i see in Jogeshwari has a television.... the real luxuries are running water, clean bathrooms and transport... The greatest luxury of all is solitude. A city this densley packed affords no privacy.... A good city ought to have that; it ought to have parks or beaches where young people can kiss without being overwhelmed by the crowd" [Maximum City, by Suketu Mehta, p156.]
• Half of the population of Bombay has no access to a toilet. That translates to 5 million people producing two and a half million kilos of human waste, every day. [ibid.]
  
• Writers banned under the regime of Saddamn Hussein included Virginia Woolf, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Herge, the author of Tin Tin. [An article in the Press, a New Zealand paper, which might have also been in the UK Sunday Times.]
  
• Nineteenth Century immigrants to the New Zealand colony of Christchurch were left on a nearby beach, with a tent, for 40 days and 40 nights. If they proved to be disease free after that time, they were granted entry.
• Neuroscientists think there are six basic human emotions: anger, fear, sadness, joy, surprise, and disgust. [An article in the Christmas edition of the Economist, which i'm still getting through.]
• Most Indians are under 25. Given the size of the country, this also means that India is home to 20 percent of the world's population under 24. [McKinsey Quarterly]