Word: slum
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...This slum doesn't have a name. The 5,000 residents call it Ban Chua Gan, which translates roughly as Do It Yourself Happy Homes. The expanse of jerry-rigged wood-frame huts with corrugated steel roofs sprawls in a murky bog in Bangkok's Sukhumvit district, in the shadow of 40-story office buildings and glass-plated corporate towers. The inhabitants migrated here about a decade ago from villages all around Thailand. Jacky came from Nakon Nayok, a province near Bangkok's Don Muang airport, seeking financial redemption in the Asian economic miracle. And for a while...
...girls tried it. And then a few of the housewives began smoking, and finally some of the dads would take a hit or two when they were out of corn whiskey. Now it has reached the point that on weekend nights, it's hard to find anyone in the slum who isn't smoking the mad medicine...
...When the yaba runs out after half the slum's population has been up for two days bingeing, most of the inhabitants feel a bit like Jacky, cooped up in her squalid little hut, her mouth turned up into a vicious little scowl and her eyes squinted and empty and mean. She looks like she wants something. And if she thinks you have what she wants, then look out. She slices at her cuticles with the straight razor. And curses Bing...
...theory, Junior Parents' Weekend is a chance for our kin to catch a glimpse of our Harvard years--to slum it a bit with us college folk, to make sure we've been eating and sleeping properly and, of course, to find out where, exactly, all their tuition money has been funneled for the past three years. Harvard invites our parents to the Square for the weekend, the weekend being the most, shall we say, intriguing aspect of any college student's week. We have, however, been thrown something in the form of a bone: an events schedule packed full...
...India, power is power. Whoever can provide precious kilowatts to householders or industrialists scores huge political points. Politicians allow slum dwellers to tap into the grid for free in return for votes, and policemen do the same for bribes. The government even subsidizes electricity bills for farmers, the majority of the population. The country simply doesn't have enough juice. And its underdeveloped and antiquated power grid is making life miserable for virtually everyone...