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Shortly after starting my blog, I took off on vacation to Nepal, thus killing any momentum that didn’t really exist. I will spare you the long drawn out travelogue, except for one observation.  Nepal is going through some incredibly rough times - power is out for 8 hours of every, the wait in lines for gasoline or diesel can take up to 12 hours, they are trying to overcome the trauma of a revolutionary war that killed thousands over the past ten years, and they are gearing up for elections that could dramatically change the government.  The prevailing sentiment was summed up this way “in ten years Nepal will be really wonderful, or really bad.”

Coming back home after 3 weeks, I also found that life wasn’t looking as rosy in Alameda as it was when I left - a perfect storm of budget cuts in education, city financial woes at the golf course and with AP&T, a downturn in housing that threatens to scrap some development projects has made the near and long term future much murkier.   Luckily we are doing without a revolution(so far), but as in Nepal, I think it is now fair to say of Alameda that “in ten years it will be really wonderful, or really bad.”

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