Amazing journey of a Salmon - In life and death

It is not just the journey that Salmons undertake during their life time but the one that they undergo after their death that is amazing.

Salmons can live in both fresh water and salt water. They are born in freshwater, follow the stream or the river in which they are born all the way to the ocean and live most of their lives there. However during their lifetime they make one or more trips to their birth place to lay eggs. In their journey back to their birth place, they swim against the stream, cross many natural and man made obstacles to reach their spawning grounds. Some Salmons during their life time might travel hundreds or thousands of miles. Talk about swimming against the tide!

However it is Salmon's journey after its death that is not that well chronicled. A typical journey after death of an Atlantic Salmon starts on a trawler that catches it off the coast of Norway and takes it to a port in Norway. There Salmon is frozen and transferred to another vessel which takes them to a much larger port like Humburg or Rotterdam. There they are transferred to another ship and taken to China - mostly likely to Quingdo on Shandong Peninsula, China's fish processing capital. There Salmons are thawed, skinned, deboned and filleted. They are refrozen, packaged, put on another ship and sent to the supermarkets around the world mostly in Europe and North Americas. Two months and a trip around the world after they are caught, the "fresh" fish gets sold, displayed neatly on crushed ice.

Literary Sojourn: Beckoning Mount Everest

An interesting piece on the joy of mountaineering. Having done some trekking myself in the lower Himalayas during my college days, it brought back all those sweet sour memories......Follow the link for the full article.

Literary Sojourn: Beckoning Mount Everest

China's manufacturing Vs India's service jobs

Between 2004 and 2008 oil prices went up from $30 to $150 per barrel. Guess what it did to the price of all the merchandise that China exports and the price of the raw material that it imports. Transoceanic shipping cost tripled.

In 2000 when the oil was at $20 per barrel, the transportation cost across pacific  was equivalent to an average 3 percent US tariff. At $100 per barrel, the transportation cost worked out to an equivalent of 8% US tariff. At $150 per barrel, the tariff equivalent was 13%.

On the other hand the bandwidth prices have been declining 20 to 25% annually!

Trend is clear, oil is going through the roof, bandwidth prices are falling through the basement. What does that do to the economies of China and India. While over a period of time oil prices are going to put brakes on China's booming manufacturing economy, the ubiquitousness of cheap bandwidth will continue to fuel and grease India's service economy. Place your bets cautiously! 

The stats for this piece came from "Why Your World Is About To Get  A Whole Lot Smaller" written by Jeff Rubin