In a dinner party of diplomats from Delhi, aristocrats from Paris, and me (a wayward semi-’student’ lurking from Boston), a French expert in the global water system told me an apocalyptic statement: in 2043 there will be a melting of the glacier ice caps, and our world will be submerged in water.

I suddenly recalled the last time a Frenchman pretended to be sure of a disastrous event looming in the future: about two months before the economic crisis in The States began, a Parisian financial expert told me that the economy in America was about to collapse. At the time, I thought nothing of it, but now I am more wary when I hear ominous statements from the often-incompetent French.

Maybe we will all be swimming in 2043, and there will be a revolution in stilt-style architecture as a result. Or maybe we will all drown. Either way, I am going to try to drink more wine, meet more strangers, and take a few more crazy chances in 2010. Or perhaps later today.

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