According to the cliche, call-center workers sleep all day and work at night. They are more attuned to American holidays, weather and baseball team scores than to events around them in India. Their graveyard-shift hours have given birth to a range of businesses that stay open all night. There are special 7 a.m. movie screenings and bars that serve drinks to returning workers into the wee hours.

[...] once a year, they still have to pick up the phone with a cheerful but culturally alien "Happy Thanksgiving."

Everyone knows oil is useful. Everyone knows the Chinese, the Indians and all the other foreigners are becoming addicted to it - just as Americans have been addicted for the last 50 years.