News from a Second-floor Refugee

I finally heard from a friend in the second of my worlds. She had just arrived home last Thursday after a month away. That night was the torrential downpour that pushed the canals over the limit. The next day water poured into their house. Her father who is disabled from a stroke, and her mother were able to be moved to a relative’s house but my friend and her sister spent the next week living on the second floor of their house with knee-deep water on the first floor and deeper outside. They were without power for the entire week. And then they had a huge mess to clean up. That is why I just now heard from her.

The gigantic city I was living in last August has recently been suffering from worse than usual floods. At one point they figured over half the metropolis was flooded. Most of the city is built on what were formerly marshes and is drained by a system of canals. Any rivers that passed through were also eventually cemented and straightened and became part of the canal system. Over the years the canals have become the public sewer and there are no words to adequately describe the utter fetidness of these canals today.

Although I refrained from mentioning the canals in previous postings, I am now going to let her rip. The building I lived in is on the edge of one of these canals. Somebody planted decorative bamboo along the edge of the canal to try to hide it from view. Somebody else planted bananas along the other side of the canal. But the breezes wafting off the canal still make it through the bamboo. I learned early in my stay to mouth breath whenever outside near a canal. There is more than one benefit from having air conditioning. The problem was drying laundry up on the fourth floor roof. It can be nice and breezy up there but if the breeze is coming from the wrong direction – it can be pretty difficult to breathe. I was happy when my clothes smelled like fresh traffic, because it could have been MUCH worse.

In the dry season the canals get thick. They don’t ever go dry but they are lower and more sluggish. Sometimes I would stop and just watch the effluvium pass by in morbid fascination, half afraid of what I might see. Some of the effluvia was still recognizable, bubbling away as unknown gasses escape. Only God knows what chemical and organic matter was in it. I could identify plastics, cans, dead rats, coconut husks, tires, papers, etc. A friend’s son and daughter-in-law and two children on board a motorcycle were in an accident on a bridge and ended up in a canal. The baby was submerged temporarily under the, uh, fluid, and was sick with pnemonia and diarrhea for a long time afterwards. But last I heard, he did survive.

In the rainy season there is a bit of relief because the mess is diluted and so is the odor. But, sometimes there is a lot of rain up stream and then the canals can go over their banks.

I was there there a couple of years ago during a normal flood and got to wade home in it. All the filth from upstream, unmentionable flotsam floating and bumping against you in the opague water, other stuff rolling and tumbling along under the surface, fortunately invisible, as you wade through sometimes thigh deep water. One of my companions was nervously wondering if there were snakes. Actually, yes, there probably were snakes, and rats, and baby diapers and more, but since you can’t see them why worry? What you need to worry about is staying on your feet and keeping your slippers on.

Here are a few descriptive words from the thesaurus:

maloderous, fetid, foul, noisome, rank, reeking, reeky, smelly, stinking, stinky, putrid, disgusting, offensive, repulsive, revolting, vile, dirty, filthy, nasty, noxious; odoriferous, odorous, dirty, filthy, foul, muddy, nasty, contaminated, defiled, polluted, tainted, unsanitary, toxic.

I assure you, they are inadequate.

Ladders 101

We've had our excitment for the week. I heard a gigantic thud this morning and came running out of my office wondering if a tree had fallen over. A couple of workers from the local cell phone company had come to fix our neighbor’s wireless internet connection. They had a long bamboo ladder set up on the relatively flat first story roof over the neighbor’s kitchen going up to the upper roof over the second floor. Apparently one guy started to come down off the upper roof when the ladder slid and he fell with the ladder. My house helper was washing clothes outside and heard the crash and him groaning so she ran and hollered to a nearby security guard to help. The guard came running along with the other cell phone worker and they got up on the roof real fast, hoisting themselves up (they had a lot more trouble getting back down). The guy was still laying there on top of the ladder but after a couple of minutes the other two helped him up. He sat there for awhile with his head in his hands bleeding from the nose. The neighbor and I told them to go see a doctor because he could have head injuries. Don’t know if they will go, but they had nearly finished anyway and soon departed. Nobody was holding the ladder at the bottom when the guy started coming down so I suppose it just slid on the corrugated cement roofing. It's a wonder the roof didn't break.

I guess that guy didn’t ever take Ladders 101. Or maybe whoever made that bamboo ladder forgot to paint on it that using it on hard slippery surfaces could be dangerous. I suspect that the guy probably won’t see a doctor unless he really develops scary symptoms because he would have to pay for it. The cell phone company may have insurance but he would be afraid that if he reported it to the company he just might lose his job for being so dumb. I hope he will be okay.

Bibulousness?

Sometimes we find entertainment in the oddest places. Shopping, for one, can be very entertaining. Today I was looking for a couple of dish towels to replace some old ragged ones. My friend pointed out a package of three dish cloths. I started reading the package and the more I read the more I realized that these dish cloths were not just ordinary dish cloths, they were Newgeneration Washcloth. Across the top it said they were Grease removing, Softness, Bibulousnsness. (Bibulousness???!!)
Further down it said that they were Antibacterial. Wow! This was getting interesting. On to the fine print: “Sewing at warp-wise and crosswise by combining high-density natural fibre surface with the best soft interior lay, it features
solid and deformation with the best using effect.” Further below it says “About 30x30cm. No need desizing. Noshrinkage Nodeformation.”

Perhaps it’s a good business principle to only estimate the size. After all why pay extra for quality control equipment? Not sure if the No need desizing. Noshrinkage Nodeformation are commands or boasts. I am mighty curious as to what bibulous means though. So I turn the package over and there’s more: On the back in addition to being Grease removing, Softness, and Bibulousness, they in addition are No plasm, No shrinking, and high strength. No plasm. Hmm. Do other dish cloths have plasm? I wonder.

But there’s more:

Features: The inside and outside layers of it (it has layers?) are prepared scientifically (!) with the features of better softness and bibulousness (there it is again!) as well as better effect in grease removing and stronger in strength. It doesn’t go moldy, rotten & unhealthy even in water for a long time. (Oh yeah?)

Usage: It can wash all kinds of bowls, dishes & wares, mop up polished furniture, automobile, bath cloth etc.

Materials: Natural fiber

Made in C---

What can I say? I am tempted to get them and put them in water for a long time just to see if it could possibly be true that they won’t go moldy, rotten or unhealthy. I am also curious as how it could mop up polished furniture. All our furniture is rattan so I guess I’d have to try it on somebody else’s polished furniture. It says it can wash all kinds of bowls and dishes and other wares – like the under wares I saw in the lingerie department today?

The more I thought about those miraculous bibulousness dish cloths, the more I thought maybe I should get them. (Oh the power of advertisment!) For $1 I could have not one but three stronger strength, bibulous, no plasm dish cloths. What a deal!

As soon as I got home I got out my dictionary. Sure enough bibulous was in there.

bibulous adj 1. Given to or marked by the over consumption of alcoholic drink: a bibulous evening. 2. Very absorbent, as paper or soil – bibulously adv – bibulousness n.

Aha! Mystery solved. These miracle new generation antibacterial cloths are ABSORBENT!

While I was at it I also looked up plasm. plasm n. see germ plasm 3.
So I looked up germ and the third definition says: a microorganism, esp. a pathogen. Ok, got it. These miracle cloths are PATHOGEN-FREE. I surely got a good deal today!

Windbags and Black boxes

Speaking of windbags in my last post...according to today's news it seems that some buddies of his are now on their way to the conflict area. Perhaps these self-appointed guardians of justice feel that the local authorities need a lesson or two. Or perhaps they are merely replacing those arrested so that more revenge can be taken on more hapless souls lest the unending revenge should end. They are reported to be disguising themselves as fishermen and travelling on small boats with their faces covered. One can only hope that the weather will cooperate and they will be shipwrecked on some uninhabited remote islands.

According to the online dictionary, one definition of a windbag is: A talkative person who communicates nothing of substance or interest.

Hmm. Wonder if there are windblogs too?

Ahem! On to black boxes. The black boxes of the budget airliner that went missing on January 1 were located a few days ago 1800-2000 meters (nearly 1 mile) deep in the sea. At that depth only unmanned robots could function and it is doubtful that much other than the black boxes could be salvaged. In the interval they have decided that there are only three countries with the technology to retrieve them - France, US, and Japan. So now this week they are dithering over who would actually pay for it. (Remember, this is the country where everything must go through a committee.)

The families of the victims have by now become resigned to the fact that their loved ones are gone. Of course there is still some interest in knowing what the cause of the crash was. The airplane manufacturer and international safety boards would all certainly like to know. But of course it can be risky to find out - especially if the evidence showed something like poor maintainence or explosives or whatever. Could cost somebody a lot of money. So do you spend a lot of money to find out what might end up costing even more? All these things must be weighed carefully. But a spokeswoman for some board or other conveniently announced last week that even after retrieving the black boxes it can take 5 years to determine the cause of an accident. That is well beyond the public's attention span and should give any guilty parties plenty of time to disappear.

Time will tell but my guess is that concessions will be made, deals clinched, and eventually somebody will cough up the money and the black boxes will be retrieved. But I am not holding my breath that it will happen this week.