Christmas noise

Our apartment building is surrounded by electronic noise generators. On one side we have 1) a kindergarten – which seems to double as a bingo parlor by night, complete with a truck air horn blown for each draw. On another side is 2) a private elementary school. On another side is 3) a Bible college and just beyond it 4) an open field which various public groups can use. The schools seem to need to have amplifiers that broadcast their programs across town. All of the children screaming in unison at the top of their lungs could not hope to compete with the person at the mike.

Last night an appliance chain store down the hill from us on the other side had it’s “Christmas” raffle. They had some awful band from somewhere using gigantic amplifiers – it could only be described as a band from hell. It was truly an ordeal for anybody living within a kilometer in any direction. For those of us uphill it was like being in an amphitheater as the noise rebounded and reverberated against our back wall so that we got it from both directions. But God was merciful and it started raining after only 40 minutes. They didn’t want their speakers to get wet so they stopped and packed up.

Tonight it seems that the Bible college is having a Christmas party. Their band is much milder in comparison but still rather shocking for a Bible college. One wonders why they bothered with the word “Christmas” though, as none of it had anything whatsoever to do with Christmas. (Actually, we found out the next day it wasn't the Bible college after all that had the band. They did sing at their party but it was drowned out by the appliance chain store having yet another raffle. At least it wasn't as loud or as hellish as it was the previous night!)

The elementary school hasn’t had their party yet but I am sure it will be soon and I know it will be LOUD.

So feel free to come and visit - but you might want to bring some earplugs!

Tales from Dubai

The other day Connie stopped by having recently returned from 4 years working overseas as a maid. She looked healthy, maybe a little bit fatter even. She regaled us with tales from her job as a domestic helper in Dubai for a family with 5 children. She said she had a good family and mostly enjoyed her time there. She said the bad thing was that her actual pay was only half of what the contract she had signed said. That was very disappointing, especially as her own family back home had many needs - her own daughter's schooling plus the higher education of her siblings. She said the lady she worked for wanted her to come back and was willing to increase her salary but Connie's husband wasn't so keen on her going back after hearing some of her tales. So she is now applying to go to Hong Kong as a domestic helper and she hopes the pay will be better.

Connie said the house was huge, nearly a hectare in size and entirely air conditioned. Her jobs were varied but because of her English speaking ability, she was the one who interfaced with the childrens' teachers at the international school they attended. The older girls also had tutors at home but if the tutor was a man, then Connie's job was to chaperon them.

She said that when the family had parties it was exhausting. Men and women met in different parts of the house. The hired help would spend all day cooking and then would serve the men first, then the women. After the party was the long clean up. She said they were supposed to have one day off a week on Fridays but often it didn't happen because the family would entertain and all hands were needed.

Whenever men were around they were supposed to cover not only their hair but also their faces. Early on she found the husband peeking at her through a window when her hair was uncovered from just being washed. She angrily confronted him and told him she was a married woman and if she ever caught him doing that again she would punch him in the face. She also informed the wife that she was a Christian and Christians were only allowed one spouse and that if she was unfaithful to her husband or if her husband was unfaithful to her then they would be breaking the law and would be jailed. That seemd to go a long way in mollifying the wife and in time Connie became her favorite.

Connie said there were several employees in that household from different countries. Her least favorite was the Indian driver who seemed to have only one thing in his mind. (Pornography may be forbidden but talk isn't.) She avoided him as much as possible. In fact she was often the one sent to take him his food because the lady of the house observed that Connie took his food and came back promptly, she didn't hang around and chat while he ate.

Phone calls were also monitered. The Mrs. seemed especially concerned that no sexual hanky panky was going on. Connie said that even when trying to call her mother back home the Mrs would be hovering in the background wanting to know if she was talking to a man.

Connie said many of her fellow employees were one-task only. Like the Indian driver who wouldn't do anything but drive. Connie became the household "electrician" because nobody else could or would do it. Whenever the circuit breaker got overloaded, she is the one that climbed up all the steps to the top of the house in the heat and flipped the switch. She said it was murderously hot most of the year and only in December and January was it really cool.

Connie is just one of hundreds of thousands who work overseas to send back money to their families (and to their government) . They are this country's largest export. But it is not yet known the impact that this is having on their children. Another friend is due back any day now, returning to her husband and two children after working for two years as a maid in Hong Kong.

Update on the Tree

Here's our poor butchered tree now 2 months later. Due to lots of sun and rain, it has a lush covering of leaves again. Someday this stick tree will again be lovely.

The birds are already back, bathing in the cat's drinking water again. (They don't sit still for me to get a good photo because they are in constant motion flipping and fanning their tails in all directions!)

Global Economic Crisis still at upper echelons

Arriving back home it seems that the big topic of international news is the Global Economic Crisis. From what I observe locally, it is still felt mainly at the upper echelons and has not yet had a major impact on the ordinary citizen.

Last July I sat next to a lady on the plane who works for her government’s central bank in the second of my worlds. She was on her way home from a meeting in Europe of global banking and finance leaders. She said it looks like the US is undergoing a severe financial crisis and said that it will strongly affect her country too.

The government had recently decreased its subsidy of fuel thus increasing the price at the pump. Naturally the citizens were upset as all other prices can be expected to increase too. But what the citizens don’t understand is that they have the cheapest gasoline and diesel prices in the region. When I arrived in the river town I saw a line several blocks long of trucks and buses waiting to fill up on diesel. The driver of the car I was in said he had waited half a day to fill the tank with regular gasoline just 2 days ago. He also said that cooking gas was hard to find. This on an island which has its own oil wells! I suspect that savvy merchants have filled up some tankers on the side and are busy selling it to neighboring countries. After all it’s win-win for everybody but the ordinary citizen.

The last two months I was again in the second of my worlds. Everything seemed normal as far as ordinary citizens selling and buying. We heard in the news about a “global economic crisis” but it didn’t seem to affect the month of fasting shopping boom.

The main topic of local concern was the constant power outages. People grumbled at the power company’s (government owned) lack of planning. They complained that they wait until the coal is all gone and then run out and try to buy a little more, just like people running out of toothpaste run out to a neighborhood shop and buy a little more.

But actually, I suspect the problem with the coal is the same as the problem with the gasoline. Sellers make more profit selling shiploads of coal to neighboring countries.

By the end of October the news was more sobering. Copra (dried unprocessed coconut) prices had dropped overnight from $64/ton to $10.75. For the people I was working with copra is their livlihood. Their villages are split between those who own coconut groves and those who harvest, they split the selling price half and half. Since the price of copra has been so good in recent years, people don’t have gardens anymore. In addition, they said that because it has been raining so much the past year that it would be hard to start a garden because they couldn’t burn it off, and clearing the overgrown land by hand would be very difficult. They were quite glum that day. But they were a bit happier when the price came back up to $32 a few days later.

One man who heads a large project sponsored by a development bank found out that they had just cut the funding by 10%. He worried that he will have a big problem to deal with because people will be angry. They will feel tht the jobs and income have already been promised and won’t take kindly to suddenly having it cut by 10%.

I recently arrived back here in the third of my worlds. Here too we hear of the Global Economic Crisis. Prices have been increasing slowly for a long time. The rice crisis seems to be over for now. In fact, amazingly, the price of public transportation actually decreased a little since the price of oil fell!

People here are used to crises. So people do believe it when they are told there will be a crisis. We had the Asian Economic Crisis a few years back, El Ninyo droughts, rice crisis, local currency devaluations, etc. The wealthy may be panicking but for the ordinary citizen there is nothing you can do about it other than try to cut back on spending and ride it out, praying that you don't lose your job. The malls are decorated for Christmas, but things do seem a bit subdued compared to previous years and the mayor is warning that the economic crisis will be severe by January.

Joys of running water

Ah, the joys of running water and 24/7 power! On my recent 2 month trip to the second of my worlds, both were in short supply.

It seems that the immediate problem of power shortages was due to lack of coal. In August rationing severe as the power company saved up coal so that during the month of fasting and for a week afterwards, electricity was normal. But starting again mid-October, severe rationing became the norm again – three hours of power and 7-12 hours off. The time is ever fluctuating so you cannot make plans. Sometimes it is on in the early evening, sometimes not. If there’s a plan to the rotation, it hasn’t been made public.

Even in the villages it was difficult. Over the last decade people have become dependent on electricity so most families have electric water pumps now and the old hand pumps have fallen into disrepair or been removed. (Wells in this area are too deep for buckets and are just pipes driven into the ground.) The same with the old kerosene lamps that people used to have. Plus now kerosene is in short supply. So even in villages it was difficult to get water for washing, bathing and drinking. TV addicts were especially hard hit. :-) I noticed several families in the village now own gasoline powered generators and were using them to get water and watch TV. And, of course, to charge their cell phones!

Friends in the city complained of feeling stressed, like having to get up in the middle of the night to do laundry and fill up water containers because the lights suddenly came on and there was no way to know when they would be on again. It’s especially stressful for people who have to be at work during specific hours as they miss whatever opportunities there might be for collecting water during the day. Needless to say, small 800-2000 watt generators are a hot item right now!

I suspect what is happening is this: the price of coal in this country is very cheap by world standards and so sellers can make more money by selling shiploads to neighboring countries and pocketing the difference. Then city X is just told that their standing order shipment will be delayed. Of course it isn’t legal but a little money can make all things possible....

The weather was also hotter and more humid than usual. It was often partly overcast and the usual wind off the ocean was absent, making it really miserable for city people shut up in buildings. I myself was constantly perspiring heavily with all my running around and started having trouble with dehydration headaches.

So, I am especially happy to be in a slightly cooler environment now with plenty of water and power all day and night (at least, when somebody isn’t blowing up pylons to prove some obscure point!)

Local Elections

Here in the second of my worlds elections take up a fair amount of people's time, energy and money. Today was the election for the regional head. In the past people only voted for president but now they are being allowed to vote for governors, regional and district heads and village heads. mayors, etc. Makes life so much more interesting and a great source of money. Case in point. One of the top two contenders for this position is the former mayor of the provincial capital. As part of his campaign he has been busy visiting all sorts of groups, including visiting many, many churches and making large donations. But some recall when he was mayor a few years ago there was an attack on a pig farm just outside of town by a group of radicals (real or fake) carrying out jihad against the pigs. They slaughtered them and just made a great mess. Well, word is going around mouth to mouth (I tell you it’s faster than the internet!) that the current candidate, then mayor, was actually the one who commanded that little operation. So despite the huge amount of money he has been throwing into good relations with churches, it is all being undone at the speed of lightening. Once nonMuslims hear, you can see in their faces their minds change on voting for him. I talked to one guy about how pigs are smelly and pollute the environment and since the city is growing it makes sense to move the farm. The guy said, “Of course, but what annoys people is the way it was done, with “radicals” doing it, it is extremely offensive. There are more law abiding ways to move a pig farm.” Since the area has a very large nonMuslim population, it will be interesting to see the election results, because up until 2 weeks ago he was thought likely to win.

Addendum 10-17: Yep, looks like he lost.

Of Tree-cutters and kittens

Just a short note before I leave for the second of my worlds.

Interruptions take a myriad of forms. This past couple of weeks has been extraordinary it seems. One day was managing the tree cutters. We had 5 guys come to cut our gigantic talisay (tropical almond) tree. They came prepared with giant machetes and lots of strong rope. Two of them spent the day about 25 feet in the air patiently chopping, tying and lowering branches.

It was awesome the way they were able to lower all the branches without destroying any of the nearby huts, houses, walls, etc. And awesome too seeing grown men climbing up and down in their bare feet like, well, like monkeys! They were all exhausted by the end of the day and definitely earned every bit of their wages.

Of course our poor garden took a beating. So our next project was getting some netting to protect what’s left of our shade-loving plants from the fierce sun for the next few months until the tree grows back. Then plants need watering more often because they dry out in the sun.

Another interruption was when a friend showed up with a 4 week old kitten she had rescued from te street. It had been in imminant danger of getting run over and she couldn’t stand the thought and so rescued it. Of course she couldn’t take care of it herself as they have 3 dogs who hate cats so she brought by unannounced to us. Sigh! Kittens that small need a lot of attention as they need to be fed often, protected from falling into drains, protected from the elements and from other cats, plus they aren’t house broken. I did not need the interruption. It was cute and very friendly though, and we managed to get it introduced to the wild cats without incident. We made it a little house out of a box. It ate well. We were starting to get used to it. Then Saturday I found it refusing to eat, vomiting, and later copius diarrhea and then I knew it wouldn’t make it. It died before noon. Sigh.

Well, I could go on about banks, computers, tickets and having to micromanage by text message in another country, but you get the idea. In between interruptions I kept plugging away trying to get ready for my trip. I will probably not update this until I get back in November and by then I am sure there will be plenty more interesting things to write about!

Harvest, Agricultural and Cultural Festival

And here we have some shots a friend got at the annual Harvest, Agricultural, and Cultural Festival. See what I missed?!

Ever wonder why there’s no peace on earth?

The government here has been having negotiations with one of the
local rebel groups. Negotiations broke down last week when
details of a secret agreement leaked out. It seems that the
government was planning to cede large areas over to the rebels.
Citizens in the affected areas were outraged that they had not
been consulted. Tensions raised dramatically when two of the
rebel commanders began slaughtering hapless villagers. The rebel
negotiators claimed that they were not responsible, that those
two commanders were acting on their own. So the government then
demanded that the two be turned over to the criminal justice
system.

The response of the rebel leader? “Oh, no. We can’t subject our
members to the laws of the government. We are revolutionaries.”

Duh.

Diminishes the appearance of creepiness????

It seems that Avon has come up with a product that it claims will decrease creepiness, or at least the APPEARANCE of creepiness.

Hmmmm. I wonder who I could try it on????!!

Stre-e-e-tching travel

Rina lives in a remote area where most people work as rubber tappers. She has a grueling trip home. She and two others have to take a bus 3-4 hours to the coast and transfer to a different bus that will take them up the coast to another river system and than follow that river for 12 hours. They will rest for a couple of nights in that town visiting relatives since there aren't many vehicles on Sundays for continuing their journey. On Monday they can either get a car or hire rides on the backs of motorbikes for several more hours to another town and then switch to a motor boat to continue on to their home village. Rina says the roads are really bad because it has been raining a lot. Heavily laden logging trucks have created enormous potholes in the unpaved road. When they get stuck they just gun the engine and try to blast their way out digging the holes ever deeper. When full of water they can be a trap for an unwary motorbike because you can't see how deep they are. She said she wasn't sure whether she would take a motorbike or a car. One's back side gets really sore sitting on a motorbike for 4 hours plus you have to get off often as the driver tries to maneuver around the enormous pot holes. But cars aren't much better. Because the roads are bad the price is high. And you may have to wait a long time before a car has enough passengers to go. Plus you have to get out often and push. On the way down she said she spent more time on the ground than she did in the car.

Despite the difficulties getting in and out of the area, it seems that rubber tapping, while not exactly lucrative, provides a decent income. She and her companions all have cell phones and seem able to refill them whenever needed. They have all also figured out how to load exotic ring tones - ring tones I'm sure Nokia never dreamed of!

Suffering for their faith

Here in the tropical rainforest, being pious can be a chronic trial, especially for women. Covering up the entire body in this hot, very humid environment means that perspiration does not evaporate easily. Skin problems are almost unavoidable and keeping body odor under control is a constant struggle. But even the head is not exempt. Apparently many young women have developed ear problems from wearing head coverings all the time. With no air circulation, the heat and humidity make it easy for the ear canal to get infected with fungus, the itching causes scratching which in turn leads to outer ear canal infections with purulent drainage. Many struggle often with smelly drainage from their ears because of this. (Usually the smelly ear drainage is only found in young kids with immature ear canals who play in water a lot and have chronically wet ears but apparently is now common also in pious women.) Another problem is their hair, Many complain that their hair is hard to manage, falls out and they have a lot of trouble with an itchy scalp. This too is related to high humidity making chronically damp skin a haven for fungus and bacteria. But unmanageable hair also provides a motivation to continue covering it up.

Their grandmothers wore loose see-through head coverings for religious functions only. They wore cotton sarongs and open necked blouses. But the push of modern piety (and fashion, I mght add) is that girls tend to wear chic pants but their head and neck must be covered tightly with heavy opague material, so that only the face itself can be seen and they are being encouraged to wear it all the time not just for religious functions. Nowdays women are out and about more at school and work and don’t have long periods at home where they can take off the gear and give their skin a break.

This is likely the reason that when you go to government offices you will see the pious female civil servants move so languidly. Government civil service uniforms are made from a heavy synthetic gabardine and pious women will wear long skirts and long-sleeved jackets made of that stuff in addition to the occlusive head coverings. Most work in unairconditioned offices. To survive an entire shift it makes sense that you would want to move slowly and avoid sweating as much as possible.

Attention investors: light, cool, opague fabrics which allow air circulation and wick away moisture please! Meanwhile, invest in the powder and skin, ear, and hair medication industries.

Never eat fish in the dark

The brownouts continue. During last night’s brownout it rained really hard with lightening and visceral-jarring thunder. There are a couple of kerosene lamps but the light is only enough to show you the big things. I decided to eat early since there’s not much else I could do in the dark. Dinner was what was left over from the group meal at lunch. The rice had the faintest whiff of starting to go off so it was best to eat it early anyway as it obviously wasn’t going to get any better later on. And with the constant brownouts refrigeration isn’t much of a help. As I was munching on a piece of a fish, I couldn’t really see it well. I thought I was avoiding the spine but somehow got a piece of it stuck in my throat. So here I am in the dark in a torrential downpour in a guesthouse by myself with a fishbone caught in my throat facing a two day weekend. I remembered being told that bread was good for fishbones caught in the throat and remembered seeing part of a loaf in the freezer compartment of the useless refrigerator. It wasn't frozen and although it was definitely on the old side, in the dim light I didn’t see any major discolorations or anything. So I quickly ate a piece. Like magic it cleared the obstruction. Whew!

Conclusion? Never eat fish in the dark!!

Banana flowers, ferns, and kerosene lamps

Here I am in the deep dark center of southeast Asia! Well, it really IS dark. This town, along with many others, is experiencing rotating brownouts. It seems that nation wide the government owned power company is having trouble keeping its act together. The brownouts are daily and anywhere from 6-20 hours long at all kinds of different times but most likely during peak hours.

So what do you do when you are stuck all evening in a guesthouse in a town you don’t know with only a candle and a kerosene lamp for light - and your computer battery is already dead? Why you sit and talk with the night watchman/janitor, what else?!

Since he couldn’t do his job either being as how he couldn’t see to sweep the floors or clean he shared a bit of how he copes with life here. The rise in oil prices has prompted changes even in this remote area. The government has been trying to wean the people off of kerosene because kerosene is cheap while some other kind of fuel (aviation?) fuel, which is made from kerosene is expensive. If kerosene use can be decreased, there will be more available to make the other kind of fuel. So people are being encourage to use gas (LPG). Anyway, July was telling me that his wife still uses kerosene for cooking, since LPG is exensive and often difficult to find here. But now they are limited to 10 liters of kerosene a month. They have to show their family ID card to get a coupon and can only get it in the district in which they reside. So he gathers firewood to supplement the family’s kerosene ration. They boil their drinking water on a wood fire as well as anything else that takes a long time.

We talked about food. He said he raises his own chickens and a couple of pigs. He said a lot of people are now feeding special growth formula to chickens so that they mature fast and can be sold at an early age. He didn’t think that was a good thing so he avoids buying chicken at the market unless it’s live and he knows it was free range. He was suprised to hear that in the third of my worlds people buy special growth feed for their piglets. He didn’t know of anybody around here using that stuff though he had once heard that it existed. He said some people buy chicken guts in bulk at the market for their pigs because apparently the leftover chemicals in the chicken tissue stimulates growth in the pigs too.

He talked about how a lot of people spray pesticides on the “sweet” vegetables (I guess things like green beans, carrots, etc. that you have to plant) just before picking them to sell even though the instructions plainly say you must wait several days before it is safe to pick, much less eat. He said he won’t buy or eat it. They grow stuff in their yard and he described many of the traditional edible leaves and plants that grow by themselves or can be had for free. One of his favorites is banana flowers, another is ferns that grow wild near his house. He said the river used to be full of fish but some people nowdays use fish-stunning chemicals so they can make bigger catches and so the fish population isn’t like it used to be. He said that 20 years ago you could easily have ½-1 kilo of fish with only about 10 minutes of fishing. But now it can take hours. He doesn’t like spending that kind of time so he prefers to “fish” at the market.

We talked about formalin and how it is being used with wild abandon as an all-purpose food preserver. In addition to fresh noodles, soybean curd, and ocean fish, he said even people selling wild pig meat they hunt in the forest are starting to use it.

From there we discussed the recent fuel crisis and on and on. By ten I decided to go wear out a flashlight and try to get at least a little paper work done. The lights came on after 11pm just as I was nodding off over the papers, but by then I was too sleepy to finish...

Thousands of people will die

What is faster than a speeding bullet?
The grapevine.
What is faster than the grapevine?
Rumors on the internet.

A few days ago a friend sent me the following email:

July 18, 2008 – [Country X] will get 8.1 earthquake, thousands of people will die. PLS. LET US BE ALERT AND
MARK THIS DATE JULY 18, 2008, FRIDAY. LET'S BE PREPARED, AND LET US ALL PRAY THAT THIS WILL NOT HAPPEN TO US.
IF POSSIBLE: PLS. DON'T GO TO WORK ESPECIALLY THOSE WITH OFFICE LOCATED IN HIGH PLACES, BUILDINGS, CONDOS AND MALLS.
NOTHING TO LOSE IN THIS KIND OF REMINDER. MAYBE, THIS IS GOD'S WAY TO SAVE YOU, YOUR FAMILY , YOUR FRIENDS AND YOUR OFFICEMATES OR LESSEN CASUALTIES. LET'S ALL PRAY AND MARK THIS DATE.
PLS. FORWARD TO ALL YOUR CONTACT LIST TO WARN YOUR RELATIVES, FRIENDS AND YOUR LOVED ONES AND ALL PEOPLE LIVING IN [COUNTRY X]
.
AGAIN: REMEMBER JULY 18, 2008 – HAVE AN ALARM ON THIS DATE.

IF YOU WANT TO READ MORE….

This was followed by a long story of a Brazilian mystic called Mr. Juseleeno Nobulega DaRoose , and a list of major catastrophes he predicts over the next 10 years. There was also a list of all sorts of major world events he supposedly predicted with great accuracy. It said he had been a Nobel Peace Prize winner so I did a web search figuring if that was true then surely he’d be on the web. All I found were dozens and dozens of Chinese and other Asian language blog pages with the same story – only highlighting whatever “prophecies” applied to their particular country. Eventually I discovered the name had been mangled but that there is indeed a Brazilian mystic called Jucelino Nóbrega da Luz who makes his living predicting catasrophes around the globe, some of which happen, some of which don’t. (I mean, how likely is it that there will be earthquakes in countries in the earthquake zone? And how likely is it that volcanoes will erupt along the Ring of Fire?)

The interesting thing is that this story has now spread all over the place and gets worse all the time. The 8.1 earthquake of a few days ago was 10.1 yesterday and today my helper overheard her neighbors talking aboutthe coming 10.5 earthquake. The internet rumor has moved to the text world, and text rumors spread even faster than internet rumors. Everyday we hear of more and more people discussing this earthquake and praying that it won’t happen. Taxi drivers, shop keepers, fellow passengers, neighbors, church mates. I expect by next week there will be special prayer meetings called all over the city. (And who knows how strong the earthquake will be next week???)

Dealing with beggars

In many parts of the world begging still flourishes. There are many assumptions about begging and its causes. Those who come from places where begging is unknown often are horrified by beggars. They assume that no one would be begging unless they were absolutely destitute. But over the course of time I have become aware of the fact that there are many reasons people beg.

Many years ago I lived in a large city in the second of my worlds. There weren’t many beggars back then but those who were around tended to be of two sorts: lepers and the mentally disturbed. The lepers were agressive beggars and I suppose the thought of being touched by them motivated many a reluctant giver! They had their established begging spots – outside the post office and outside of mosques and churches when services were held. They would be brought to the sites by car and picked up at the end of the day. The government actually provided housing, stipend and medical care for them but this was a way of getting extra. Many people did give, after all charity is a good religious duty, but others told me they refused to give because they said the guys just used it for gambling. Others said they were part of a syndicate and most of what they collected went to their bosses. Others saw giving as a way to show God they were grateful it wasn’t them who had leprosy. As for the mentally disturbed, many people out of pity would feed them and give them clothing. In smaller communities and face to face neighborhoods people know who is in need and why, and they deal with them appropriately. But in large cities begging can be done more anonymously.

In recent years, however, the numbers of beggars in that city has increased substantially and a large number are children. Nothing is more heart-rending than a grimy little kid out there begging. Those from places where begging is unknown are undone at the sight and would probably be apalled at what that city is doing about the begging problem. Starting in December, it will be a crime to give to beggars. That’s right. If you are caught giving to a beggar you face up to 3 months in jail or a fine of about $166. If someone, even a child, is caught begging he faces fines of up to $500 (ha, ha, ha) or up to three years in jail.


Now you may think that is harsh. But according to the local government, most of those children are being used and exploited by adults in syndicates who use them to raise money as a business, a begging business. A few are street kids who prefer the freedom of living on the streets to living at home, going to school, etc. Children are at extremely high risk of abuse in these situations, in fact you can probably assume that they will be abused. The mayor’s office says that people are welcome to help street kids but that cash should be given to the social organizations which have been set up to help them rather than giving directly to the beggars themselves.

Honestly

Today I flagged down a taxi and when I went to get in I saw something on the back seat that perhaps a previous passenger had left. I pointed it out to the driver and he turned around and picked it up and opened it. It looked like a large fancy scientific calculator that some student had left. I got in and he asked if it was okay to go back to where he had let his last passenger off. It was only about a block away – though to get there we had to drive across a field to where a paved sidewalk too small for a car goes on up the hill into a crowded low cost boarding house area. Three young guys were sitting on a nearby porch talking. I heard the driver ask them about a person in a green shirt and they grunted and pointed up the hill (where cars cannot go) and one of them came down and got the calculator.

We took off and the driver said he often finds things people leave behind even cellphones. He said he always returns them because there’s One who knows, and he pointed to the sky. It was very heartening to see an ordinary citizen going out of his way to return a lost item. (And he didn’t turn the meter on until he was back on the main road where I had flagged him down!)

A friend was telling me about her niece who works at a gas station. She recently got a very nice cellphone for about 1/4th of the cost of a used phone from a taxi driver who regularly fills up at that station. He apparently often finds cell phones left behind in his taxi. Instead of bothering to try to return them he just sells them cheap to the gas station employees. He has even found nice camera phones. He has found as many as four in the course of one week. Whenever he shows up to fill up with gas, the employees come running to see if he has any new cellphones for sale.

What a world.

When life gives you floods go swimming

It seems we are getting lots of experience these days with utility failures. Yesterday afternoon I returned home in another torrential downpour. This time I had taken my flip flops along so I wore them home in the rain. That way I could wade in the water and not ruin my shoes. Nothing was deeper than mid-calf and I was able to find a taxi waiting on the other side of the worst part. The driver complained all the way about all the flooding and traffic. I tried to cheer him up by reminding him how much worse the capital city would be and he did indeed brighten considerably thinking about that!

When I arived home there was no electricity. Apparently a coconut tree had fallen and snapped some wires near our place. Like I said yesterday, falling trees is one of the common results of too much rain. Anyway I tried to light our old kerosene lamp but realized in time that it now leaks. So I decided to light candles instead and then stumbled around trying to get things put away.

The power eventually came back on, but this morning the telephone doesn’t work, nor the internet. I called a friend on my cellphone so they are going to call the phone company for me and report it.

Meanwhile the poor garden is a mess of smashed plants and flower pots but the huge limb that fell has been mostly cleared out and it turns out it didn’t damage the roof or the wall it was balanced on. Even though it’s disheartening to look at the mess in the garden, it’s probably good in the long run. Now it will have more sunshine. Almost everything will have to be cut back which will allow for new growth. Some things will have to be replanted and some replaced. A lot of plants around here can be propagated by trimming the stem of a broken-off piece and replanting it. So you can end up with more than you started with.

Maybe in the same way all the storms and hassles of life, the big and the little can bring some good to us too. I like the attitude of these kids: When life gives you floods go swimming! -->

* Pictures swiped from local paper.

The trees are falling

This afternoon I was jerked to attention by a loud, drawn-out, tearing, rumbling crash and an earth-shaking thud. After peeking out the window and seeing nothing obvious I ran to the door to see what on earth had happened. Apparently an ancient moss covered mango tree in the lot next to our building had fallen. It must have been cut down on purpose though I don't recall hearing chopping.

An hour later a tremendous downpour started up with thunder and even wind. Soon there was another drawn-out tearing crash. But this time it was in our back yard and it was NOT on purpose!

A HUGE chunk of our tropical almond tree had broken off and rebounded off the concrete wall and broken into more pieces. Big branches are suspended on our wire clotheslines, others are balanced on the concrete wall and extending over to the the neighbor's roof and some small ones even up on the the second floor roof. But what a perfect fall! It couldn't have fallen better if somebody had tried! The biggest part fell vertically right next to the base of the trunk. (I couldn't get back there to take a picture cuz of the rain - plus there's a lot more of the tree still standing!) The weight of the branch on the neighbor's roof is resting mostly on the concrete wall - not on the roof.

We've been asking to have the tree cut back for a couple of years. But I doubt they would have cut it as well as this! Since it is still raining and almost sunset we'll have to wait until tomorrow to start cleaning up the mess.

This is another sort of thing that happens when the ITCZ meets up with the Tropical Wave.

When the ITCZ meets the Tropical Wave

One of the things I miss living in the second and third of my worlds is the Weather Channel. Of course weather around here is pretty predicatable, at least temperatures stay within a narrow range and precipitation is of one kind only. After all this time I was excited to have found a scientific explanation for what local weather we do have. Sort of. Weather here seems to be driven by two main things: the Intertropical convergence zone and Tropical waves.

The Intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) is basically a band of clouds and thunderstorms that circles the globe near the equator. It is where the trade winds of the Northern and Southern hemispheres meet. It moves north and south with the seasons. (Red represents July, blue January, though obviously not this year!)

Tropical waves are the bottom edges of elongated high pressure ridges that move across the oceans from east to west. The bottom edges get kind of ragged and unstable and tend to produce a lot of rain and it is thought that they can also be instrumental in producing hurricanes and typhoons.

So what happens when a Tropical Wave meets up with the ITCZ? Well, I think we are finding out! We had a lot of rain last week and I once again realized the disadvantages of small umbrellas. The heavy rain continues this week. The other night it poured all night long after having poured all evening. There was flooding in many parts of the city, which isn't unusual but this time they even cancelled school in some areas! Our new neighbor found out what we meant by the flooding garage under his place. Thankfully his little sedan still started this morning.

More on rice crisis

According to the local paper the Secretary of Tourism said :

...the issue is not the shortage of supply but the unexplained steep increase in the prices of commercial rice. The prices of rice increased by as much as [36 cents] in some parts of [the area] in a span of two weeks from [$0.77 - $1.14] amidst assurance from government agencies that there is more than ample supply to last the lean months of July to September. "It is the speculation in the prices of rice that is driving its prices up, it is the same thing with oil," he said. "The government is very suspicious on the reason behind the increase of the prices of rice," he added.

Yeah, so are we.

Rice Crisis

Apparently all the talk about a rice crisis has produced one, at least locally. In the last week the already high pice of rice increased another 25%. Yesterday at the market the best rice was selling for $1.15/kilo, up from about $0.95 last week. The price of the government subsidized rice was selling for $0.41- 0.72/kilo. This government rice is a mix of various kinds of old stock, so the cheaper stuff is old and tends to be yellowed, broken, and dirty. It is also likely to have a high mold content. In the last few days there have been huge lines of people waiting to buy up to the daily limit of 2 kilos.

This is incredibly high for poorer families, especially when the minimum wage for a full time “official” laborer is $3.18 per day. That is, if he is a full time “official” worker working for a larger company. A great number of people earn less than that because they are considered “temporary” or they work on a comission or they work for a smaller business. This comes at a time when people are also scrambling for extra money to buy school supplies and uniforms. One 15 year old who was going to finally get the opportunity to start high school this year – most kids start at age 12 - was just told by her mom that she may have to get a job instead to try to help the family instead of going to school. Yes, legally 15 year olds can’t work. But the reality is that they can and do. They are hired for extremely low wages as house helpers, they help in home-based eateries, and in the back rooms of other small businesses.

It is not only rice. The price of gasoline has been going up and recently resulted in higher fares for public transportation. It also results in higher prices for everything else. Already the shops and markets seem a bit quieter as people are using more of their money for rice and transportation and less for other stuff.

Yesterday we found out in the news that the unusally high prices of rice are only in this region of the country. The city council had an emergency meeting and decided to check out rumors of rice hoarding. Officials have reportedly begun checking out local rice sellers and large millers. It is a crime to hoard rice in this city. The city council has also asked that more government subsidized rice be allotted to this area. They also asked the public to leave the subsidized rice for the poor. (Yeah, like other people aren’t also feeling the pinch.) They also talked about trying to increase rice production in the area.

We shall see. If the price doesn’t come down soon we may end up with major problems here. The poor simply cannot afford it.

Dripping

It’s that time of year when the humidity gets so high it just falls out of the sky as rain. Last month I was attending an evening funeral service. It was outdoors and the sun had already set but it was still incredibly hot. Everybody was wet with perspiration just sitting there doing nothing. Suddenly in the middle of the service it seemed that the air saturation hit 100% and condensed into rain. It was like the sky just suddenly dropped all its moisture in the form of an exceedingly hard downpour. No thunder, no lightening, no wind, no warning. Wham! And soon it was over.

The same thing has been happening here this week. Last night for example, I was standing outside watching the cat eat. Doing nothing. Just standing there. Perspiration was just welling up and running in rivers down my face, neck, arms, back, everywhere. Not too long afterwards the sky opened up and dumped an incredibly torrential downpour. Again, no thunder, no lightning, no wind, no sprinkling, no warning. Wham! It didn’t last more than 10-15 minutes but it was an incredible amount of water.

I sometimes wonder what would happen if you bathed in an antiperspirant? Would your body blow like a volcano because the sweat couldn’t come out??? It sure would be interesting to try it and see. Maybe one of these days I will – some time when I am sure the water won’t go off in case I need an emergency bath!

And that brings up another thing. Days like these do make me wonder about this common sports drink sold around Asia, like, uh, exactly what is in it????? Is this even appetizing???? Maybe you enjoy it better if you don't speak English????

Sometimes it's better not to know

Thursday the internet was down all day – some major problem with the server affecting half the country. Friday the power was off. Somebody bombed two major transmission towers on the other side of the island. Today the water has been off all day and is still off. In fact we hear it won’t be back on until tomorrow. After all that I’m kind of starting to get nervous about what new thing tomorrow might bring!

We never did hear what caused the internet problem but it seems to be fixed. The electricity is on but I can hear the back up generator down the road going so the transmission towers apparently aren’t fixed yet. Nobody seems to have any idea why somebody keep bombing transmission towers. Is it rebels trying to send some message that nobody seems to be understanding, or at least can’t do anything about? Is it bored teenagers out for some sort of obscure fun? Is it sabateurs paid by somebody to hassle the electric company – after all, we heard that there had been some clandestine deal being brokered by some big fish to sell it to a Chinese company. It’s supposedly off now, but it does make you wonder. As for the water, we heard they are draining a reservoir. Reminds me of the time a reservoir in the capital city was closed for a day while they looked for the body of a guy who’d fallen in and drowned. They didn’t find him so they eventually threw a bunch of chlorine in and turned the water back on. Perhaps his remains are still stuck in a pipe somewhere.... I guess maybe sometimes it’s better that we don’t know why things aren’t working.

Where is Solomon?

Dealing with public health issues requires the wisdom of Solomon. Three recent public health issues come to mind: iodized salt, smoking, and iron fortification.

We all assumed that iodizing salt is a good thing, right? It is supposed to prevent unsightly goiter. In the second of my worlds there is a campaign in process to introduce iodinization. I recall a couple of young ladies going around house to house in a No village three years ago. At each house they would ask to borrow a little salt. When the people brought the salt they put it on a piece of paper and dripped a little liquid on it. If it turned purple it meant the salt was iodized and the family was praised. If it did not turn purple they were lectured on the value of buying iodized salt. Many people do now use iodized salt although coarse uniodized salt is still available and is still a little cheaper.

In the third of my worlds all salt is now iodized. If there is any uniodized salt at all, I do not know where to find it. But there has been an unanticipated side effect. According to a local endocrinologist who did research into the problem, this country never really had a problem with goiter. Most of the population also regularly eats fish and other seafood. (So I wonder why they decided to outlaw uniodized salt in the first place???) Since the phasing out of uniodized salt, however, they have seen a rash of cases of hyperthyroidism. According to the doctor, giving iodine to some people is like throwing fuel on a fire and the health problems that have resulted are worse than the problem that the iodinization was supposed to have helped.

A second public health issue is smoking. It is well known that many diseases are exacerbated by smoking. And smoke is certainly annoying to non-smokers. No one was happier than me when smoking was banned on airplanes. No more coughing and sneezing when everybody lit up after the meal (of course meals on planes are also a thing of the past it seems). Gradually the ban was extended to malls, large stores, restaurants, bars, until now about the only place you can smoke is in your own house. In one sense as a non-smoker, it’s fine with me if nobody ever smokes, but from the point of personal rights and freedom it does seem a bit overkill to not even be able to smoke outside. After all, a smoker outside is totally negligible in comparison to auto fumes and the constant burning of trash that goes on. (Did I mention that burning a smelly old tire is considered by some a way to cure disease? It is reputed to scare off evil spirits. I’d trade that foul smell for a smoker any day!)

The third public health issue that is currently underway is the requirement that all rice be fortified with iron. As mentioned in a previous post, a large percentage of people in this country are reputed to be anemic, so it was decided that the rice should be iron fortified. All stores and restaurants that sell rice are required by law to sell iron fortified rice, whether cooked or raw. As mentioned previously, people do not like the iron fortified rice. They say it looks dirty, doesn’t taste good and is gritty and they don’t like to buy it. So to maintain sales, stores have stopped premixing the iron pellets into the rice and instead include the pellet packets (1 packet per kilo) in the bags of rice so that people can mix it themselves. Of course it mostly ends up in the trash. (One more thing to burn???)

Apparently however, the law doesn’t require rice sold in the market to be iron fortified. Most poor people (who are more likely to be anemic) buy their rice at the market because they can find poorer grades of rice than what is sold in stores and so it’s a little cheaper. And now it’s even cheaper still because the stores have to pay for the iron fortifcation packets. Poor people also don’t tend to eat at restaurants. They are more likely to eat at little household run eateries which are not subject to the law. Those people also do not serve iron fortified rice because it is more expensive and they want to make a profit. So as it turns out, the poor who are anemic are not benefitting from the iron fortified rice. It is the middle class who probably is not anemic who is dealing with having to deal with the higher price and throw away the pellet packets.

So, three public health issues. Where is Solomon?

Who says TV is addicting?

Do you ever wonder about stuff like this?

Experiments conducted by researcher Herbert Krugman reveal that when a person watches television, brain activity switches from the left to the right hemisphere. The left hemisphere is the seat of logical thought. Here, information is broken down into its component parts and critically analyzed. The right brain, owever, treats incoming data uncritically, processing information in wholes, leading to emotional, rather than logical responses. The shift from left to right brain activity also causes the release of endorphins, the body's own natural opiates--thus, it is possible to become physically addicted to watching television, a hypothesis borne out by numerous studies which have shown that very few people are able to kick the television habit. It's no longer an overstatement to note that the youth today that are raised and taught through network television are intellectually dead by their early teens.

From:
Mass Mind Control Through Network Television: Are Your Thoughts Your Own? by Alex Ansari, InformationLiberation.com, Apr 21, 2008

A few months ago I was out in a No village. That village has had electricity for over 10 years now. and more and more electrical gadgets are appearing all the time -- TVs, radios, stereos, small refrigerators, irons, cake mixers, etc. I was staying at a house without a TV but they did have a computer which is sometimes used for watching CD movies. Somebody acquired a CD advertising some health supplement with video promos in half a dozen languages. So the people in the household decided to watch it. It was astonishing to me to see the whole group sitting in front of that computer screen mesmerized by some promo in languages they did not understand. I tried talking to them – they were like zombies, barely able to acknowledge my presence, having to make tremendous efforts to pull their eyes away from two suited guys sitting in a studio jabbering in Korean. Hardly an action flick! Every one of them was like that from the three year old to the elderly visiting auntie. Busy absorbing all those endorphans, I guess. A very sobering illustration of the quote above.

Rice Shortage

There has been non-stop talk of impending rice shortages in this country this past month. One local person opined that it was just the government’s way of diverting people’s attention from its other shenanigans. That may well be, but I also read an article about local merchants already talking to rice distributers on the island south of here (country B) about buying rice from that country and importing it. In turn, news in country B has bemoaned the fact that they are still not self-sufficient in rice production and must import so many tons each year. They say the government will be intensifying efforts to improve rice production this year. Meanwhile, yet another article said that a leading bulk food store chain in the US would be limiting the quantities of rice its members could buy.

I went to the grocery store today and the bins of rice seemed to be normal quantities. The price has increased significantly in the last month but it is not clear how much is due to shortages and how much is due to a recent law requiring that all white rice sold here has to be iron fortified. Somebody has to pay for the iron and I doubt it is the merchant or the government.

As an aside, the iron fortification law apparently was a response to a report that a high number of people in this country are anemic. Since everybody eats rice, it was decided that the rice had to be iron fortified. The “iron fortification” consists of rice grain sized grayish pellets that are to be mixed with the raw rice and cooked. The pellets sort of dissolve in water and then seems to be like powdered iron tablets. Most people, however, do not like it. They say it makes the rice look dirty no matter how many times you wash it, makes the cooking water gray, and they don’t like the taste, plus it makes the cooked rice slightly gritty. Merchants have to comply with the law but recently many have tried to make the product more saleable by not premixing it. Instead they are putting small packets of iron fortification pellets into the 1, 5, and 10 kilo bags of rice and letting people mix it in themselves. I suspect most of it ends up in the trash. Anyway, I am sure that those packets of iron pellets are at least one of the reasons the price of rice has risen.

To make it all even more bizarre, while in country B last month, the rice farmers were complaining about how cheap their rice sells for while the price of fertilizer and pesticides keeps going up.

In both countries they say it has been raining a lot and so the crops aren’t as good as usual.

So, what gives? Is there really a rice shortage?

"No frills" flying

I just returned from an international trip and survived the new "no frills" airline that I took. As I was reflecting on the trip, all I can say is that I earnestly hope that I will always have an alternative choice of airlines to fly on.

Why? The flights themselves weren't too bad - the planes are new Airbuses and were comfortable, everything still worked, and the pilots seemed quite able to fly them.

But the hassle factor was very high. The prices listed on banners advertising the flights were bait and switch - ie after you go to buy a ticket you find out that the advertised price didn’t include the "taxes" which are twice again as much as the advertised price. Then there was the factor that you couldn’t get the tickets thru a travel agent – you had to go yourself in person to the airline office and wait in line. Three hours after returning home they called and said they’d forgotten to charge the “fuel surcharge” so I had to go back again, wait in line again for them to charge me more. Then the price is different every time you ask. If you don’t buy the ticket today you can bet the price will be higher tomorrow. In the end, the price was not much less than the competitor’s price.

The routing and time of the flights was also difficult. Some of it was late at night, some in the middle of the night. Had to change airports in both countries. Two stops were over was 5 hours long, the other two were 12 hours. They charged for every kilo over the 20 kilo weight allowance, they serve nothing on board, not even water. Which with the new regulations about not allowing you to bring liquids on board, you are forced to buy their water if you want any. They had a limited amount of junk food for sale on the plane and even what they say they have, they may not. For example, in the flight magazine they say they sell 4 kinds of juice. But on none of the 4 flights on this trip did they have ANY juice at all. Well, okay, it’s a budget airline.

The bus and tickets and advertising material have this goofy cartoon plane character. Made me feel like I was on a kiddie plane. The airline attendants all wore tight T-shirts and low slung skirts or pants. Made me feel like a bunch of teenagers were running the place – and I wondered if they would know what to do in an emergency. I also felt a little sorry for the girls when some of the men from a neighboring country were leering a bit obnoxiously. It would be nice if they could wear a jacket over their skimpy T-shirts, at least on international flights.

They also play “games” on the flights. On one flight, my neighbor was the first one to pull out a senior citizen ID card and he got the prize – an inflatable plastic giraffe head and neck. I mean, what on earth do you do with an inflatable giraffe head and neck??? It can’t even stand up by itself. (I would personally have preferred a bottle of water!)

Even the flight magazine leaves you shaking your head. It’s full of full color pictures, and lots of slap-happy upbeat "fun" and weird stuff. For example, an article on how you can help stop global warming. I thought at first that surely it was satire but I don’t think it was. It included: 1) shave your head so you use less soap and water to wash hair. Both men and women can now shave their heads, the article claims, because two famous movie actor/actress (I didn’t recognize the names) have shaved their heads. 2) Do all your washing in the shower, like brush your teeth (I wonder if the clown that wrote the article ever tried to suck up water spraying down on him without choking to death???) Or, keep your underwear on and just wash it while on you as you take your shower. 3) Stop breathing so much. Every breath you take lets off carbon dioxide which contributes to global warming – it really did say that!!!! 4) Fly more often. Planes make contrails which help cool the earth.

Overall impression? I was glad when the trip was over. I plan to take a different airline next time.

Why are they lazy?

The other day a Chinese business woman asked me why the No people were so lazy. Even though I lived among the No people for a number of years I was still hard pressed to answer. I hadn’t really ever thought of them as lazy. But she was speaking from her perspective as an employer. She had also observed how immigrants had come into the area and were industrious, hardworking and eventually successful, unlike the No people who seemed to be stuck back in a time warp.

The quick answer is, it’s their culture. But what is it about their culture that makes them appear lazy to outsiders?

I have indeed known lazy people among the No people. One whole family in the village would far rather sit under the mango tree and strum a guitar than go attend to their fields. As a consequence, over the years they have lost all their land, selling it off bit by bit for cash to pay for things like weddings, funerals, TVs, etc. All the other villagers have long ago wearied of trying to help them. And nobody wants to loan any more money. Many will hire them sometimes to help with harvest or planting, but even then they will only work when they are hungry and then their work is slipshod and sometimes has to be redone. Now most of the children have grown up and married and most are just as unsuccessful as their parents were. One of the daughters-in-law is a very industrious gal but she has complained that her in-laws are constantly coming to them for help (ie handouts) and she is very frustrated. Another daughter-in-law who lives in town quit visiting altogether when on one visit she had to go beg rice from a neighbor to feed her 4 year old because there was nothing at all in the house.

Now, in the No culure there is a strong value of helping your family and neighbors. So people find it hard to refuse a direct request for food. But they still resent it when people from this family come asking because in the eyes of the rest of the villagers, they are lazy.

So, there definitely ARE lazy No people. But what about the rest? The cultural thing that seems to hold them all back is related to envy.

Most of the conflict in No culture results from envy. Life is organized to avoid people becoming envious of you. An envious person will at the very least gossip, backbite, slander. That is unpleasant enough but an envious person may also resort to magic - and that strikes fear in people's hearts. Their elders told them that it was useless to plant a lot of rice because others would become envious and would use malign magic to destroy the rice, make them sick, or cause other misfortune. So the motivation to be successful has been countermanded by fear of others’ envy and especially fear of magic being directed towards them. Others have found that any extra prosperity is quickly devoured by other family members. So this also demotivates people from becoming “too successful”.

The result today is that other ethnic groups move into the area and are quickly successful and prosperous while the local folk are more and more marginalized.

So, are they lazy?

On budget airlines

This comes just as I’m about to embark on a trip flying on two different budget airlines.

Remember the budget airplane that crashed into the deep blue sea with over 100 people on board 15 months ago? They retrieved the black boxes last August with the help of a salvage ship and just this week the results were announced: primarily pilot error. They were distracted by some other problem and forget to check their instruments. The report also said that there was no evidence that the airline “included component reliability in its reliability control program, to ensure the effectiveness or airworthiness of aircraft components for the fleet at the time of the accident.” Hmmm. Poor maintainence and poorly trained pilots. The rumors were true.

Two weeks ago, the same airline was grounded by the government for failure to meet minimum safety standards after yet another of its planes had a mild crash–it seems some people never learn. Hats off to the government though. They do, eventually, with enough encouragement, get around to doing their jobs. Starting last July the EU refused to allow ANY airlines from that country to land anywhere in the EU. It was a national embarassment. I imagine that has motivated them to put a little bit of effort into doing inspections.

What amazes me the most though, is how angry the passengers were who had booked tickets on that airline only to find the airline was grounded for safety reasons. They weren’t angry at the airline, they were angry at the safety board. Some of them even went down and had a protest demonstration at the safety board office!

It’s part of the philosophy – if it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go. If it’s not, then God Himself will hold that broken plane with the incompetent pilots up in the air and get you home safely.

Black Saturday

According to the paper, 35 people (including a woman) had themselves crucified yesterday. Of course, they didn’t die and I understand they use stainless steel nails that have been sterilized, so it seems to be a “safe” procedure. But still uncomfortable. Nevertheless, one guy has now done it for 13 years in a row. Other “scores of men pound their bleeding bare backs with bamboo sticks dangling from ropes in a flagellation rite meant to atone for sins.” Here are a couple of photos off the net:

Why do they do it? According to the article, in addition to atoning for sins, it’s done to pay a vow or to pray for an illness to be cured. The guy who’s done it 13 times said he’s doing it this time so that his sick son will get well. He also said “After being nailed to the cross, I feel so refreshed, like all my sins are washed away.”
Although religious authorities frown on the practice it has become an annual ritual in some places. The guy who has done it 13 times says his own father had done it 15 times.

In my area nobody gets crucified. But a number of people carry crosses or crawl on their knees up a winding road to the top of a hill at the top of which is a shrine. An even larger number go along in procession on foot. (Witnessed by the fact that today you can still see the entire road to the top is carpeted in discarded cups, juice packs, junk food wrappers, and water bottles.)

Tomorrow beginning about 2am there will be a procession starting from the nearby church. The Mary figure and accompanying procession will leave through one door and the Jesus figure and accompanying procession will leave through a different door. They will pass over different routes around town and then “meet” at the nearby mall. From there the two processions join and go back to the church together where there will be a special pre-dawn service. And then Holy Week is over.

Out of stock specials

Today I went out for lunch with two friends. We went to a place that is reputed to have good and interesting food – when it’s in stock. The restaurant has lots of windows and you can choose tables, booths or even a few bar stools along a counter. Outside were plastered signs about the current specials: Seared Tuna and Citrus Sauce, Thai Chicken, etc. One friend was especially interested in the Seared Tuna special. However once inside and seated we found out that the cook doesn’t come in until later in the day so those specials weren’t available. Oh, okay. So we looked through the menu and two of us ordered Chicken Fajitas and the other some Cajun Shrimp Chowder. Those apparently were in stock and there was someone present who was able to cook it.

One of my friends ordered a watermelon shake. The waitress came back and said they were out of stock so my friend ordered a green mango shake. Soon the waitress was back and said that was out of stock too but they had ripe mangoes. OK, so ripe mango shake it was.

The food was pretty good once it got sorted out what was and wasn’t in stock. The fajitas came with 2 extremely thin “tortillas” in nice plastic tortilla dishes with a cover. Only they weren’t really tortillas, they were spring roll wrappers. Oh, well, never mind. There aren’t too many Mexicans in this part of the world so maybe no one else will notice. The salsa was fresh and not too salty and even had a mild hint of chili to it.

One friend insisted on separate bills. That isn’t really the norm here so sometimes people have incredible difficulty figuring out separate bills. When our bills came I couldn’t help giggling at the little descriptions typed on the top of each of the bills: brown hair, white hair, and pink blouse. I guess I was Brown Hair. Soon White Hair and Pink Blouse were giggling too and I thought we were really going to lose it. Actually two of us had pink blouses on and two had brown hair. But it still worked out. And after all, it could have SO much worse!! (Like Small, Medium, and Large. Or Glasses, No glasses, Needs Glasses. Etc.)

PS These photos are glamor shots off the internet, NOT the real thing.