Between Three Worlds

Fragility of Life

2011-03-15T22:19:00.000-07:00

World news has dominated the local news for the last 3 weeks. Many local people have friends and family working in the Middle East so each report of increasing tension or violence in Libya, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia is met with great concern here. Several people from this country were also apparently killed in the earthquake in New Zealand. The news carried the story of one young woman's last text messages to her mother as she lay trapped in the rubble. She was at a language school there to improve her English so that she could be employed as a nurse. So far 5 from this country have been identfied by DNA. She is among the 11 who are still missing.

But now the focus has switched to Japan. The destruction and loss of life is astounding and reminds me very much of Aceh. The main difference is the huge numbers of cars caught up in the debris. But the sheer enormity of the MESS left behind is mind boggling. More than 1/4 million citizens of this country work in Japan. Most are in the Tokyo area but several thousand were in the area devastated by the tsunami.

There were tsunami warnings here. All along the eastern coast people were warned away from the shore line. Fishermen were not allowed to go out and most pulled their boats way up the beach as far as they could. Several areas did report unusually large waves up to 1-2 meters high, but there were no reports of injuries or damage.

And now the radiation concerns. Yesterday people all over the country were frantically forwarding a text message that said that radiation from Japan would be blowing our way soon and so everyone should immediately paint their throats with Betadine and use an umbrella when they were outside. News stations on TV and radio were busy last night and this morning playing it down as a hoax. The government says they will be watching but that it is extremely unlikely there would be any problem because the prevailing winds blow out over the Pacific Ocean, not in our direction.

Japanese colleagues report the relief of finding friends and family are safe. But others whose travel takes them through the Tokyo airport have reported major delays and difficulties with local transportation.

All of this again a reminder of how fragile our lives are. Everything can change, irrevocably, in an instant.

Cool tropical weather...

2011-02-27T19:12:00.000-08:00

It's been awhile since I wrote, though not for lack of things to write about!

It's been one of those rare cool spells here, dark and gloomy and threatening to rain any minute. I have actually been wearing a sweatshirt to bed for over a week now! The weather is due to a series of "wind convergences" or "low pressure areas". Locals complain of being cold, but even I have hardly broken a sweat all week and indeed sometimes feel downright chilly. It's amazing becase I haven't seen my thermometer go below 79F!

At times like this the price of fish soars - the fishermen don't like to go out in the rain especially if it's windy. It's also a really bad time to try to go snorkeling. Though we are in the tropics and close enough to the equator to be out of the typhoon belt, the ocean currents at this time of year can be chilly. I have snorkeled at this time of year in the past and gotten so cold that coming out of the water and sitting in wet clothes in the rain in a breeze felt warm by comparison!

I hear from the country south of here that they too have had a lot of rain recently and everybody's sick (colds).

I guess we have indeed gotten the La Nina they promised a few months ago would follow the dry El Nino last year. I certainly am enjoying the cooler weather and best of all, there have been no power interruptions for a long time!

New Year's Eve

2010-12-31T02:07:00.000-08:00

It is New Year's Eve. I was awakened this morning by a pig squealing. Lots of pigs are meeting their demise today to be spitted and roasted for the holiday.

My house helper and her friend are spending the holiday here keeping me company - and borrowing our kitchen. Last night they went shopping and came home and packed a box of goodies to send to their families in the countryside. They included things like small cans of meat and fish, a big bag of candy, packages of instant coffee, milk, and Milo, sugar, laundry detergent, soap, shampoo sachets, etc. They also included the makings for a favorite holiday specialty - macaroni salad. It's made of cooked macaroni, fruit cocktail, sweetened condensed milk, processed cheese, and a bit of mayonnaise. They also planned to send about 2 kilos of roast pork left over from the friend's Christmas party at work. They left early this morning bringing the box to the bus terminal to send home with a family member they met there.

Now they are busy in the kitchen making cupcakes and fried noodles. They have two loaves of sliced white bread and apparently plan to make fried noodle sandwiches with it. They will also make spaghetti for a relative who will be stopping by later for some cupcakes.

This evening they will watch movies on an old laptop, eating fried noodle sandwiches and cupcakes, until midnight when the whole city will be outside making racket to welcome in the new year.

As for me, I am writing emails, updating my blog, and pondering life around me. I, however, do NOT plan to eat noodle sandwiches! :-)

Wishing you a happy New Year!

Sad stories for Christmas

2010-12-30T22:57:00.000-08:00

I think I am coming to the conclusion that it is not possible to completely solve the problem of poverty.

Lola is a 23 year old girl from the mountains. She and her two siblings were raised by their grandmother, and an aunt paid for her schooling through high school. She then came to the city and got a job in the fish market. There she met another orphan, also raised by his grandparents. He was a fish slicer. They didn't get married but just moved in together, which is quite common these days among the young folk. The excuse is that they don't have the money for a wedding. There are also plenty of older people who have been previously married who have "live-ins" because divorce isn't legal.

Six years later Lola has 3 children ages 1, 3, and 5. They rent one room in a house located over the ocean. There is no bathroom. All waste goes beneath the house where the tide carries it off each day, though of course it can be pretty smelly during low tide. They buy water from a neighbor, paying per bucket. Cooking is done over charcoal, usually outside unless it is raining. The husband lost his job a few months ago for some unknown (to me) reason and only intermittantly works now. He seems to have his heart set on being a fish slicer and doesn't want to look for other work. He spends his days at the market, hanging around with his friends and eating with them, waiting for an occasional opportunity to slice fish. Meanwhile the wife is at home with the kids. She is still nursing the baby and when she doesn't get enough to eat the baby cries a lot. While her live-in worked, they had plenty of fresh fish to eat. Now it's difficult.

She stopped by to pick up some CDs from her aunt. Her aunt gave her fare to go home but after she left, her aunt started wondering why she had bothered to come just for CDs and then realized that Lola probably didn't have any food in the house and had probably been hoping the aunt would give her money. Lola's now embarassed to ask for help because she has had to ask so many times and some of her relatives have begun advising her to leave the live-in and go back to the country where she and the kids can at least plant vegetables and eat.

Thinking about the kids, the aunt collected some stuff around the house, sugar, Milo, coffee, mung beans, a few left-over Christmas goodies and went to the market and bought charcoal, oil, eggs, vegetables, 10 kilos of rice and a kilo of chicken. When she arrived at Lola's house she found the live-in sitting there watching TV, hoping that a lottery ticket he'd bought would pan out netting them about $1.25 with which they planned to buy food. Lola had apparently bought 1/4 kilo of rice with what was left from the bus fare and they had eaten rice soup for lunch. The kids were super excited to see the Christmas treats and the big package of Milo.

Lola's grandmother has begged her on several occasions to come back to the country and so have several of her aunts. But she refuses. The man, who is quite large and through it all has managed to keep his weight up by eating with friends, refuses to look for other work. Is he cognitively challenged? Is he unable to think outside his small box? Is he lazy? Or does he just have the problem of being unrealistic? This is the kind of situation that makes relatives and other observers want to pull their hair out.

But you can't run people's lives for them.

Another painful, yet also hopeful story is that of Rita.

Today was a joyous day for a 9-year-old girl I will call Rita. Four years ago Rita had suffered a broken femur. Nothing was ever done about it and eventually the bone became infected. Earlier this year social workers brought her to the city where she was taken in by an expat doctor and his wife who helped navigate the paperwork to get the girl treated. It was a long process with many obstacles. They got her some crutches and she began to be able to get around a bit. She was hospitalized for nearly a month on IV antibiotics to clear up the bone infection. Then she had some heart arrhythmias and the cardiac consultant refused to give permission for surgery. Colds and such caused more delays. She had also been quite malnourished and was tiny for her age. One of the doctors was outraged when he saw her. He said it was child abuse to allow a child to go that long untreated. Social workers eventually brought her 12-year old brother to the city also and he is staying with his sister. He too was tiny and malnourished and had never been allowed to go to school. But finally, just after Christmas in a surgery that didn't start until 11pm and went until 2am, the leg was repaired. Today Rita is leaving the hospital to the great delight of her foster parents and all of her well-wishers. Go, Rita!

Hypnotism crime

2010-09-09T20:36:00.000-07:00

Apparently a common method used in crime in the second of my worlds is hypnotism. You know, the criminal hypnotises the victim so that they do not see the crime or cannot resist. In our town a guy was arrested by the police last year for stealing motorcycles. When he was released he walked through the police station in full view of a dozen police sitting at desks. He swiped one of the police helmets, in full view of them all, and none of them could lift a finger to stop him.

Recently a TV news station showed footage from a security camera at a convenience store where such a crime occurred. A group of 6 men and women came into the store and pretended to shop but in various ways they also tried to distract the cashier, asking where the bathroom was, asking for change, etc. While the cashier has the cash drawer open and her hands counting change right over it, you can see one of the guys reach over and take a large wad of bills right from under her nose, apparently without her seeing it.

Last year a city newspaper helpfully gave some police tips on how to protect yourself from hypnotism crime. Some of their suggestions included things such as:

- Believe fully that evil hypnotism cannot happen to people who reject it,
because all hypnotism is self-hypnotism where our fear is used by the
hypnotist.
- Beware of people who come up and befriend you because all hypnotism is a communication technique.
- Keep your thinking busy and don’t let your mind be empty when you are alone in a public place because when your mind is empty you are very susceptible to suggestion.
- Be careful when you feel sleepy, nauseated, dizzy, or have tightness in your chest especially when it comes suddenly for no reason because there may be someone using a telepathic forcing on you. Immediately decide to throw off that negative energy to the ground and pray according to the religion you believe.
- If you are suggestible, don’t go out alone or else get over your suggestibility.

I'll try to remember those suggestions the next time I'm out and about! :-)

Where have all the flowers gone?

2010-08-08T01:35:00.001-07:00

I recently returned from a month long trip. Our back yard was looking pretty overgrown and since the El Nino has ended and it is raining again, it seemed a good time to do some “bush whacking”. I noticed though that several of the potted plants have disappeared. That is, the pots are still there but no signs of any plants.

I think I have discovered where all the flowers went:

He has replaced the hanging plants!

Such a cozy bed!

Taken before I went on the trip - I should have known!

Even the mama cat now likes the flower pots! Sigh!

Cat in the tree

2010-06-19T02:13:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday morning I heard a commotion across the way. The neighbors in the opposite apartment leave their door open a lot and apparently a stray cat had gotten in and they were trying to get it out. The poor cat was trapped in their window and couldn’t get out because of the screen. It was a pretty uncoordinated effort. Two kids were outside poking sticks at the cat through the screen while somebody on the inside was hitting it every time it dropped to the floor. Eventually somebody decided to open the drape on one side and the cat scooted out of the window on the inside and was frantically slipping and clawing on the tile floor trying to get away as they kept whacking at it with their sticks. It finally got straightened out and scooted out the door – only to be met by the family’s big long-haired cat who promptly attacked it. We heard some screeching and then the intruder came leaping across the pavement and climbed up the big talisay tree while the family stood in their doorway laughing at the scene. Their cat didn’t try to follow it up the tree and eventually went inside.

I didn’t think any more of it. The next afternoon a warkman said there was a cat stuck in the tree. When I looked I realized it was the one who had been chased up the day before. It was a young cat, still a kitten really. White and black and quite handsome. A worker who is a good tree climber attempted to get it but it was scared and he said it tried to bite him and only climbed higher up in the tree.

The next morning I could see him out the second story window all curled up comfortably on a branch about 20 feet up. Periodically he’d meow but made no effort to come down. I figured that eventually if he got hungry enough he’d come down, especially at night when there were fewer people and less commotion. But he didn’t come down that day either. I looked on the internet for ideas. Most had unhelpful advice such as calling the animal rescue squad or a tree trimming company, none of which exist here. But they all advised trying to get it down if it had been there more than 12 hours. And several refuted the idea that cats will always come down. They said that sometimes they are too scared and will cling for days until they are so weak they fall. Kittens especially. One guy said he was a tree trimmer and had seen cat skeletons in trees. Of course I get more upset thinking about the poor cat starving to death and having to listen to his plaintive meowing for days. I certainly couldn’t reach him, our ladder didn’t go high enough. Nobody else was interested in risking their life climbing up there and trying to grab a scared cat. The worker tried poking the cat with a long pole but it just climbed even higher.
Since I couldn’t do anything else, I decided to just pray. I know, it seems crazy to pray for a cat, what with a world full of humans who desparately need prayer. But on the other hand, God created cats too and the Bible says He even cares for the sparrows. Maybe somebody’s guardian angel could take a few minutes off during a slow time to give guidance to a poor traumatized kitten in a tree?

Well, the next day (day 4) the cat was gone. No more pitiful meowing and no cat in the tree. Later that afternoon I thought I heard it again and sure enough, there it was eating some leftover rice in front of another neighbor’s apartment- on the ground.

So did God send an angel? Maybe. Maybe He sent mine, because that evening, sometime after I prayed, I got distracted while carrying a bowl of boiling hot soup and spilled it all over my hand. It certainly provided a painful distraction to worrying about the cat! Ha, ha!

Coping with brownouts

2010-06-09T21:57:00.000-07:00

The past several months have been much drier than usual due to an El Nino. This island normally gets most of its power from hydroelectric sources but this year the water levels were extremely low resulting in power shortages. In this city they have managed to organize the brownouts such that you can sort of plan your day. The city is divided into three groups which have a rotating schedule of brownouts, not to the exact time but the general part of the day. In my part of town on Mondays and Tuesdays we are scheduled for afternoon brownout of 2-3 hours duration. Wednesdays and Thursdays we have them in the early evening. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays we have them in the morning.

It does interfere with work since it’s too dark inside our house to read or see the computer keyboard, and my second monitor doesn’t work. If we have a brownout in the morning I often use that time to go shopping or do errands because the malls all have their own generators. Or I might go to our office which is on a different rotation schedule. There I can check the mail or photocopy or use the library. When we have an afternoon brownout that is when it is the most difficult because it is not only dark but also very hot. Sometimes if I’m sleepy I take a nap on the cool tile floor. Or else I just sit and sweat and listen to a pre-downloaded mp3 radio broadcast or sermon while playing a mindless computer game until the power comes on. When the power goes off in the evening, I light 3-4 candles, power up the mp3 player and hike laps around the kitchen and living room for an hour.

It has been raining again recently so we hope that eventually the reservoirs will fill up and the power will become more regular.

BREAKING: They just announced a change in the schedule. To be more "equitable" the schedule will change every week. Sigh! Just get a system figured out and they go and change it again.

The most expensive rice I ever ate

2010-06-09T21:45:00.000-07:00

Reading glasses are a bit of a pain and since I wear them all day long for computer work, who wants to drag them out at the store? Well, last Sunday I stopped by the grocery store at the mall. I saw some really nice looking unpolished brown rice that I had not seen there before. It was less than half a kilo so I threw it in the cart to try. I didn’t check the price. After all regular rice is about 80 cents a kilo and although brown rice would be more, I figured at most it would be $1 a kilo. It was in a simple plastic bag that the store uses for breaking down wholesale sacks of rice and repackaging into smaller retail amounts of 1, 5, or 10 kilos. The price is on little stickers but it’s hard to read without digging out reading glasses. I had several items at the checkout and tho the total seemed high, well, everything is higher now.

But the next day at home, we noticed the price – amounting to $10 per kilo! Good thing it was less than half a kilo. Was it mismarked????? It’s hard to believe that that could really be the price! We are cooking it now and it does smell wonderful. But it will be the most expensive rice we have ever eaten.
If I ever see it again I will definitely want to recheck the price. I will also plan to dig out the reading glasses when in doubt. (And I will probably be in doubt more often now!)

The elephants are still fighting

2010-05-28T21:12:00.000-07:00

Now we are in the post-election phase. Losing candidates are busy complaining about the automation machines, challenging results, demanding recounts , accusing the winners of corrupt tactics, and filing lawsuits. The top two vice-presidential candidates have been neck and neck with only a few thousand vote difference so that has been mildly interesting. Both have been very civil about the whole thing. They haven't yet declared a winner but are promising to do so soon.

What's been interesting is the local mayoral race. The Daughter won 65% of the vote for mayor and the incumbant Mayor won 80% of the vote for vice-mayor, or rather, Vice-Mayor. The election committee has long ago declared them the winners. But somehow the Opponent continues to fuss. Rumor has it that he threw huge amounts of money into winning this election but after all he didn't and he can't believe it. I guess he doesn't yet understand the perfidy of people.

He is the one who demanded that the election committee take over the city during elections lest the emcumbant Mayor cheat. The Mayor agreed and so the election committee has been in charge of the city since a couple days before the election until now. Now he is filing a suit accusing the Mayor's party of having 17,000 dead people vote and 40,000 zombie voters (people registered in more than one precinct), and of other irregularities. (Not that 57,000 votes would have changed the election results anyway.) Meanwhile the current Mayor wisely noted that the suit should actually be filed against the election commission, not him as they are the ones who were in control of the city and the election. The head of the election committee is annoyed and says that that was not possible, that THEY were in control and were very strict and weeded out people registered in more than one place. The new mayor-elect, Daughter, said she was expecting about a thousand suits from Opponent. So this is just number 1 with 999 to go. But even frivolous lawsuits have to go through the courts and takes the time and money of the accused.

This has been an interesting election. Apparently many if not most politicians are lawyers who can spend all their spare time throwing legal challenges at each other. I also learned that these elections are deadly serious affairs, and the power struggle is awseome. Reminds me of the African proverb - when the elephants fight, the grass gets trampled. It may make for amusing news stories, but you sure don't want to get involved!

The first "automated" elections

2010-05-28T19:58:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago was election day for president, vice-president, senators, congressmen, and locally, mayor. It was the first time they used what they called “automated voting”. Each polling station had a machine that looked like a fax machine. Voters blackened in ovals next to the candidates of their choice on the ballot cards and then fed the ballot into the optical scanning machine which was supposed to count the votes and store the info on a flash card. It was then supposed to contact home via satellite with the counts every hour or so. Apparently there were numerous problems with the machines. Some had battery problems, some didn’t work at all, some were just slow and ballots had to be fed in multiple times before they were finally accepted, and there just didn't seem to be enough of them to handle the numbers of people quickly..

It seemed that the print was small for some older folk, and so some brought a grandchild with them to help them cast their vote.

One friend went at 7:30am and after multiple problems with the machine plus the slowness of the whole procedure, didn’t actually get to cast her ballot until nearly 7pm. It sounds like a lot of people gave up and went home without voting so that was frustrating.

Sounds like vote-buying was rampant too, especially by the Opponent of the Mayor. People reported being offered round trip fare if they would sign a list saying they would vote for the Opponent of the encumbant Mayor. Workers were reported as going door to door even on election day, offering up to $22 per household to vote for the Opponent. In some neighborhoods the Opponent was sponsoring roast pork parties on election day. Others whose kids had scholarships thru the gov’t (the Opponent has been a national congressman for a long time and has sponsored many scholarships) were threatened that the scholarships would be cut off if they didn’t vote for the Opponent. It was also reported that in certain precincts the ballots listed two candidates with the same last name as the encumbant Mayor. This was done in the last election as a way of splitting the vote for those who didn’t read the whole name carefully. The interesting thing is, though, that if you download the official ballot form off the national election site, there is only one candidate listed as having that last name. So when was the second name added????

Privacy isn't quite what it is in some other places. Most of the polling places were at schools. People were sitting at school desks in a classroom, several at a time filling in their ballots. A friend said that the print was so small she didn't think anybody could see what another person was filling out. But some people said that at their polling station there were people looking in the windows and they were afraid that, since they had accepted money to vote for the Opponent, those people might see if they didn't vote for the Opponent and so felt intimidated. At other polling places there were curtains at the windows and people felt secure.

The perfidy of people. A number of people reported having accepted money from a candidate but having no intention of voting for him. In a way I kind of felt sorry for some of the candidates passing out candies, t-shirts, snacks, and even cash and hearing people say oh yes, they were going to vote for them and then here comes the election and they lose big time. Then again they aren't supposed to be engaging in vote buying.

There were no reports of violence in this city – though I did hear of one guy who got so frustrated he tried to smash the voting machine. Police pulled him away and then he turned and broke a window so they hand-cuffed him and took him off somewhere. In other parts of the country there were some reports of grenades and gunfire used to scare off voters lined up.

There were daily updates on the status of the presidential candidates but it was a few days before they announced the results of the mayoral candidacy. Apparently the local election committee didn’t want to release any info until all precincts have reported. Eventually it was revealed that the Opponent garnered about 35% of the votes and the Mayor’s daughter won 65% of the vote. (The Mayor has to step down for a term because the law mandates a limit of three terms in a row. He can run again in 3 years time. So in this election he ran for vice-mayor while his daughter, who is the current vice-mayor, ran for mayor.)

My Dengue Journey

2010-05-04T07:37:00.000-07:00

Everybody’s writing their Journey stories so here’s mine. This is the fourth time I’ve had dengue fever. According to what’s out there, there are 4 types of dengue. So I have apparently hit them all. Am I a world record or what? So unless they discover a fifth type that should mean that I am done with it and need never fear another mosquito!

Nobody writes much about what the dengue journey is like. You read about the symptoms of high fever, severe headache and backache but not much about the real, you know, experiential part of it all. Today is Day 6 of Round 4.

Headache. Oh yeah. All four times I had a headache. They say it’s often pain at the back of your eyes. Well this time it was the bones above my eyes, the bones below my eyes, the bones of my temples, the bones in front of my ears and my teeth. They hurt so bad I didn’t even notice the back of my eyes! Move your head and unnghhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lower backache? Oh yeah. Not as bad as the time I had it in South America when I had to grit my teeth and stop breathing just turn to the other side. This time I could still breathe when turning but it kept me rolling back and forth ever searching for some comfortable position.

Fever? Of course, that’s why it’s called dengue fever. Highest recorded this time was only 39.8 and that’s cuz a friend persuaded me to take paracetamol whenever it got above 39 (almost 103F). The record was the second time when it hit 41 (105+F).

Stomach pain? It wasn’t so noticeable earlier, it was a vague cycling from extremely hungry to nauseous to slightly painful and back around again. Now that the fever has broken those sensations have intensified. I don’t usually vomit as long as I don’t drink too much at a time. And nothing sounds good so no danger of eating too much. Besides, you get a weird taste in your mouth and if you do eat anything with chemicals in it the flavor of the chemicals is super enhanced.

Rash? Today I do have a rash but frankly I couldn’t really have seen whether I had a faint rash before that or not because when my fever gets that high my vision gets dim. Yeah, literally like somebody dimmed all the lights, including the sun, moon and stars.

What I don’t see mentioned in the medical literature is the weird mental stuff. It’s kind of funny but when you’re in the midst of it, it is not boring. Most of the time you’re lucky and just sleep or lose consciousness but sometimes you see weird things. Like, the time when my fever was 41 (105+F) I would see lots of ugly stuff, like heaps of squirming guts, mounds of worms, disgusting nasty things. If I opened my eyes and looked at something real it helped. But in the dark of a moonless night in a remote village you don’t see anything at all even if you do open your eyes. The only thing that helped was praying and forcing yourself to think about beautiful things like flowers, butterflies, clouds, etc. This time there was none of that but my mind was like incessantly nattering away at nothing, like it was busy-busy working on some urgent problem until I finally had to forceably shut it off and think consciously about something else. Later I was reading a weird email so long I couldn’t scroll long enough to ever get to the bottom and I kept finding it embedded and looped upon itself. The person it was from would never in a million years have been so verbose about anything! Of course in reality there was no such email but hey, I was READING it! I could give you a synopsis of it! That’s the weird kind of mental stuff you don’t hear much about.

The next step is wait and see if you get any of the the hemorrhagic stuff with it. So far on this journey I have been blessed and have not had any bleeding that I ever noticed, no gum bleeding or nosebleed or even noticeable rash. May God grant that this (hopefully) last stage of this journey also be so blessed.

Do not let your cat sleep on your back

2010-04-07T20:45:00.000-07:00

It all started one night when I was peacefully minding my business, snoozing on my stomach. For some reason the cat decided to take a nap on my back. Maybe he was lonely or maybe he felt cold, I don’t know. But since he’s hot and heavy I didn’t really want him there so I wiggled a little to get him off. Instead of getting off he dug his claws in. I know at least one claw went all the way thru my t-shirt!

Now a few weeks later, I have a huge, nasty, painful boil on my back – just below the shoulder blade where it is difficult to reach and impossible to see. They say heat is good for bringing a boil to a head. So for five long days I put hot water in a plastic bag, and tied it shut. Then I tied the bag into a sarong and hung it over one shoulder and tied it like a sash so that the bag would be on top of the boil. But after 5 long days it still hadn’t come to a head and I couldn’t lay on my back at all cuz of pain and swelling. So a couple days ago I finally went to a doc. She took one look and ordered a huge dose of antibiotic. Said she since there wasn’t yet(!) a head she didn’t want to cut until I’d been on an antibiotic for three days.

So here I am 2 days and several doses later. The thing has started to drain a little but is still very painful and still huge and I still can’t lay on my back. I don’t think it is an ordinary staph infection cuz the drainage is gaggingly foul smelling! I guess I'll have to go back tomorrow and see if the doc can drain it all at once.

And so my friends, that is why you should never ever let your cat sleep on your back!

Green energy woes

2010-02-23T19:33:00.000-08:00

It seems that we really are having an El Nino this year. We seem to alternate years, nothing normal anymore, just El Ninos and La Ninas. It hasn't been raining daily like it usually does and we have had to water the plants a couple times a week lately. We are told that the lake and river which provide almost all the power on this island are very low and so power has been cut back. Luckily this city has an old 40 MW Bunker-fuel plant as well that has helped pick up some of the slack. It is located less than a kilometer from our place and it has been running almost constantly for the last 3 weeks. It is extremely noisy and even at this distance there is a low pitched background thrumming that kind of gives you a headache after awhile. In fact, one of our neighbors is out house hunting right now because he can't sleep. He says not only is it noisy but it shakes the ground and even using ear plugs and closing windows and using air conditioner don't help. So they are scouting out a neighborhood out past the airport.

Today the power company said the allotment of hydro-electric power has been cut even more so they will have to start rotating brownouts of about 30 minutes duration. The local generator can be cranked up to 53 MW temporarily and when it does it REALLY gets noisy! But it can't sustain that level so eventually it drops back to 40MW and the noise subsides - a little.

So much for our green energy.

Avastin

2010-02-23T19:03:00.000-08:00

No, it's not a nautical term. It's a medicine used for retina problems. Monday (Feb 8) I had Avastin injected into my eye – and I have survived to tell about it! What follows is the gory details of the injection. If you do not like gory details just skip this post! But I am writing it for others who may someday need such an injection.

In early January I noticed an area of distortion in the upper left quadrant of one eye. At that point it was not in the macula and did not affect reading. But since I am very myopic I am at risk for retinal issues so went to see a local retina specialist.

I kept hoping the distortion in my right eye would get better with conservative treatment (anti inflammatory drops) but after a few weeks the area only got bigger. Once I decided to go for the anti-VEGF injection I went to the one and only doc in town who does it – and found out I’d have to wait another week because the Avastin would have to be ordered from the capital city. Although I wavered again and again over the next week, the area slowly got even bigger until I was totally unable to read a clock or calander or recognize faces with that eye . Reading a computer screen was slow and difficult even with enlargement, it was like looking through dirty water at italic and other weird shapes with piecs of the letters missing. And of course it is my dominent eye so it keeps trying to take over. By the time Monday came I was ready, if not exactly looking forward to it. The doc had ordered eye drops to start 4 days before the injection and an extremely (excessively?) high power antibiotic (Levofloxacin). Seemed a bit of over kill and after googling Levofloxacin I’m sure my fingers and feet started feeling numb!

Day 1 On Monday after lunch I went and got in line. They took me first so no chance to ask anybody else how it went. I was gratified that they used good aseptic technique, anesthesia drops, betadine drops and a presumably sterile face cloth with only a hole for the eye. The doctor put on some kind of head gear as well (I couldn’t see well with no glasses.) I was told to look off to the upper left. I am very nearsighted and couldn’t see much in the dim lighting but found a piece of shadow I tried to focus on. They put a gizmo to hold the eyelids open and did some more touching of the eye, none of which was painful. The injection itself wasn’t very painful but I saw the swirling of the medicine go in and lost the shadow I was trying to fix my eye on. I’m afraid my eye moved a little as I ended up with a good sized blood clot on the white of my eye. They patched the eye and gave me a list of instructions – eye drops every 2 hours for a week while awake, an anti-glaucoma drug the rest of today and tomorrow. Continue with the antibiotic for 5 more days. no bending, strenuous exercise or activity, no lifting heavy things, avoid sunlight and dust, close eyes while bathing for next week, and come back tomorrow. (The needle was nowhere as big as the drawing shows and was inserted on the outer side not the top.)

Total cost was $760 which I paid in cash after it was done. (And that was the cheaper procedeure. Lucentis would have been over $2100!)

I felt okay but it was weird having an eye patched, you kind of lose distance perspective like stepping off curbs, reaching for things, etc. The eye was starting to ache by the time I got home but the anti-glaucoma pill really seemed to help. I ended up taking the patch off because what with wearing glasses over it my eyelids kept brushing it and it was annoying. I did find a piece of clean gauze in my cupboard to cover it that first night. I could see as well as before the procedure but the blood did look kind of gross and I had to wipe some clots away that ran down after I put eye drops in.

Day 2 went okay, still taking the anti glaucoma drug and high power antibotic and eye drops every 2 hours. When I went back the doc said to not get my face wet in the shower (now he tells me!) but just clean with a cloth and to wash my hair like in a beauty parlor, not bent forwards. Sigh! Do you know how many times in a day a person bends over? Especially a tall person in a short man’s country?? I mean, books off of shelves, getting clothes out of cupboards, pans out of lower cabinets, lower desk drawers. I even have to get on my hands and knees to plug my computer in! That’s not to mention feeding the cats, or picking up things I drop, making bed, etc. Good things my knees are still good as I get lots of deep knee bends in these days! My eyes seemed tired and so I rested in the afternoon and went to bed a little earlier than usual.

Day 3 no more anti glaucoma med and so far so good, no aching. I got my hair washed today with assistance. We did at the outside sink. It was a bit messy and I had to change clothes afterwards but it’s great to have clean hair. It could be my imagination but the distorted area seems slightly clearer, I can read enlarged fonts through it, in a way it’s like having my own private magnifying glass LOL! Though still distorted. Faces are still not recognizable but I can see that it is a face, it’s not just all grayed out. And I can now see the center dot on the Amsler grid. I’m to go back in 2 weeks.

Day 4. Woke up feeling better. The bloody eye feels less sore. The possibly imagined slight improvement is still there. Wondering about this antibiotic tho. Something is giving me a head ache and making me feel kind of buzz-headed and spacey. It’s hopeless to do serious work. The bloody eye is getting slightly yellow around the edges (I can’t see cuz that eye still has the gray spot in the middle of whatever I look at but Maret helped me take a picture of it.)

Day 5 Still have a slight head ache. Wondering if it’s ok to stop the Levofloxacin a couple days early? Vision in right eye is dimmer than left. Used to be the other way around. Letters are also bigger in the right than the left. It’s been that way a long time, long before this bleed started. I CAN read with the right eye – it’s still dim and distorted but I CAN read. Interesting that in passages colored with colored pencil I can’t see the color. Hmmm. But I CAN read it. My eyes don’t work together yet, though so I still feel like things are kind of out of focus. I am going out to a meeting today so we shall see how I do!

Day 14 Went back to the doc today. I feel like the vision has improved significantly, tho not as to what it was before all this started. The line of print I read in a book or the screen is straight and clear tho the line above bows upward and the line below bows downward. I guess the distance acuity isn’t quite as sharp as it was as tho since I am not able to read all the letters on the chart. This doc is Dr Brevity. He kind of grunts and says “It’s flat”. Wondering if that’s good or bad I asked what was flat. He said the macula is flat that it had been swollen last time he saw it. I guess that’s good! But then he greases up the eye with lidocaine gel and sticks his scope in it and grunts again. Then goes off and writes a note to the referring doc and says it’ll happen again. (!?) He sees a scar, a black spot. There’s lattice degeneration and atrophy at 6 o’clock. I can go back to the referring doc in 2 weeks and she can laser it. So I am befuddled. Is this something new again? Why are we suddenly talking about laser??? His brevity doesn't help.

I have spent a lot of time on the internet and don’t find much. It seems no one has definitive answers to my questions such as why did this happen? How can I prevent a recurrence? Is exercise okay or not okay and what kind is bad? Anything but contact sports? Or as one doc said, only slow gentle stuff like walking and Tai Chi? And what about heavy lifting - like heavy bags when travelling and hauling water and washing clothes by hand in the village and hauling stuff on a motorbike? Certainly the three docs I have seem so far all had different opinions as to what was even wrong, let alone how to treat it or what if anything I could do to avoid future problems. Sigh!

Raining in the dining room

2010-01-26T00:55:00.000-08:00

Well it’s “raining” again in our dining area. The 2nd floor bathroom of the apartment next door is once again dripping into our place. We are optimistically hoping it is clean water. Most of the previous occasions have been. It somehow gets into the wall and ALWAYS drips down into our place instead of theirs. It would be so much easier if it leaked into their own place – then they would believe that there’s a problem. Sigh!

The handyman came by yesterday and tore out a piece of our ceiling. Ew, what a smell! It’s extremely mildewed and moldy with a hint of something worse. Obviously some slow leaking has been going on a long time to get that much mildew up there. But of course the worker was not able to see what the problem was. He could see where it’s running out of the concrete wall but of course since the pipes are in the wall in the next apartment he can’t see anything from our place. We told him that, after all we have been through this many times over the years but each new handyman wants to rip apart OUR ceiling and see for himself. I’m going to take pictures this time and hopefully save the next guy the trouble!

The worker was uneasy about disturbing the neighbor, after all it’s not dripping into THEIR dining area. He suggested things like cutting a hole in our upstairs floor. Can’t imagine what good that would do, if he can’t see through the hole he already made in the ceiling he won’t see anything additional through a hole in the floor! The water pipes are embedded in the concrete wall – and the waste pipes are above the neighbor’s ceiling.. (I can just see somebody staggering out of bed and falling through a hole in the floor upstairs!) His other suggestion was to chip through the concrete wall from our side to try to get at the neighbor’s pipes.. (Just what we need, a window into the neighbor’s bathroom.)

Sometimes the best thing to do is to just go in your office, shut the door and play a computer game.

Distortion of reality

2010-01-26T00:23:00.000-08:00

It’s been a wild week or two around here in the third of my worlds. Two weeeks ago I noticed an eye problem. At first I thought it was due to fancy graphics on a website I was reading but then noticed ALL the windows on the computer were like that. Even the clock across the room looked dented in on one side. Being still a bit jet-lagged it took me awhile to figure out what to do. To make a long story short, I finally got in to see an eye doctor the following week and the next day had some tests. To see a doctor you find out his or her clinic hours and then show up early to get your name on the list. First come first serve. Even coming early doesn’t guarantee you won’t be waiting 3-4 hours on a hard, crowded bench in a tiny hot waiting room.

Having diagnostic tests is always an interesting experience. But even finding this place was an experience. I just kept asking security guards all along the way. You had to wend your way through the hospital and find the back door, go down a dirt alley out to a paved alley and kitty-corner across to what looked like a parking ramp. People I asked insisted the eye place was in there and after wending my way thru rows of cars in the semi-dark saw that there were indeed signs of a building back there. I guess they didn’t want to waste space and so built a parking ramp right at the front entrance. The eye place was cheerfully painted and lighted inside and was well air conditioned. The waiting room was much bigger than clinics around here usually are so I didn’t even need to worry about my knees blocking anyone’s way.

One test involved using a dye. Before the test they wanted to make sure I wasn’t allergic to the dye so they injected a small amount of the dye into the skin of my arm – like a TB test. The guy said it would sting a bit – yikes! He wasn’t kidding! I was NOT prepared for the excruciating pain~ all I could do was try to breathe like they teach women in labor to do. It left a fluorescent green welt on my arm the rest of the day.

Anyway the tests went fairly well once I figured out that when the technician told me to look right or left she usually meant HER right or left not mine. They had been saying I needed a companion to go home (maybe because people come out of there disoriented not knowing which direction was really right and which was left?? Ha, ha!). But since I felt fine I just got a taxi and went home. They gave me the results on two CDs so naturally I copied them and had fun looking at them on my computer.

So far treatment is anti-inflammatory eyedrops that give me a headache. It isn't doing any noticeable good but at least it's not invasive! I still haven’t heard what the doctor thinks is causing the bleeding. Sigh! I sure hope it improves in another week or so and no further treatment is needed. Meanwhile I’m chowing down the green leafies and antioxidents.

Choices, TV, Noisy houses and snow removal

2010-01-16T04:19:00.000-08:00

Sometimes people ask what my impressions are of the first of my worlds after having been away for awhile. There are many but here are a few:

People seem to value lots of choices, unending choices in fact, at least over trivia. Coffee shops added another choice since my last visit: dark, medium or light roast. Even sandwich shops- you think you ordered a number 2 and solved all the choice issues? Oh no, you are still asked what kind of bread (6 choices) what kind of cheese? (4 choices) what do you want on it? (10 items to choose from, onions, olives, pickles, tomatoes, etc) What sauces? Mustard? What kind (3 choices of mustard). But not done yet, do you want it heated? Here or to go? Yikes!

Go down the cereal aisle in the grocery store or the soft drink aisle. Guess that says a lot about people's diets, huh? (Here it would be the powdered milk aisle or the junk food aisles.) It's not just food, there are endless cable TV channels, books, movies, magazines.

Some things, however, offer few choices such as the color of cars or the color of siding on new homes. Curiously clothing also offered few choices in style or even color. Example, women's winter tops were long sleeved but way too low in the neck. What's with that? This isn't Florida! And there were only certain colors available, didn't matter what store.

Yet other things offer no choices, such as political parties. The only thing different is the rhetoric. Actions and outcomes are the same.

Television? Unbelievable. Does anybody really watch it anymore??? News-tainment about the fallen hero of the day. And scaring people about the flu. Commercials? Lots of prescription drug ads, all of which have long lists of horrendous side effects including death and suicide.

Noisy houses. Furnaces, water heaters, sump pumps, blowers, beepers, buzzers, dingers, etc. My first nights back here– as I wake up at 2 and 3 am – by contrast were pretty quiet. The house was totally quiet other than my fan and out my open window all I could hear was the Swiss neighbor's cuckoo clock, a distant dog barking, a few leaves rustling in the breeze. That's it.

Snow removal is amazing. After the Christmas storm I saw thick ice on the highways mysteriously GONE overnight! I saw snowbanks being loaded up in trucks and carted away, and other snowbanks literally shoved back from the edge of the roads.

Nothing new in the public bathroom scene. It seems that everything that could be automated already has been. I did notice that in my home state 9/10 bathroom stalls had the TP very low down making it difficult for tall people to reach. Not so in other states. Maybe the state legislature was bored last summer???

"Suicide" drugs

2009-12-30T04:16:00.000-08:00

What is with all these suicidal drugs???!!

I am amazed at the countless TV commercials for various prescription drugs. The commercials spend maybe 5 seconds telling what the drug is for and then 25 seconds hurriedly reading a long list of horrendous side effects such as liver failure, edema, coma, death, mood swings, elevated blood pressure, weight gain, and suicide. And suicide is what they all have in common! There are various drugs- antidepressants, drugs for arthritis, bipolar disorder, anti-smoking and more. And suicide is a possible side effect of all. One's distinct impression is that the side effects far outweigh the benefits. Are they really hoping to boost their sales??? Or is there some other purpose for these “ads”??? Creepy!!

Is your laptop overloaded?

2009-12-18T05:07:00.000-08:00

According to an article I read recently:

The wealth of media in modern life means the average person is bombarded with enough information every day to overload a laptop computer, a study has found.

Yes, I am feeling that bombardment! Being in my home country for a short visit I am playing catch up with a lot of people. When you don’t see people very often you have a lot to catch up on. And so you are taking in all the latest on what people are up to, their kids, their jobs, spouses, health, hobbies, etc.

Plus there is a lot going on right now politically that even Congress seems unable to keep up with (and it is their full time job!)

Advertising in this country bombards from all directions. Even people like me that try to avoid TV still find our mailboxes loaded with ads. Everything you buy from groceries to electronics comes complete with more coupons and ads trying to get you to buy even more.

As I near the end of my time here I am starting to think about the details of packing and departure. With email and cell phones you are only a text away from issues and events on the other side of the globe. A recent email regarding future visa options has sent me scrambling to collect and “authenticate” some documents.

And I did notice that it is Christmas season which adds a certain amount of time constraint to finish certain things before the holidays.

So I do feel somewhat fragmented and distracted as I think about details of packing and shipping, work plans for the next few months, national and international trends and crises, visa stuff, and whether I should even bother trying to do Christmas cards or just make it New Years’ cards, and Christmas preparations. All of that interspersed with thoughts of the people I wanted to see, books I had wanted to read, events back in the second and third of my worlds, etc.

My “laptop” does sometimes feel like it’s overloaded!

Shooting trouble

2009-12-18T04:58:00.000-08:00

In this the first of my worlds, government and business procedures and processes are usually clearly spelled out. You are given an exact list of requirements, documentation, etc and told that the processing takes 5 working days or 10 working days or 6 weeks or whatever. And mostly it does. But in my other two worlds things are much more fuzzy. I have had to develop a technique of on-the-fly problem-solving and trouble-shooting where I don’t wait around for complete understanding because things are only completely understood in hindsight if even then. Just muddle your way through it and figure it out as you go and have no expectations as to time constraints.

Imagine my surprise when I suddenly am in such a situation here! I am supposed to switch to a different kind of visa. The consulate requires “document authentication” of things like transcripts, diplomas, birth certificates, etc. The first step is to get the documents notarized. Sounds simple. Weeeeeeeeell, not according to the 4 notary publics I talked to yesterday! Somehow the list of requirements given by the consulate does not communicate enough to me or to the 4 notaries I have talked to so far, nor to some colleagues who are also spending their Christmas season gathering documents to authenticate. I spent a couple of hours on the internet trying to get some clues plus a couple of hours on the phone and emailing colleagues to see if anybody else has come up with ideas. So far it seems that I am out in front trouble shooting on my own.

But I am not too stressed out. Annoyed, yes, but not stressed. After all, I am used to this. I just have to resign myself to spending a fair amount of time on the phone and internet and running around and just hope most of it is done before Christmas! Who knows, the answer might be just around the next corner or in the next phone call!

And if it doesn’t get finished by the time I leave? Then I guess I keep working on it from a distance!

Matchless Matches

2009-11-27T05:20:00.000-08:00

One of the things that hasn't ceased to amaze me is the matches you can get here. They are small, even wooden matches and actually have very little material in the match head. But they light first time EVERY time! This box is nearly empty and the strikable sides of the box are still in pristine shape.

In the second of my worlds, there are several brands of matches but the best is Rainbow matches. Even so, they don't all light. Sometimes the head breaks off and goes sizzling off in some crazy direction. (My face or arms have been burned more than once by flying match heads.) And usually the sides of the box wear out from repeated striking long before the matches are all gone.

But then there is Brand X. In the village market, there are always a couple of guys going around selling three boxes of Brand X matches for 15 cents. They are very agressive, they shove the matches in your basket and hold out their hand hoping to intimidate you into paying for the worst matches on earth. These matches are a royal pain to have to use. I have more than once used over half a box to light one candle. They break, the stuff they are coated with is uneven and seems to be very fire resistant. A single match usually needs to be struck multiple times before it finally lights. In the process of striking, matches frequently break, and the rough stuff in the side of the box gets shiny (and useless) from use. Many matches never do light no matter what you do. Some do light but don't stay lit long enough to get a candle burning. I avoid Brand X like the plague. The only thing they are good for is tinder for a fire - if you light the fire with something else.

Torticollis and cell phones

2009-11-20T13:46:00.000-08:00

It appears that in this state there aren’t any laws about cell phones and driving because I certainly have noticed a lot of drivers do use them. One needs to be more on the alert for inattentive drivers than ever before. I have followed cars which were having a hard time staying in their lane and then suddenly were driving fine. The driver must have ended his/her call. Several time I have seen cars in the far left lane suddenly zoom across multiple lanes of traffic to exit on the right by drivers yakking on cell phones. When you see drivers whose mouths are moving they may not be singing or talking to themselves – most likely they are talking on a cell phone - and that’s a sign to watch out! Another sign is torticollis: abnormal postures and movements of the head. If you see a driver with their head bent to their shoulder, look out!

Yesterday while I was walking, a poodle puppy came bounding out to greet me. His owner was a woman with a crooked head who walked a bit like Lurch as she tried to call the puppy back. I thought she had torticollis or maybe left-sided weakness from a stroke or something as she seemed unable to reach for the pup with both hands and her head was oddly bent to the left resting on her shoulder. Every time I started walking again the puppy ran back towards me so I finally stopped to wait for the woman to capture her pet. It took me a few minutes to realize she was talking on a cell phone gripped between her head and shoulder. She didn’t have torticollis after all!

My sister commented in a public restroom about the need for cell phone etiquette and soon we were in a lively conversation with several other ladies on the topic. They complained of interrupted conversations as people grab for their phones, phones ringing in meetings, in church, people shouting into phones in stores, elevators, startling you, intruding in your space and forcing you to hear their one-sided conversations. Or people start talking and you think they are talking to you but aren’t.

At least people around here don’t seem to text as much. People talk as they walk but I haven't yet seen anybody out crossing streets while texting!

Dusty haired people

2009-11-17T07:32:00.000-08:00

(Oct 2009)

Now I am back in the first of my worlds for a visit. It’s often interesting what stands out. This time it was all the dusty-haired people. There are a lot of graying people to be sure. But it’s more than that. Maybe it’s partly because I am used to seeing black heads in Asia and here there are a lot of blonds and light brown haired people. Or maybe it’s because people’s hair is dry from climate, too much washing/drying/perming/dyeing, or from chlorine/fluoride in the water. I am not sure, but the visual impression I get is of a sea of dusty-haired people!

August-September notes

2009-11-08T05:07:00.000-08:00

August 2009

Well it’s another hot one. Maybe there really is an El Ninyo forming. Last week the sky was brilliantly clear but this week it has that hazy, dusty tinge it gets when the fires on the next island are burning (the annual "smokey" season - see entries from Oct-Nov 2006, July 2007). It has been raining a little but just enough to increase the humidity, not great gully-washing, roof-pounding rains that would actually cool things down.

I am teaching English in the heat of the day, from 11:00-2pm this week and next. That means I have to dress professionally (read: hot). I’m commuting from the village which means wearing a jacket too for sun protection. The commuting is actually not too bad. It is the month of fasting so traffic from the rural areas at least is really light at the times I travel, tho if I spend too long doing errands and come back after 4pm it can be rather heavy as people come out to do shopping, etc. The light traffic makes for a more pleasant commute. Traffic picks up significantly at the city limits, but since I only have to go to as far as the school, it’s not so crazy as it gets further into town.

The temporary wooden-coconut log bridge is showing signs of age and breaking at the edges but still seems safe enough for a motorbike. It’s definitely cooler in the village – not that it is cool but it is not as hot as the city. There have continued to be lots of power outages. It’s a lot more bearable out here without power than in a hot, closed up city house without power! This morning I’m actually still feeling slightly chilled with a fan at 6:15 am. According to my alarm clock it is 81 degrees. Hmmmm.

(Temporary coconut log bridge collapsed a few days before I left. Luckily not with me on it!)

Something in my lower back/waist got pulled on the trip, either from sitting so long in weird seats or possibly hoisting luggage. Domestic airlines use new contoured-for-Asian-sized seats where the "pillow" part usually hits me between the shoulder blades. The seats are also closer together so that more passengers can be crammed into the plane. If my knees aren't jammed into the seat ahead, they have to be sideways. Makes for cramped sitting. Anyhow, something got strained. Over the course of the day my back gets more and more cramped and stiff and after standing teaching for 3 hours it is downright uncomfortable. Two days ago I started sleeping on the floor. It does seem to help. Even tho the mattress on the new bed is hard, it has springs or something and maybe that little amount of shaking and movement keeps things off balance in the spine department. I also broke down and took mefanamic acid (Ponstan) last night. This morning it still feels slightly cramped/spasmed in the area but not exactly painful so that’s good. Maybe today will be better.

This country is admittedly not good for my back. Even my motorbike is a tad too short and I can’t quite sit up straight and still reach the handlebars. Mirrors if any are too low, even the new ATMs I have to bend way down to even see the keypad! Tables and seats tend to be short and I have to make a concerted effort to sit up and not hunch over. I think I have developed the habit of hunching down to fit the furniture...

September 2009

I am in the village. Friday I finished the last English class. After class I bought a new printer for one of the teams and brought it home pinched between my knees on the motorbike. Yesterday (Saturday) I set it up and printed one sheet and then it started complaining of a paper jam. (And there is no paper jam.) Nothing I do changes it and so it won't print anything, just keeps wanting somebody to clear the nonexistant paper jam. So I will have to haul the thing back to town and see if they can fix it. Sigh!

While sitting on the floor intently focusing on the printer, a kitten playing on the bed next to me decided the flashing light on my glasses was cool so he swatted at it and got a claw in my eye. Ow! Fortunately I have a tube of not-yet-expired terramycin eye ointment. Half my eye is bloody but it's not very painful and I can still see ok. So picture me tomorrow riding my motorbike squinting thru one eye with a printer in a box balanced on my knees or squeezed between my knees or something. Whoo hoo!

Three worlds

2009-11-08T04:59:00.000-08:00

I spent a month in the second of my worlds. It is no joke that I call each of these three countries “worlds”, for that is what they are. The languages are different, the religions are different, the dress code is different, the food is different, not to mention customs, worldview, transportation, government, house layout, yard maintanence standards, medicines, even writing paper and pens!

I have noticed how the brain helpfully seems to compartmentalize experiences. When I am in the second of my worlds I automatically drive on the left side of the road. Remembering names of streets and shops is always difficult upon arrival for the first few days until the brain gets the proper file to the front. Visual memory is instant but the linguistic stuff seems to take a bit longer to get to the forefront. (That means that I can still get to places even if the names of the roads I need to take aren’t on the tip of my tongue.)

This trip I was to teach a 24-hour English course and fit in visits with three teams around that. The only problem was, that I didn’t know when the course would actually start or how many of the hours could be done in one day. This seems to be the way things operate. You make a plan but no need to figure out the details until the time comes to actually do it.
Anyway, I will post some notes from that visit.

Yard kittens and ants

2009-11-02T03:03:00.000-08:00

Ooops! Here a couple of back entries that didn't get entered for "operational reasons". (Well, that's what the airlines say when planes are late).

August 2009

Roof kittens become yard kittens

The two kittens we had been feeding on the neighbor's roof finally came down. Luckily all this time no one has moved in yet but since that could change at any time, we needed to figure out a way to get the kittens to come down into our yard and eat there (not to mention that it would be a whole lot easier for us to feed them there!) We started putting their food closer and closer to the edge of the roof near our place. Then I started putting it on the wall between the two apartments. They protested at first but hunger overcame fear and soon they were eating on the wall. But the wall is narrow and more than once they knocked the food off the wall trying to both get at it at the same time. And the ants were becoming a problem on the wall. But the problem was, how to get them down?

With some trial and error, we made a cat ladder from tree branches, plastic twine, and left over wood, with the rungs close enough together for kitten legs. In no time at all they had figured out how to use it and now gallop up and down several times a day!

And now they have made themselves at home, playing with a rubber centipede a friend donated!

September 2009

Be careful where you sit

We have had some major ant wars recently. There are several species which like different habitat. There are the medium sized black ants which mainly live outdoors but march around in columns and seem attracted to water. (See picture.) They only bite if you accidentally compress them while they are running over your body somewhere.

There are the tiny almost no-seeum brown ants that LOVE the cat’s food dishes, and any kind of crumbs, sweet or savory. They are wide ranging and love to bite. These monsters can crawl into beds, on chairs, desks, computer keyboards, etc. They seem to live in cracks in the wall.

Then there are the medium sized red ants – miniature fire ants. These live outdoors (so far) and march in columns. They are especially attracted to dead bugs and animals, and cat food. They bite without provocation and cause quite an itchy burning bite and the pain can last for days.

We finally declared war because it was getting so bad. We found some “ant houses” at the hardware store filled with a syrup that attracts the ants. They take it back to their nests and it kills off the whole lot. This seems to have been effective with the small brown ants. I can once again take a nap on the floor without being bitten up.

The red ants were especially annoying as they seeme to be taking over the back yard. We didn’t want to spray because of potential harm to pets and environment. And since the roof kittens are now yard kittens, we didn't want them playing with the leaky "ant houses" we used in doors. I found instructions for natural methods on the internet. So for several days I would pour boiling water on the main nest holes and then douse the area with blenderized pomelo peels and water. Citrus peels are supposed to have some ingredient that insects don’t like. Pomelos have very thick skins and so I was able to quickly make a lot of the mixture. Now a month later, the ants are still there but in greatly reduced numbers and confined to a much smaller area.

More on giants

2009-07-22T19:25:00.000-07:00

Now the son of the man who was said to be killed by a giant is complaining of chest pain. He is worried that the giant may be taking further revenge on him. So he left his carpentry job in the city to go see the quack doctor in the village. This is the same young man who survived 13 stab wounds a couple years ago plus a couple bouts of pneumonia afterwards. I suspect it is more due to the fact that he suddenly took up smoking during his father's illness, but what do I know?

He was somewhat relieved when the quack doctor assured him it wasn't the giant but rather a dead grandmother who is demanding some chickens.

I can't help wondering why grandparents who loved us in life would now turn against us in death and become malevolent.

Still amusing ourselves to death

2009-07-22T19:20:00.001-07:00

I read the book "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman a couple years ago and when I ran across this cartoon, well, it says it all. (Cartoon by Stuart McMillan at www.recombinantrecords.net)

Slain by a Giant????

2009-07-05T01:57:00.000-07:00

Giants are apparently large spirit beings who like to live in certain trees, especially large trees with heavy shade. They are said to be able to cause mischief if you inadvertantly disturb them.

A friend’s brother recently became sick. He was 50 years old. Last week there were rumors that a “friend” of his whose father was a renowned practitioner of black magic had put “poison” in his food. But, this week they said it was a giant.

There was an old mango tree on his property which had been there since he was a boy. It’s a tree that bears the smelly mangoes, they are very sweet but have an unusually pungent odor and not everyone likes them. Some neighbors recently asked if they could cut the tree down and use it to make charcoal, a common way for rural folk to make a bit of cash. Since not many people are interested in buying the fruit, he agreed and it was done. But, soon afterward he became ill. According to the quack doctor, there had been a giant living in that tree and he was angry because it was cut down. The quack doctor recommended that they do a certain ceremony with a white chicken and 8 eggs. They did do the ceremony but it didn't do any good.

From what I could tell, the man had lived a hard life. His wife died soon after their third child was born, nearly 20 years ago. He left the kids with his parents to raise and he went to the city and spent many years as a pedicab driver. His meager earnings were spent mostly on drinking. He often just slept in his pedicab rather than rent a room. He smoked and drank for years and didn’t eat well. After his father died 5 years ago, he moved back home with his mother and worked some on the family farm but continued smoking and drinking heavily with his friends. When I heard that he was complaining of lack of appetite, weight loss, difficulty breathing, swelling, I assumed that he was probably starting to have problems with liver failure.

But, what do I know? Whatever it was, he died this morning. His entire family was present as he had requested. But I do wonder what they will put on the death certificate.....

Rat Update

2009-07-05T01:16:00.000-07:00

June 8, 2009

Since we have been able to close the windows we have not had any more nocturnal damage to our fruit and vegetables. But it sure does make the place hot! The rat has not yet given up trying to get in. For the last three days he has apparently tried to climb up the glass and has left his urine all over the outside. We know he is BIG because the glass panes still have nearly a ½ inch gap between them. I am sure if he could get through, he would have done so. (Though he would still have to deal with our new screen.)

Saturday much of our white cement and saltine cracker mixture that we put at the back of the empty apartment next door had disappered. We refilled it and put out more dishes. Sunday I didn’t go check the dishes next door but the BIG rat had again left evidence of trying to get in through the window. I bought a kilo of bread crumbs from a bakery. It must have cake crumbs in it too because it smells really good! This afternoon we went to refill the bait bowls with the bread/cake/cement mixture we saw a dead rat in the path! Hooray! (But it wasn’t the BIG rat.) From the smell there are more like it down at the basement entry. Hopefully the new bait will smell as good to the rest of the rats as it does to me. I also bought some shrimp flavored Knorr cubes as a further taste treat if needed. We also found a plug-in rat repellant so we can try that too though of course it doesn’t solve the problem, it only (hopefully) sends them elsewhere. I’m not quite ready to leave the window glass open at night, though.

July 4, 2009

The rats seem to have vanished. We have had no more nocturnal visitors, we no longer hear them in the daytime and we haven't seen any at night either. We no longer find their droppings all over the yard, and we have barbecued a couple of times with no visitors! I gues the cement and bread crumbs did the trick. We recently got new neighbors who cleaned up a big pile of old cans and rubbish in their yard so we hope things will stay calm.

Unfortunately, the new mama cat died a couple of weeks ago. We think she died of poisoning because she died rather suddenly and we know other neighbors use rat poison. With three growing kittens she had been very busy hunting. Her three kittens were under the roof next door. We tried to catch them but only got one which died shortly afterwards. (They hide deep under the roof and we can't get at them.) We thought maybe all three had eaten of the same poison rat but suprisingly the other two have survived. They are very shy and startle easily. We have been putting food out 2-3 times a day and when all is quiet we can sometimes see them come out and eat. Fortunately no one has yet moved into the next door apartment on that side so we can go through there every day to put food on the roof. But we haven't figured out how to get them. I hope they will eventually be willing to come into our yard.

More rats!

2009-06-05T01:23:00.001-07:00

The war goes on. The day after the last post a mama cat came by. We quickly fed her and she decided that was cool and has now been regularly hanging around part of the day. This immediately decreased the day time rat sightings at least. But mama cat goes off to her kittens for long periods too and I think the rats have figured out her schedule. Two nights ago I was looking out my 2nd floor window and saw three BIG rats snooping around down below. I fleetingly wondered if they would ever get so hungry as to climb the walls and get in thru the kitchen window but was too sleepy to get worked up about it. But the next morning I saw that they had indeed climbed in through the kitchen window! They’d enlarged a spot where the screen was starting to pull away from the frame. They had eaten half of two mangoes and a sweet potato! Now I began to get worked up!

We put out a mixture of bread and cracker crumbs mixed with cement that night. We taped the screen. We moved some junk away from beneath the window that we thought they had climbed up. We set the TUFFCAT traps on the window sill. We tried to close the jalousie windows but since they hadn’t been closed in about 10 years they were stuck open. We dripped sewing machine oil on the screw thingies and managed to get two sections working the but the third was obstinately stuck open.

Yesterday morning there was no evidence that the rats had gotten in. But this morning they obviously had gotten in, we lost a couple bananas and another sweet potato. Unfortunately the rats do not like my mixture of cement and cracker crumbs. (Only the cockroaches and ants liked it.)

Luckily for us, the owner’s handyman showed up this morning to work on one of the empty apartments. He had enough extra screening to change our holey one. He also was able to get the third window to close. So now we are feeling a bit more hopeful about keeping the rats out tonight! Very good timing too as today was market day and we have a whole new supply of fruit and vegetables!

They say that if you are seeing rats in the daytime that means there are a lot of them. So there must be a lot of them because today I saw one sitting on top of a wall in the heat of the day. (Watching us?!) Unfortunately mama cat was looking hopefully at me and had her back to it. Otherwise she surely could have gotten that one!

The handyman in all seriousness advised us to not talk harshly to the rats lest they become angry and really wreak vengenace. Ha! Do the rats speak English?!

Rats!

2009-05-28T05:55:00.000-07:00

We have been having problems with rats lately. A few weeks ago neighbors on both sides put out poison, which by the smell did kill several but it also killed a couple of the neighborhood cats who apparently caught poisoned rats staggering around before they died. So with the decreased cat population, the rats have been able to mount a major come back since they reproduce much faster than cats do.

We ourselves are down to one cat. He is the cat equivalent of an arm chair sportsman when it comes to catching rats. He loves to sit at the edge of the drain and watch them below, but when faced with two or three on his level he just wants to come inside.

What to do? Well, I don’t want to put out poison because we don’t need to thin the neighborhood cat population any more. In addition to poison, the stores offer traps and rat glue and glue boards. The idea of the rat glue is that you smear it on a board and stick some bait in the middle. When the rat comes it’ll stick to the glue. You can also buy ready made “boards” with the glue already on it. It’s the same idea as fly paper but on a grander scale. The downside is that you then get to kill it. But that’s not the only downside. Rats often get only partially trapped and will drag the glue-coated board with them sometimes great distances, sometimes smearing glue all over everything in between. We once tried it in the village. One dragged the board until he fell in some water and drowned. But the worst was one morning we found only a paw. No idea where it came from but several unpleasant scenarios can be imagined. I decided that even rats don’t deserve that.

There are wire cage type traps but you are then stuck with killing the rat and getting it back out of the cage in whatever order you can make work. What I really wanted was an old fashioned spring loaded rat trap that kills the thing right off. After visiting 4 hardware stores, however, it seems there is a big demand right now and they were all out of stock. Finally we found something called TUFFCAT rat trap.

The TUFFCAT rat trap is a plastic gizmo a bit bigger than a computer mouse but otherwise very similar in shape. It’s easy to set and load the bait. So we tried it.

But,

Below you can see a rat sneering at our TUFFCAT. His buddy is just out of view.

Here he is eating the bait.

The trap did eventually spring but all it accomplished was to startle the rats. They came back later to see if any of the bait got dropped.

So I guess we have to try something else.

Someone once told me that plaster of Paris is a way to kill rats without endangering cats, dogs, and birds. You simply mix it in dry food. Unlike cats, dogs and people, rats can’t vomit and the stuff apparently hardens inside and kills them. Now if I can figure out what plaster of Paris is called around here...

What do you do when your shoes fall apart?

2009-05-28T02:53:00.000-07:00

Pilates.

Today I sat down to put on my sports shoes and noticed that one shoe was “smiling”. Oops! Not a good idea to do stair stepping with a smiling shoe. Guess I need to go out and buy some more glue. But I have an old pair of sport shoes too. When you have big feet and you live in SE Asia even when you get new shoes you are not hasty about throwing out the old ones because you never know. Like tonight.

So I pulled out the old shoes and put them on and went to crank up the VCD and set up the step. Then I noticed some stuff in the floor - like some little kid had dropped chunks of chewed up crackers and bread crumbs. The more I walked around the more I saw. Since there haven’t been any kids here all week I wondered where it came from – and that’s when I noticed that my old shoes were dropping chunks of old foam or something. On closer examination the soles are cracked in several places and the stuffing stuff has basically disintegrated and is coming out. So much for the old shoes, they are now unfixable. So now I’m barefoot, but no problem, I have a Pilates CD. After another 10 minutes cleaning up the crumbs, disposing of the old shoes and resetting up with a different VCD I finally got some exercise in.

And, until I can go out and get some glue I guess I’ll be doing Pilates...

On fragrant canals

2009-05-20T17:50:00.000-07:00

Some things never change. Way back in 1971 John Perkins, the author of The Secret History Of The American Empire, went for his first stroll in the capital city of the second of my worlds. Here is his first impression:

...In an attempt to avoid being run over I nearly stepped into a gutter that was black as tar, littered with garbage, and reeking of urine.

The gutter drained down a steep incline to one of the many canals built by the Dutch during the colonial era. Now stagnant, its surface was covered with a green and putrid-looking scum; the stench that arose from it was nearly intolerable. It seemed preposterous that the inventive people who had turned the sea into farmland had attempted to recreate Amsterdam amid this tropical heat. The canal, like the gutter that fed it, overflowed with debris. I could even distinguish the two by their distinctive stenches. The gutter had an immediacy about its odor, rotting fruit and urine, while the canal carried a darker, longer-term pungency, the mixture of human excrement and decay.

I continued along, dodging the bicycle cabs that hugged the sides of the road. Beyond them, in the mainstream of the thoroughfare, was a frenzy of automobile and motorbike traffic; the sound of honking horns, backfiring engines, and muffler-deprived cars was overwhelming, as was the acrid stench of oil on hot pavement and gas fumes in the humid air. The weight of all this began to impact me physically.

Well said. He could write the exact same thing today in 2009.

Teachers to loose jobs because of swine flu?

2009-05-14T08:14:00.000-07:00

This would be funny if it wasn’t potentially dangerous. At a rural junior high school in the second of my worlds, the teachers sat around gossiping in the teachers’ lounge as usual. But today things got out of hand. Instead of the usual topics of money and their sex lives, they started discussing swine flu. One thing led to another and soon the majority of the teachers there, being followers (sort of) of a certain prophet, declared that the minority of teachers, being followers of religions that permit pork consumption, should all be transferred elsewhere. The connection with swine flu was obscure but perhaps they thought that because of the name “swine flu” that people are catching the flu from pigs and after all, didn’t the government run around spraying pigs a few days ago? So it seemed logical to them somehow that getting rid of teachers whose religions permit them to eat pork would somehow prevent swine flu. They got quite heated up about it and began referring to students and teachers of said religions as “unclean outsiders that stink of balsem”. Unfortunately they didn’t consider that 75% of the student body belong to one of those religions. Word got out and by the end of the day, parents of 75% of the students were up in arms and threatening to transfer their kids elsewhere.

Moral of story: engage brain before opening mouth, ESPECIALLY if you are a teacher.

Spraying pigs to prevent swine flu??

2009-05-07T21:30:00.000-07:00

It is unfortunate when people take action without knowledge.

(http://flutracker.rhizalabs.com/)
It seems that the "swine" part of the name of the current flu pandemic is having repercussions around the world. It was announced that fear of swine flu recently led the Egyptian parliment to demand that all pigs be slaughtered. The reaction in the second of my worlds hasn't been quite that drastic but I got a text message this morning that people supposedly from the health department had been going around the area "spraying pigs against pig flu".

Remembering the "spraying against dengue" that was done a few weeks ago, I wondered what on earth they could be doing. This flu isn't being spread by pigs, pigs are not getting sick, and as far as I know there is no vaccine out yet and even if there was it would likely be injected not sprayed.

The villagers were in a bit of an upheaval because they are concerned that their pigs are being sprayed with some kind of poison or even a virus to make them get sick and die. They are very aware of the paranoia towards pigs by some of the folk of a different religion and they well remember the attacks on pig farms by some fanatics a few years ago.

A quick check on the internet showed a few stories on how the department of health in various parts of the country has begun spraying pigs with disinfectant. More texting back and forth revealed that the pigs had been sprayed as well as the area around them and that it was odorless. And at least one family had just flatly refused to let their pigs be sprayed. I told them about the spraying with disinfectant and suggested that it was probably okay and wouldn't hurt the pigs.

I do wish the folk from the health department would put a bit more effort into explaining things to people.

I am not sure how much good spraying bleach water on all the pigs will do towards stopping this human flu pandemic but perhaps it makes nervous people feel like the government is doing something?

The rabies got a bit more personal all of a sudden

2009-05-02T05:06:00.000-07:00

About a week and a half after the dog was killed, I went outside one evening to break up a fight between two of the puppies who had really latched on to each other and were making quite a racket. I shouted, I smacked their back sides, I even flipped them over a couple of times. No effect. I didn’t want to dump water on them because they were still small and it was night and I didn’t want them to get chilled and end up sick. So, stupidly I whacked them a bit closer to the head with my hand. It broke up the fight but one of them bit my finger. The holes weren’t big because the puppies are still small but their teeth are sharp – it felt like it went all the way to the bone!

It bled a lot, dripping all over the floor on my way to the bathroon to wash it. That is good they say, for cleaning out a wound. I washed it well with soap and plenty of water. Somebody had some betadine so I applied that. Coincidentally, a teenager in the house had been bit by the neighbor’s dog earlier in the day. That dog probably isn’t rabid, he just likes to bite. When the neighbor got home she came over and brought some grated up pulp from a particular tree that they say draws out poisons. So they packed the teenager’s wound and my finger with it. It was cool and soothing but after an hour I took it off and reapplied betadine. My wound wasn’t particularly painful but of course we are all aware that the mother was recently killed for presumed rabies.

From what I have gathered, the incubation for rabies in dogs is usually 3-6 weeks but can be as long as 6 months. The virus works its way up the nerves into the brain and when it gets to the brain it infects the saliva glands and the saliva is what carries the infection to other animals or people. That is also when the symptoms start. So apparently the animal is not contagious until about the time the symptoms start or a couple days earlier. That is why they say to observe the animal 10 days. If it was coming down with the disease, it will be showing definite symptoms in that time. If the dog is not sick within 10 days, then it was not infectious at the time of the bite – even though presumably the animal might still come down with the disease at a later date.

To comfort (?!) me they told me all about a 10-year old boy in the next village who had died of rabies a couple years ago. He got it from a puppy that they didn’t know had rabies. (Puppies die from all sorts of things.) They told me about a 20 year old girl from another village who had also died of rabies of unclear origen. So rabies is definitely endemic in the area. In fact, one of these puppies was killed in the night presumably by a rabid dog. Fortunately for me, that puppy was not the one that bit me.

The government has intermittent campaigns to vaccinate dogs and there are antirabies shots for those bitten, although with the chronic electricity problems in the area one wonders how viable the vaccine is. After arriving back in the third of my worlds a few days ago I heard that rabies is also an ongoing problem here though they seem to have made more progress in getting animals vaccinated routinely. They also vaccinate water buffalo, cattle and horses. I told the vet about my adventure with the puppies and he confirmed what I had found out about incubation, etc. He also suggested that I considered getting vaccinated against rabies since I am often in a high-risk area. He himself gets an annual booster. He also advised me that the next time I want to break up a dog fight to just use water!

Anyway, I am now past the 10-days and the puppies are still healthy.

On rabid dogs

2009-04-29T22:14:00.000-07:00

April 10, 2009

I always hate it when they kill a dog. Today they clubbed a dog whose pups are about 6 weeks old. She looked and acted like she had rabies. She was normally good natured but a couple nights ago I noticed her attacking dogs that usually would attack her. Yesterday I noticed she was running around a lot and snarling at her pups when they wanted to nurse, even nipping them. I tried to feed her last night but she seemed to have trouble eating, she'd eat a little and then have to stop and cough. She was obviously hungry but seemed unable to eat. This morning she was chasing everything - cats, chickens, other dogs and running a lot. She kept coming back though and smelling her pups front and back. By midday her mouth seemed frozen partly open, though she did come and let her pups nurse once.

They clubbed her just now. There is no cure for rabies and if she were to bite anybody it would be a disaster. Even so we don't know how if any of the other dogs she attacked may have become infected. Her puppies may also already be infected. Sigh.

The teenage boys plan to eat the dog.

Rabies in humans is a big problem in the second and third of my worlds and there are usually a few dozen deaths each year from rabies. One 10 year old boy in thos village died a couple years ago from a puppy bite - a puppy they did not know had rabies. The post-bite vaccines are available but apparently are expensive and can only be gotten in a big city where there is electricity. Poor rural folk find the cost of the vaccines and the cost of getting to the city and staying there for the duration prohibitive. And sometimes you don’t know the dog is rabid.

Elections...again

2009-04-29T21:48:00.000-07:00

April 4, 2009

Elections seem to be occuring more and more frequently. When I was here last October/November there was also a campaign going on for regional head. Next week are national elections where the people choose representatives to the provincial and national parliments. The roads are lined with an incredible number and variety of flags and posters. I am told that there are 44 parties each with different candidiates.

I should also explain that in the presence of many languages, and a high rate of minimal literacy, symbols and pictures are very important here. Each party also has a number which is very important as they will be listed on the ballot by that number. In the past, the ballots consisted of the symbols of each party printed on a page and the voter poked a hole in the symbol of the party he chose. This time the system is being changed slightly. Instead of poking a hole, they will now have to use a pencil and mark (check or x) the symbol of the party they are choosing. The ballots are quite large (poster sized) because of the large number of candidates and will require special folding.

At the school where I have been teaching I saw a letter posted on the bulletin board from some interchurch body. It said that they had been asked for guidance on voting so they got together and came up with several guidelines. According to them, you shouldn’t vote for a party which was likely to receive less than 2.5% of the vote as your vote would essentially be wasted since such a party couldn’t win. They also said you should chose a party that wasn’t aligned to a particular religion but should instead vote for a party committed to the rights of all people, and they listed several examples. Then they said you should look for experienced parties which had experience in governing and they narrowed it down to two. Lastly they said you should not belong to the “white party”, the euphemism for those who don’t vote.

When discussing that letter with one guy, he objected strongly to the narrowing the choices down to two and he also felt that telling people it was wrong to not vote was wrong too. He felt that people should have the right to not vote if that was their decision.

Out in the village I heard further discusion of the matter. Many said that 44 parties was way too many, how could you even know what they stood for. Some felt that not voting was the best option in the midst of too many choices. One guy opined that you could easily eliminate a lot of them because they were religious parties and had cresent moons and stars in their symbols. (Indeed, it did look a bit like they were electing the Minister of Religion rather than parliment representatives.) I also noticed several posters which had Arabic writing or ladies in headscarves. So eliminating those would narrow the field down quite a bit. Many of the people running are well known in the area. One popular traditional party has as its candidate a former governor. But that governor was on trial for corruption not too long ago. I assume he was cleared or surely he wouldn’t be running for parliment but some locals seemed to write him and his party off because of that case. They apparently assume he was guilty.

Perception is everything.

April 30, 2009

Election day cane and went. Several people at the last minute decided not to vote. Others who did go expressed concern that they had done it incorrectly. As the counts come in, people in general seemed glum. The largest recipient of votes (the party of the current president) garnered only 20% of the votes which means 80% of voters are disappointed. Some expressed amazement that that party had gotten that many votes and immediately speculated that the counting had been rigged. Stories were out about various losing candidates becoming clinically depressed or even suicidal. Only the top 10 of the 48 parties are listed as potentially winning parlimentary seats.

Oh, well, there's another election coming up later this year. That one will be for president. Interestingly, no one seems quite sure when it will be...

Traffic, uh, Flow

2009-04-29T20:21:00.000-07:00

(Some of these posts are delayed because of power and internet issues.) 4 April 2009

While teaching these past three weeks, I have had the interesting experience of driving a motorbike and experiencing up close – very close - the traffic patterns here. Every town has its unique characteristics even within the same country. Traffic in this country tends to resemble a stream gurgling over and around rocks on its relentless path down the mountain. But it seems in recent years some serious eddies, whirlpools, and riptide rapids have developed in this town.

People drive on the left side of the road so for those of you from right-handed places, just think the opposite to get the same effect. In other words turning right here is like turning left for you. The majority of vehicles on the road are motorbikes but there are also plenty of cars, and some trucks and horse carts and man-pushed carts.

The single most important unwritten rule seems to be do not ever stop if it can at all be avoided, and its corollary, avoid slowing down. Thus we have people wanting to turn right (left) who won’t stop and wait for a gap in traffic, they just turn right (left) and drive along the edge of the road on the wrong side of the road waiting for an opportunity to finally zoom over on the proper side of the road. I have seen people 2-3 blocks later still driving down the wrong side of the road who haven’t yet been able to get over. (Had they stopped and waited there was a big gap in the traffic coming up but since they couldn’t wait, they end up following the crowd and can’t get over.)

This of course produces hazards for others. As you drive innocently down the road on the proper side you may have to squeeze uncomfortably close between those right-turners driving down the wrong side of the road and people in the oncoming traffic who are in a big hurry and swing way out into your lane to pass someone.

Passing is wild too. People pass on the right and on the left. A wise driver never swerves because you never know what might be coming up behind you in a big hurry. While vehicles here do come equipped with turn signals, it appears to be optional as to whether you use them. And even if they are on there's no guarantee that the correct signal is on. You must learn to read minds as to whether the vehicle ahead of you or in the oncoming traffic is planning to turn and you must keep your foot near the brake at all times as precious seconds count when you guess wrong.

There are several traffic lights in town now too. The lights rarely all function and with the constant blackouts, they often don’t function at all. From observation, it appears that a yellow light is mere decoration. A red light means keep going as long as somebody ahead of you is still going. You don’t want to be the first vehicle stopped at a light. People turning right (left) tend to start turning from half a block back cutting across the oncoming traffic’s lane and pose serious hazards to the first vehicle stopped at the red light since they nearly get clipped by the folk turning.
In addition, people waiting at a red light to turn right (left) typically start a new right (left) turn lane on the oncoming traffic’s side of the line. Usually this is just motorbikes but sometimes even cars will do it. As you can imagine, this can cause serious traffic blockages as the oncoming traffic has to squeeze through what’s left of their lane. Last Friday I had to sit through three cycles of red lights because of this type of gridlock. And this is NOT a big city.

This behavior is not just young high school kids. I have seen government workers in uniform do the same. I have even seen policemen do it. And it is not my imagination, I have talked to several others (natives) who see the same things I do and complain about it.

Several years ago before the internet was very common in SE Asia I used to have to babysit a computer that would receive an international phone call every night some time after 10pm with the bundled email for our office. We had the only phone with a modern line capable of receiving digital signals with minimal garbling. I had to make sure the computer was on and booted up and then would wait for the call and make sure the info was completely downloaded before turning it off. While waiting I would play games that were installed on it. I remember noticing at the time that playing the games had noticeably improved my manual dexterity which had sort of gotten rusty after several years of village living. I think it was also helpful in improving hand eye coordination and helping me in my driving now especially as I try to anticipate moving targets, etc. My impression: a certain amount of video gaming may be beneficial for driving!

Addenda 4-30-09 It occurred to me the other day that the basic thing going on is that people drive like they walk. People on foot do not stop, nor do they bother with lanes or staright lines, they just walk around obstructions and cut across to where ever they are going, whenever there’s an opening at whatever angle it takes, but they never stop walking.

Avoiding dengue fever--

2009-04-02T05:59:00.000-07:00

It is 8:15pm and the temperature in my room has finally dropped to 90 degrees. Earth Day or Hour or whatever it was has passed and we DID have power so I spent it sitting in front of the fan! (I'm off to the village tomorrow seeking some slightly cooler place.)

I am teaching a class on cross cultural communication and one thing we talked about is how people can see the same event and have very different perceptions of it. Or people have the same experience and interpret it very differently. Today when I arrived to teach I was almost overcome by the strong chemical/pesticide smell. The place I teach is a large school complex with several hundred students from kindergarten through high school and college. Apparently government workers had been by earlier in the day and sprayed for mosquitos for the prevention of dengue fever. They sprayed while all the kids were present. Some of the children had vomited.

Not only was I practically gagging at the odor myself, I was horrified that they had sprayed with the kids all there running around. All sorts of questions flood my mind - do they not know that the spray is poisonous? Why don't they spray in the afternoon or on a weekend? I wondered if the sprayers even take any protective measures themselves? Etc.

But I was apparently the only one who was upset. Everyone else just laughed or said that that was just the way they do it here.

I suppose so. Just like the article I read recently which said gold miners on a neighboring island sometimes rub mercury all over their skin to make them strong....

Earth Day

2009-03-26T19:39:00.000-07:00

There's a lot of hype out there about Earth Day and save mother earth, yadda, yadda, yadda, by turning off the lights for an hour. Yeah, yeah, go have your candlelit dinner if you like but as for me, if the power is on, I do NOT plan to turn the lights off!

It’s 8:35am and 85 degrees. The power is still on but the internet has died. It is best in the morning or late at night, perhaps due to high demand or some system of business prioritization. Or maybe the power is off at the phone company.

I have now taught three days of Cross-Cultural Communication, of which I know nothing. I really need to learn to just say “no” to some of these requests! I have materials but no real idea how to use them or where I’m going with the class. It’s all complicated by my own fighting against the environment. The heat and humidity have been rugged. It is hot in the day and muggy at night with several-hour long downpours at night. The electricity is often off more than it is on, especially in the daytime. So, no fan to counteract the heat. It’s a wonder my skin hasn’t rotted off yet since it is rarely dry. My face and neck in particular just run with sweat until the front of my blouse is as wet as a slobbering baby’s.

I teach at high noon so am hot and bothered when I arrive. I try to get there early so I can sit and cool off but of course it takes quite awhile to cool off when it’s over 90. Being endocrinally challenged doesn’t help. And I have to dress professionally AND wear a jacket while on the motorbike. Overheating is unavoidable and to a large extent untreatable.

At the house where I am staying, when the power comes on you jump up and plug the water pump in. Then you run around filling things, washing clothes and dishes, maybe cooking while you’re at it to take advantage of there being water. Sweating profusely all the while. You also need to remember to charge all the accoutrements of modern living such as cellphones and computers. If you remember, you can reset the wireless internet and check your email. The pump no longer has automatic turn-off so you have to keep an eye on it and go unplug it when you aren’t actually filling anything. There’s an automatic washing machine here which is incredibly slow filling. To save the pump, I’ve been filling buckets and helping the machine fill. Then you go unplug the pump while the machine washes. When it’s ready to rinse you go plug the pump in again, fill buckets, etc. For this week I am the only one here so I do it all.

When the power goes off I can work on my computer until both batteries are drained – usually 2-3 hours. Then I just lay on the tile floor and try to stay still and cool off a bit. I have an MP3 player and have been listening to various pre-recorded radio broadcasts and talks and lectures so it’s not been a total waste of time. At least you don’t need a light to do that.

And yet, I also have to count my blessings. I am staying at a clean house that actually can get some cross breeze in the afternoon. It is safe, the roof doesn’t leak. I am only teaching once a day. I do not have to dress up and go out to any social events in the dark in the evenings. There IS a water pump and a washing machine, I do not have to hand pump and hand wash like I would in the village. There are screens on the windows so it is fairly mosquito- and fly-free. I have money to buy food. I only have to cook and wash for one, not for a whole family.

So go ahead and turn off your lights if you wish, but as for me, I'm all FOR leaving the lights on!

Competition of the mosques

2009-03-19T17:37:00.000-07:00

It is 5:01am. There is a bass voice rumbling on with a lot of vibrato coming from the neighborhood mosque. The call to prayer, judging by the dull moan in the background from all over the rest of the city, was around 4:41am. But the mosque next door seems to be on a different time table than everyone else. It started sounding at least an hour before that, I didn’t check the clock but probably before 4am. Then its call to prayer was at least 10 minutes before the rest of the mosques. It is now continuing on with more chanting. The last several evenings too they have had an hour of chanting before the 6pm call to prayer in which a man calls out something and a couple of women’s voices then repeat it. It is very repetitious in intonation and cadence, almost trance-producing.

Mosque noises have always intrigued me because, except for Friday noon sermons, they are rarely intelligible and so I wonder who it is for. Presumably they are speaking Arabic but of course since hardly anybody knows any Arabic, they could be just making it up. Apparently it is sacreligious to use an intelligible language. I remember reading about a guy in another part of the country who was teaching people to pray in the national language and was thrown in jail for defaming the religion. Perhaps it is thought that they are speaking to God. If so, it is wondrously easy to talk to God in this day and age of electronic recordings. Indeed, if God likes hearing it, one wonders why they don’t just play it all day and all night? (Maybe the neighborhood mosque is on a campaign to do just that!)

I always look at it as basically a city-wide alarm clock to waken the faithful and unfaithful alike with the hope that they’ll crawl out of the sack and do their ritual. Most people can roll over and go back to sleep after the call to prayer, which in itself is beautiful in a mournful sort of way. But this hour of pre-call to prayer and the 30 minute post-call to prayer vibrato stuff was too much for me today. That is why I am up on the internet writing this.

A few years ago a professor, who is also of said faith, was commenting on a recent spate of increased noise and said that some mosque operators seem to think God is deaf. So I gather that there is currently another competition going on between the various “denominations”. My hypothesis is that our neighborhood mosque belongs to one of the newer varieties and not to the traditional variety most common in this area and perhaps seeks to win over more adherents by showing that it is more holy via its noise campaign. Certain people might indeed find that attractive because after all, maybe holiness can rub off on you, and a person can’t have too much holiness when facing Judgement Day.

Update

2009-03-19T17:34:00.000-07:00

The Mayor vs The Church seems to be on hold for the moment as outrage over the murder of the young teacher has taken front and center in the news. Meanwhile I am back in the second of my worlds for a few weeks....

2009-03-09T23:53:00.000-07:00

Apparently the spat between The Mayor and The Church has been put on temporary hold due to recent events. Another summary execution, but not by the masked bike riders.

A few days ago a 20-year old woman was kidnapped on her way home from her college in this city. She is the daughter of the head of one of the main rebel groups. Her body was found a couple days later in a canal on the outskirts of the city. She had died of multiple stab wounds and showed evidence of torture. It is not yet known who was responsible but speculation is rampant. Members of the rebel group assume it was the military. The Mayor has begun his own investigation and announced the other day that he is 70% sure it was not anyone from a government agency. The modus operandus led a leader of a consortium of activist groups to speculate that the perpetrator was a certain retired general. According to her, those killers are new in this area and are not part of the usual assortment of thugs which are under observation by security forces. Whoever did it was smart enough to make a fake license plate to display on the vehicle used.

The papers, The Mayor, the local military chief all pointed out that killing family members of rebel leaders makes their own families vulnerable to similar attacks and condemned it most strongly.

Some of the ordinary folk conceed that they could see somebody wanting revenge on her father since he has been responsible for the death and maiming of many. But everyone seems appalled that such a thing should happen to a young woman who by all accounts was not involved in her father's rebellion.

The Mayor vs The Church, Part 1

2009-03-08T08:31:00.000-07:00

What happens when an irresistable force meets an immoveable object? Maybe we will find out as The Mayor and The Church square off.

Recently some of the local officals of The Church have been overtly accusing The Mayor of the vigilante-type killings of drug pushers in town, They are saying that if he is not personally behind it then he is protecting those who are. (And maybe since he’s the mayor, that makes him ultimately responsible for what goes on in the city.) They are outraged at the continued extrajudicial killings, and have demanded that he speak with them in private. The Mayor has steadfastly denied that he has anything to do with it and says that he is happy to have a meeting but it must be in public.

Last week The Church racheted things up by printing a 2 page prayer that all the faithful in the city are required to pray at the end of the church service in which the faithful were pointedly required to, among other things, ask forgiveness for the sin of “hating” drug pushers, and to pray for the souls of the innocent killed by extrajudicial vigilantes on mere suspicion. The prayer also pointedly mentions "the lustful greed in the hooded killers on motorbikes" etc. Of course The Mayor was outraged and said that while it’s fine to pray for the dead, the prayer is incomplete and should also include prayer for the victims and families of the death and destruction caused by drug pushers. He also intimated that he knew some dirt on certain local Church officials and that they should clean up their own act before presuming to interfere with others.

Stay tuned for further developments....

The Mayor’s latest problem

2009-03-08T08:23:00.000-07:00

As I’ve noted before we have a sovereign king here who is called The Mayor. He is well liked by the vast majority of the voters who have reelected him 5 times by overwhelming majorities. He is credited with cleaning up this city of criminal elements. Other projects have been garbage collection, anti-smoking laws, anti drug campaigns, and work on traffic flow. He has a reputation of being very tough but fair and has also worked for peace in this troubled area, and has won the trust of many on all sides of the various conflicts.

For a number of years there have been mysterious killings of suspected (and often convicted) drug dealers in this town. The modus operandi is always the same: two masked men in black pull up on a motorcycle and one shoots the victim, usually in the head and off they go. It can happen at night or in broad daylight, but always out in the open. Since I came, I have heard many rumors that someone big was behind it. Some say the mayor, some say the police because it is efficiently done and no one is ever caught.

Locals tell me that the vigilantes rarely (some say never) make mistakes. People say that folk caught selling drugs are given two warnings. The third time is it. We have heard stories of people being let out of jail on a second or third drug charge and getting shot before the day was out. A neighbor of ours had a troubled son who was arrested twice for drug possession. Then one night a warning note appeared on their door. He was smart. He left town before dawn. I hear he has since cleaned up his act.

I barely missed witnessing a killing one day. Shortly after I passed by at 2pm, a man walking down the same road was shot and killed by the vigilantes. Another friend tells of walking home late one night from the factory where she works. Two masked men pulled up in front of her in a motorcycle, one shone a light in her face and said “It’s not her.” They then took off. But my friend was so badly shaken that she could hardly stand. Apparently there was a woman of similar build and similar long hair who had also worked intermittantly at that factory who was rumored to use and/or sell drugs. Needless to say that woman left town too when she heard about the incident.

Another friend was telling me that it has spread outside the city now. A young man in her village was recently shot dead by the same method. He had been a troubled youth and known to use drugs and alcohol a lot. Two men rolled up on a motorcycle and shot him one evening as he was sitting in front of a local shop. My friend said that according to neighbors, it was likely he had been selling drugs and that is why he was targeted.

It IS very unnerving to think about people getting shot like that. People say that drug peddlars often get out of jail easily because they have lots of money and it is apparently easy to bribe your way out. So they say that the judicial system doesn’t work and that’s why the vigilantes have stepped in. But of course what happens if there is a mistake? What if someone is falsely accused of drug pushing, perhaps by an envious neighbor, and they end up getting killed? I mean, you can recover from a beating and live to mend your ways, but getting killed is pretty permanent. The other troubling thing is that, like everywhere else, the big fish are never caught. It’s always the small dealer.

(There are other types of killings that go on around here too, particularly gang killings and what are called “summary executions”. Different modi operandi. If killing could be ranked, no doubt they would be worse. But that is another story.)

Rumblings

2009-03-03T04:43:00.000-08:00

A friend from the second of my worlds texted yesterday morning and said they had just had a strong earthquake. She had been out in the rice field spraying when it hit. She said there was a loud rumble with it and it was so strong it knocked her to her knees. She said the local elementary school kids were outside at the time having a flag ceremony and when the quake hit they just scattered, running home crying. Schools were cancelled the rest of the day. She didn't have any news at that point as to any structural damage or whether the hot springs in the next village burst open again.

Amazing what you can do with modern technology - I looked it up right away on the internet at IRIS Seismic and there it was already posted, a 5.7 with a center 20km south of town - just about exactly where my friend lives! So I texted her the info. Two friends in the nearby town said they were okay, that schools had been cancelled but people weren't panicking and running for the hills in fear of a tsunami or anything. No further news so apparently all is well.

Late night radio

2009-02-22T00:38:00.000-08:00

Last night I ended up researching late night radio stations. The occasion was that our new neighbors were playing mosque “music” loudly again. Perhaps they find it helps them sleep but for me for 20 years it has always been “wake up” music. Wake up and pray at 4:45am or wake up and pray at 3pm. Or when the month of fasting ends and people party all night long then they play that music. So for me it is indelibly “wake up” music.

I was trying to find a way to kind of drown out or cover up the “wake up” music and checked out local radio stations. I was checking out FM stations looking for something mellow and sleep inducing, like instrumental muzak or something. But slowly one by one the most mellow stations went off the air. By midnight I was down to about three choices, none of which was ideal, though any were better than nothing.

Usually it's very quiet around here until the birds wake you up in the morning so I am not used to a radio playing in my ear and most of it was in English so I kept ending up listening to the dumb words. I thought about going downstairs and sleeping on the floor in hopes that it might be quieter but knew I’d be bitten by ants all night. Finally, with some gel ear plugs in and the radio going at the head of the bed by the window, and my head at the foot of the bed (which I had to share with the cat), I FINALLY drifted off to sleep...

Believe it or not, when I woke up this morning and took out the ear plugs, the “wake up" music was still going, though not as loud as it had been. I was happy to learn this morning that these neighbors are only there temporarily, waiting for their house to be finished and should be moving out in April.

As for the results of my research into late night radio stations, all I can say is that there apparently isn't much demand....

Corruption, Collusion, Nepotism

2009-02-03T01:41:00.000-08:00

Since the relatively benevolent dictator fell in 1998, the people in the second of my worlds have coined another new acronysm – CCN – which stands for Corruption, Collusion, and Nepotism. It has almost become a national mantra whenever the topic of reforming government comes up. Politicians, government workers, people on the street and farmers on the back side of nowhere all mouth this new acronysm. It has even entered many of the hundreds of local languages around the archipelago.

In this part of the world, nations vie with each other to see who can be in the top 3 most corrupt nations. The second of my worlds (and inded the third of my worlds also) is usually in the top three. The problem isn’t so much the governments but rather that corruption, collusion, and nepotism are part of the very fiber of society. Everybody does it from the least to the greatest. It is done without thinking, a reflex action. You expect to help your relatives get jobs. And your employer doesn’t mind hiring your relatives. You expect perks from your job, after all it doesn’t pay much anyway, how else can you live? You expect to gouge other people, after all you have been gouged in everything you have ever tried to do too. When you buy something for a group you belong to, you naturally ask the shop owner for a receipt for more than what you actually paid. It is expected, accepted, and budgeted. It is part of life. So even though people are currently fond of accusing others of CCN, most are totally oblivious to the fact that they too are guilty.

Case in point, some friends were recently visited by a bureaucrat from the department of education who sponsors their visa. The bureacrat flew in from the capital city to visit them. They put her up for three days, wined and dined her, and took her sight seeing. She talked a lot about how they are cleaning up corruption and that part of her visit was to check on them and make sure they really did what they said they did. But before she left, she went to one of the nicer hotels in town and got them to write her a receipt for three days' worth of room and food in that hotel so that she could get reimbursed - even though her entire stay was paid for by my friends.

But there are signs that there has indeed been progress. Recently the Ministry of Finance has been in the headlines. A new finance minister has been cracking down on CCN in her department.

[B]y raising pay for bureaucrats, and not demonizing those who previously took payoffs to make ends meet, she has raised standards and steeled a reputation as an incorruptible reformer. Her message to her staff is simple and positive: "I only have one goal: I want the people [of this country] to trust us, this department, because this country will go nowhere if the people don't start to trust their own government.

Another encouraging sign was when the State Minister for Administrative Reforms admitted in December that half of the country’s four million civil servants were unqualified. Indeed. The bloated, lackadaisical civil service segment is notorious for inefficiency, corruption and cronysm. Astoundingly, the minister further stated that “We’re not a charitable institution. We can no longer afford to pay people who don’t work properly.” He said that they are planning to eventually reassign the 2 million unqualified workers to other jobs in an effort to stop, as he put it, “bureaucratic inefficiencies that leaked money.” A pilot project involving the Finance Ministry found that more than half of the workers in the Finance Ministry were unqualified. Even more astonishing, the unqualified will not be fired, but rather retrained as agricultural consultants and will then be posted in villages throughout the country.

This leaves me breathless with amazement as I try to imagine tens of thousands of low level financial bureaucrats born and raised in the capital city being retrained as agricultural consultants and uprooted along with their families and sent to rural areas in the far flung reaches of the archipelago! Could it really happen???!

Nevertheless, the fact that the issue is being addressed is immensely encouraging.

Yet another encouraging sign was regarding a recent conflict between a mining company and local residents. Usually these sorts of complaints go on and on with blame being thrown around until the little people give up and move on with their lives. Astonishingly, the governor stood up and said the fault belonged to his department who hadn’t investigated the issue properly when the mining concession was made. Not only that but he will take responsibility! Wow!

Dr. Quack-Quack

2009-01-10T00:43:00.000-08:00

Maybe when I retire I should open myself up a little clinic. I can be Dra. Quack-Quack, which in the local language would mean ‘sort of like a quack but not exactly”. It shouldn’t cost much to set up. After all, quack doctors do not need any training. They have no boards, no licensing, and no annoying bureaucratic oversight. Why, I could set up my living room to be the waiting room. I could hire a friend to make snacks for people to buy while they are waiting. Another friend who is a master of detailing every bodily symptom and the minutest sensation – including ones you never thought even HAD any sensation - could sit there and write down a list of peoples’ complaints. Another friend does massage so she could work there too. And, we have a floor tile in our living room that sort of looks like some saint's face. I could hire another friend to sell candles so visitors could burn candles to it while they are waiting.

Yesterday a friend got a frantic text from her mother in the village saying that she needed $40 immediately because the quack doctor had told her she had a huge kidney stone and needed treatment urgently. At first I was breathless – who ever heard of a quack doctor charging that much for anything? In a country where the daily wage in rural areas can be as low as $2/day, that is phenomenally steep for a quack doctor. Usually they are paid only a small donation. As I finally began breathing again and oxygen returned to my brain, I began asking how she knew she had a kidney problem? After all, my friend had just been out there last week for New Years and she was fine then.

Turns out she had numbness down her backside and the back of her thigh. Now, it may have been a long time since I was in nursing school but the human body hasn’t changed and I’m sure that is NOT the symptom of kidney stones. In fact, sounds suspiciously like sciatica –pinched nerve in the back. I told the daughter to bring her mother to town. There is a real doctor, a neurologist even, who does charity work every morning and charges only $1. The mother argued a bit because she was apparently quite convinced by the quack doctor that she needed treatment. She said the quack doctor was going to operate on her and it was urgent! Operate???? Yikes!!!

Really, I could do better than that. For only 5-10 cents (I’d have to pay my workers) I could look at all their complaints, listed by my able friend, and any I couldn't help I could at least send them on their way in the right direction for help, whether to the massage lady, the pharmacy, the charity doctor, the appropriate specialist or the government hospital.

My friend put her mom’s name on the list to be seen by the charity doctor this morning and then met her at the bus terminal. As I suspected, he told her it is not kidney disease as she has no trouble urinating, no blood, no pain. It is a pinched nerve. All my friend had to pay was $4 for her mom’s bus fare, $1 for the doctor and $5 for medicine. Saved her a whopping $30 and everybody’s stress has decreased enormously!

Happy New Year!

2009-01-01T21:11:00.000-08:00

We had an astonishingly QUIET New Year’s day in sharp contrast to Christmas. Though we are surrounded by electronic noise generators they were all on vacation for New Year’s! The schools are closed, as is the appliance chain office. Many of my neighbors in the apartment complex are also gone for the holidays so we were actually in a quiet cul-de-sac in the midst of all the other racket going on at midnight. Firecrackers have been banned since 2001 and though people try to make noise in other ways, it is just not the same intensity. There was one lone kid with a paper horn out back and in the distance we could hear a low roar of noise: cars honking, people banging on things, loud music and TVs.

New Year’s day is very quiet. People believe that whatever you do on this day you will do all year so they generally prefer to stay home and eat and sleep, maybe visit with relatives. It is also the local custom to assemble 12 different kinds of round fruits and then proceed to eat one fruit a day on each of the first 12 days of the new year. So fruits such as papayas, pineapples, bananas and mangoes aren’t in big demand. Jicamas (called sinkamas locally) , though a root crop, are considered to be round fruits. All sorts of exotic fruits not normally seen in the market suddenly appeared last week. Watermelons cost 5 times what they normally do. They were even selling unripe rambutans! Apples, oranges, durian, pomelos, grapes, guavas were in big demand. Even imported kiwi fruit! (You can also use lemons but the downside is you have to eat it!) Judging by the lines, other hot selling items at the super market on New Year’s Eve were sliced bread, hams, mayonnaise, macaroni, sweetened condensed milk, and the makings for spaghetti. So I presume everybody today is eating spaghetti, macaroni fruit salad, and ham sandwiches in addition to one round fruit.

As for me I'm enjoying a fruit shake made of all the unwanted fruits - papaya, mango, banana, and pineapple!

Merry Christmas!

2009-01-01T20:35:00.000-08:00

Christmas Eve we spent at a friend’s house with several others of various nationalities. We got to discussing English as she’s spoken in various places. One lady is from England so I suppose she can be considered the speaker of real and original English! She is teaching kindergarten at an international school with mostly American kids. She commented on some of her frustration when she first came because the children didn’t seem to understand some simple commands! She would tell them to put things in the rubbish and they would stare blankly. She told them to use their rubbers to rub out mistakes and again got blank stares. She didn’t know that here rubbish is referred to as "trash" or "garbage". She didn’t know that here rubbers are called “erasers” and to rub something out is to kill it!

So we got to talking about local English usage. My all time favorite was taking a voltage regulator back to the shop and telling them it didn’t work. All I got was a blank stare. So I described in excruciating detail how every time I plugged it in and plugged something into it, it blew the fuse. Finally the light dawned and the guy said, “Oh, you mean it doesn’t function?” Ah, yes. Only people "work". Things "function".

A friend once noted that her new house helper always swept the floor but never mopped it. So she was trying to explain that the floor should also be washed with water not only swept. To her dismay the girl began throwing buckets of water on the floor. What my friend didn't know is that "wash" means to clean using lots of water, like washing clothes or dishes. What she should have said is "mop" or "clean the floor with water"!

A fun site to vist is www.engrish.com . Also check out http://signslabels.blogspot.com/

And, I hope you had a merry Christmas!

Christmas noise

2008-12-13T06:22:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-21T19:04:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-21T18:41:00.001-08:00

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

2008-11-21T17:34:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-14T16:42:00.000-08:00

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

2008-10-16T20:44:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-21T18:49:00.001-07:00

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

2008-08-28T02:01:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-08-24T08:32:00.000-07:00

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????

2008-08-09T07:40:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-01T23:21:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-20T16:51:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-18T18:31:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-16T06:43:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-09T18:26:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-04T20:19:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-27T02:28:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-20T00:56:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-18T07:17:00.001-07:00

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

2008-06-18T06:51:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-05T17:47:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-04T19:43:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-04T01:12:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-31T08:33:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-05-17T06:23:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-05-05T18:42:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-05T06:47:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-04T05:29:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-05-04T03:25:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-29T07:09:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-21T23:06:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-16T05:19:00.000-07:00

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.

Feet

2008-03-14T01:38:00.000-07:00

One of the interesting things I have noticed between the first of my worlds and the other two is the attitude toward feet.

Everybody’s got feet and when feet are missing, diseased, or painful it makes life very difficult. In southeast Asia feet are considered to be cleaner than shoes. It is very common to take shoes off when entering a home and it is perfectly acceptable to walk around someone’s home in bare feet. But I noticed while back in the first of my worlds, that walking around someone’s house barefoot is considered rather disgusting behavior. Being stocking–footed is fine but being barefoot appears to be rather revolting to the natives. You can see it in their faces even if they are too polite to say anything. It seems that they see feet themselves as the source of disgusting smells and fungus. Perhaps this is because people must wear shoes most of the year because of the cold climate and so feet don't get much air, and thus actually ARE more disgusting.

In the southeast Asia, however, shoes are considered much more filthy than bare feet. In some areas you will offend people if you wear your shoes in their house. Far better to walk in barefoot even if you are dropping fungus spores all over the place. Because of the warm climate people do wear slippers more and feet get more air. But on formal occasions it is important to have nice-looking feet, otherwise you should hide them in closed-toe shoes. Women especially like to use nail polish on their toes. There are thousands of manicurists/pedicurists who work in beauty shops, or have their own business and go around making home visits.

Babies, on the other hand, should always have their feet covered in public. Despite the torrid climate, it is considered tantamount to child abuse to take your baby out in public with bare feet. The guy in this picture would have total strangers come up to him in righteous indignation and rebuke him for taking the baby out without foot coverings. (A babythat young also shouldn’t be held upright – but that’s another tale for another day.)

Showing the soles of your feet is also in poor taste in many areas. Of course most of the time people are standing on them so this is not a problem. But what I have found personally challenging is when you ae invited to sit on the floor in someone’s house. Many rural houses are simple and may not have conventional chairs, and if they do, the chairs are outside on the ground level. Sitting on a slatted bamboo floor and trying to keep your legs folded up so that nobody has to look at the soles of your feet can be challenging. I never have been much good at cross-legged yoga positions. Fortunately in the No area, women aren’t supposed to sit cross-legged. They sit with their knees bent and their legs folded off to one side.

While it is true that people spend a lot of leisure time wearing flip flops (rubber slippers) they often must wear shoes at work or school. Since many families don’t want to spend a lot of money on quality shoes especially for kids who outgrow them rapidly, many shoes are made of cheap materials and are not conducive to good ventilation. (Indeed, sometimes there are no quality shoes to be had even if you DID want to spend the money.) Thus fungus does grow well. Fortunately buildings and public vehicles usually have good ventilation since windows are open and so smell is not a problem. But once in a while you get in a situation where the ventilation isn’t too good. Like on an airplane being loaded with passengers who of course are dressed up and wearing their closed shoes. And the pilot, presumably wishing to save fuel so he can get a bonus, does not turn on the air conditioning until you have reached cruising altitude. As the heat in the cabin rises dramatically, the fungus infections of all these feet start to smell quite ripe. In fact I have heard that in China, one of the most common complaints of travellors is other people taking their shoes off in the trains.

For those who have King Tut type feet (at left) it can be quite challenging to get around socially. Perhaps this other footwear I saw on the internet would be a possible solution:

Asian vs Western Culture

2008-02-29T18:49:00.001-08:00

They say that pictures are worth 1000 words. But these, sent by a friend, are worth 10,000!

Understanding of Asian vs. Western Cultures - Although based on research of Chinese Asians, it also applies somewhat to other East Asians (Japanese, Koreans, Mongolians), Southeast Asians (Indonesians, Malays, Filipinos, Thais, Burmese, Vietnamese), and South Asians (Pakistanis, Indians, Bangladeshis, Nepalese, Sri Lankans). These icons were designed by Liu Young who was born in China and educated in Germany.

Blue side is Western, the red side is Asian.

Expressing an opinion:

Way of Life:

Punctuality:

Contacts:

Expressing anger:

Waiting in line:

Perception of self:

Sundays on the road:

Partying:

Noise levels in restaurants:

Treating a stomach ache:

Travel records:

Handling problems:

Enjoying three meals a day:

Transportation changes: 1970-2008:

Elderly daily life:

Mood changes with weather:

Relation of boss to staff:

What’s trendy in restaurant:

Approach to new things:

Neo-colonization???

2008-02-29T18:35:00.000-08:00

Yesterday while in a taxi, the driver asked if it was okay with us if he listened to the radio. We said "sure" wondering why he'd asked our permission. Usually it's not an option, what they play on the radio is what you have to listen to! He went on to explain that he wanted to listen to a prayer rally that was at that very moment occurring in the capital city. He further explained that he and his countrymen were disturbed at the "unrightousness" of their government and wanted the current president to resign. He said that the poor of the country were tired of the rulers' corruption and felt that the best thing would be for their country to just become part of the United States or Britain. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what to say so I didn't say anything. In fact I thought for sure I had misheard. (But later the lady with me said that she had heard the same thing.) Meanwhile he turned back to the radio program and we heard a speaker ask for the president's resignation to which a crowd cheered. The driver said with satisfaction that that speaker was a former president.

What gives?

Civilization comes at last to the ends of the earth

2008-02-25T18:09:00.000-08:00

The world is flatter than you think. A friend sent this picture....

Tough Mayor

2008-02-19T05:53:00.000-08:00

The following is a slightly modified quote from today’s local paper. One never knows what the mayor will say next.

IN HIS usual tough mode, City Mayor RD advised gun owners who witness an ongoing crime to just shoot the criminal and save his life as well as those of the innocents.

In his television program ... Sunday, the mayor said many gun owners ask for his advice as to what they would do when they witness a crime

“Some are afraid to use their gun for fear that worse things will happen to them," RD narrated.

The mayor said the best move would be to just shoot, but only to protect a life. He said killing somebody to protect a property is not justifiable.

"If the criminal approaches you with a gun then your life is in danger now, go ahead and kill him and I will reward you with a medal for what you did," RD said.

RD said he would also not think twice of shooting a criminal if he sees that somebody's life is in peril. But, he said, if the criminal is just stealing and is unarmed then it is best to just maim the person and not kill him.

Perhaps this is supposed to give the message to the armed criminals to watch out. But somehow the thought of having to encourage gun owners to start shooting the armed criminals doesn't exactly make one feel safe. I mean, are there that many armed criminals running around???!!!

Grossology

2008-02-15T01:19:00.000-08:00

I heard about this new field of study just a couple of months ago. It is the study of all sorts of gross and disgusting things and things generally not spoken about in polite company. So if you are not into gross things, I would advise you to read no further - just skip down to the next post!

One very interesting cultural tidbit I picked up several years ago while living in a remote village was about farts. Farting is a universal phenomenon but is handled differently in different societies. Among the No people, farting is of course unavoidable but one must avoid farting near other people. You may be walking along with a group or even with just one other person and they will suddenly stop and leave you continuing down the trail by yourself – even in the midst of an exciting tale. If you notice and ask what the problem is, they will say they are farting.

Although it is considered somewhat of a social taboo to do it, they certainly have no trouble talking about it. In fact there are several different words for fart in the No language. The generic word is otu. This word is a noun but can be made into a verb, or even an adjective. You can add a prefix to the verb to make it mean ‘cause to fart’. You can add a different prefix to the adjective which comes out meaning ‘excessively farty’ (or something like that.) There even are a couple of idioms. One is to ‘eat other people’s farts’ which means to eat what’s left of a meal after everybody else has already eaten. Another is ‘fart on his words’ which means to dis what somebody said.

Then we have the word pudi. Now pudi is for quiet little high-pitched involuntary farts. Especially ones that squeeze out when you are trying very hard not to let them escape. I was told a folktale about a girl who did some pudi where it might have been overheard by a suitor. She was so embarassed and humiliated that she ended up killing herself. (I doubt that she was a No person, though.)

There is also the word poge. This is an explosively loud reverberating fart. One that absolutely cannot be hidden or blamed on the dog. You can’t do this one without loud protests from everybody in hearing range.

Now all these words can be combined with other verbs and adjectives to make very picturesque and graphic descriptions. For example, there is an adjective busi that usually means ‘very loud and startling and ground-shaking’ and is used to describe deafening noises such as a coconut suddenly whamming into a tin roof after falling from a tall tree, or something huge (like a giant tree) crashing to earth.

Well, one day the third grade class was left unsupervised while the teacher went up to his house to take care of something. While he was gone, the boys decided to have a farting contest. Of course each boy wanted to out fart the last one so things quickly ratcheted up. They began to cause-to-busi their farts. In other words, they put their hearts and souls into it. Jemy, forgetting that he had been having problems with diarrhea lately - yes, you can see where this one’s going. To hurry on with the story, Jemy ended up having to go home real early that day.

Poor Jemy. I will never forget the sight of him standing by the well while his 23 year-old uncle filled buckets of water to throw at him to get him cleaned up. Unfortunately his uncle was laughing so hard he could barely stand let alone pump coherently so the whole process took quite a while. Meanwhile his mother and aunts were pacing around spitting in disgust and muttering about kids who busiraka otu!

When they run out of the usual words, they can get very descriptive. (Now this next bit may get really gross – so I’m warning you to stop while you can!) For awhile I stayed in a very small house with several others. There was a bathroom off the kitchen with only a curtain for a door. One day someone was in there and obviously was having some major gas and stomach problems. He let out a tremendous and lengthy passage of gas and then made a loud remark about somebody revving up their motorcycle. I was in the next room trying to keep quiet but I noticed that everybody else dropped what they were doing and fled. When he finally came out there was nobody to be seen.

Amazing what they sell in hardware stores!

2008-02-10T01:50:00.000-08:00

Kung Hei Fat Choi!

2008-02-07T06:53:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! We have many New Years in Asia. Today is Chinese New Year and we got to see the Lion Dance at the mall. There were three technicolor lions, each manned by two guys in sneakers. They would dance from shop to shop, bowing and scraping. In each shop it would rear up to grab a small red envelope with money in it that was hanging from the ceiling. The guy manning the head end had to try to get the head up close enough to grab the envelope in the mouth. Shop keepers cooperate of course because its supposed to bring good luck when the lion gets a gift.

Some of the lions look more like dragons to me, but what do I know? Here's one head on.

Is this guy being chased????

Latest Cab Decor

2008-02-07T06:43:00.001-08:00

I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this decor in a cab I rode the other day. No, he did not crash into a hill - that is plastic grass all over his dashboard. A lawn that will never need cutting....

CD-retro

2008-01-27T03:39:00.000-08:00

Today I decided to go to the mall and pick up a few things, since the mall is only a block from church. I knew that it would be crowded because Sunday is the day to take the whole family to the mall and spend a few hours. But little did I dream I would stand in one line for nearly 40 minutes!

I was looking for a particular kind of cable to connect some antique (ie last millennium) computer equipment. I checked at a couple of computer shops and they all said to go to CD-r King. CD-r King is a no frills computer accessory shop. It doesn’t sell computers but sells lots of cheap no-name CDs, DVDs, memory sticks, mice, cables, earphones, etc. The place is always crowded and you have to take a number. There were 10 people ahead of me. Today I found out why it is always crowded.

The shop is no frills but also no touch. Everything is behind the counter or locked behind glass doors. It’s kind of hard to shop because you can’t quite see the items well enough to read the fine print. I had plenty of time though to spot the cable I was looking for. There were 7 employees visible. One was a bored cash register operator who had something to do only about once every 10 minutes. Two girls were selling to customers according to their number. The other four were milling around behind the counters maybe stocking shelves or assembling merchandise or something.

Since there wasn’t a lot to do in those 40 minutes I started watching the way the two sellers worked. They would call a number and get the plastic number from the person and go off and hang it on a hook. Then they would wander back and begin serving the person with that number. One guy was looking at CDs and earphones. After explaining what the various prices of CDs were he finally chose a brand. Then she obligingly got down 4 different kinds of earphones, opened up all the packages and patiently stood there waiting for him to try them on one by one and discuss it with his girlfriend. Finally he made up his mind so the girl reassembled the earphones all back into their original packing. Then she wrote on a sheet of paper the product code, the number, the price per unit, the number of units purchased. Then she rewrote all the same information onto a paper pad with a carbon copy. Then she added it up on a calculator, figured out the tax, and asked the guy to sign the receipt. Then she counted out 25 CDs and carefully wrapped them in plastic. Then she got some small stickers on which she wrote today’s date. She had to re-examine everything to find out how long the warranty was and then wrote that on the small sticker. She opened up the earphones again and put the small sticker on them and then reassembled the packaging and told the guy the warranty was 30 days. Then, she put all the things into a plastic bag and then finally accepted the guy’s money. Then she went back and woke up (just joking!) the cashier who then added it all up again, gave a receipt and change and the seller girl took it back to the customer and FINALLY was ready to attend to the next in line.

You would think a computer related chain of shops could come up with a little bit better system. I mean like scanners so the girl doesn’t have to handwrite everything several times? (And somebody in the back must be retyping and collating all that stuff for inventory and bookkeeping!) Like a go-fer so the girls don’t spend so much time wandering around the shop, finding keys for the glass cases, finding a stool to climb on to get three sets of headphones down and could maybe attend to a second customer while the first is waiting for the merchandise to appear?

The “r” in CD-r must stand for “retro”. And I guess they are Y2K compliant—still.

But I think I will buy my CDs elsewhere.

Delights of high humidity

2008-01-13T00:20:00.000-08:00

Ah, the delights of high humidity! Soon after landing in the third of my worlds I could feel my freeze-dried nose and airways beginning to heal. No more bloody nose. No more chapped lips. No more need for body or hand lotion. Even my Velcro fingers have finally healed! Now it’s back to two showers a day and using a thin towel so that it has a chance to dry in between.

It’s also wonderful to be able to touch things like doorknobs and computers without a jolt of static electricity. I wonder how long it would have taken Ben Franklin to study electricity if he had lived here instead?

It is amazing how much easier it is to move around when you don’t have six or eight layers of clothing on. More than once I felt like that little kid in the movie who was so stiff from his big fat snowsuit that when he fell over in the snow he couldn’t get up and had to just lay there and cry for help!

Oh, and I brought back a thermometer so that I can tell you what the temperature is in Fahrenheit. It is currently 81 degrees in my office, pleasantly cool with a fan (but with exertion and no fan, enough to make you sweat!)

Gadget Test

2008-01-08T01:11:00.000-08:00

This is an attempt to add some fun and games:

If you don't like that, what about this:

Domestic Airport: A Dreadful Place

2008-01-06T16:19:00.000-08:00

The domestic airport in the third of my worlds is a dreadful place indeed, a place of constant chaos. There are clumps, clots and dribbles of people everywhere milling and moving in all directions and constantly reforming. One clump may seem to be moving in a particular direction when without warning one or more people in the group stop to talk or rearrange things or they stop for no observable reason. The rest of the group wanders on and then like slow motion elastic eventually returns and reforms the clot around the stoppees. Meanwhile others who were trying to move behind or beside them have to stop or swerve and seek a new opening in the crowd. As soon as a new opening appears, like as not a child will suddenly pop into the opening from a stopped clot bringing those trying to get by to another halt as they try to calculate the child’s likely speed and direction. Perhaps someone from the child’s clump will pull him or her back into the clump. So if the way should open up again, you must move immediately. If you don’t, another group or clot will surely jump into the opening ahead of you and you will have to swerve, stop, or back up again.

The security check is similar to others except that they are short of plastic trays. So you had best repack all your coins, cell phones, documents, jackets, watches, and loose children into your bags so that things don’t get lost in the x-ray machine. Here you DON’T have to take laptops out of their cases.

On the other side, the people who butted ahead of you to rush through the security are frustrated to find that their bags inside the x-ray machine did not jump the queue with them and so they are forced to wait until your bags come out before their bags finally appear.

The waiting room is also a mad house, but there is a sea of plastic seats in rows facing the front which keeps some semblance of order if only that it makes it difficult to mill around much. At the front off to one side is an Our Mother of Perpetual Responsibility statue for those inclined to burn a candle for traveling mercies. At the back is a series of fast food vendors selling healthy foods such as donuts, sweets, and soft drinks. The nice thing is, there is only one kind of coffee and it comes in only one size!

There are three or four gates at the front of the hall and girls are continuously hanging signs above them which have reference to either a flight number or a destination. Newcomers tend to sit in the back and have refreshments. As flights are called and the crowds ease slightly in the seats towards the front, those in the back move forward.

I will say, it is a people-watcher’s delight. Some are dressed for the beach, even though they are not going to the beach. Some are dressed for business. Some are dressed for comfort, others are dressed to kill. One group has just come back from Mecca and are dressed in white Arabic-style robes complete with Yasser Arafat type kaffahs on the men. No need for a book or a TV. The crowds provide plenty of entertainment. (Like the older lady walking with a cane but still wearing clogs...)

Tips, er, traps for the unwary travellor

2008-01-03T17:00:00.000-08:00

January 2, 2008

My trip back to the third of my worlds was relatively uneventful. But travel is full of traps for the unwary and requires quite a bit of juggling of luggage and documents. Security checks are always a challenge. Currently they want you to divest yourself of shoes, jackets, electronic equipment and the little ziplock bags of liquids as well as keys, coins, cellphones and place them in little trays and send them through one by one. The less you are carrying the better, But they also tell you not to check electronics, valuables, keys, etc.

Those little zip baggies with liquids are a relatively new thing. They are where you store any non-solids needed for your trip – chapstick, toothpaste, hand lotion, contact lens solution, etc. So you take things out as you use them but you’d better remember to put them back into the baggies lest you suddenly have to go thru another security check!

If you buy anything at the airport – and you will, you need to pay taxi, porter, airport tax, overweight luggage, drinking water (because you can’t take any through security with you.) DON’T put your coins in your pocket – otherwise you might get in trouble if you suddenly have to go through a security check. Pity the poor people traveling with small kids as they juggle kids, strollers, car seats, shoes, jackets, liquids, money, documents, and valuables plus try to keep track of it all!

When I arrived in the third of my worlds there were 3-4 jumbo jets all disgorging passengers at the same time. The immigration hall couldn’t hold all the people so people were piling up down the hallways too and for all I know, all the way back to the runways! In true Asian style there were no visible lines (queues) until you were quite close to the counter. You can’t really see from the back of the hall what the signs said and you can’t get to the front to read them. I kept asking other passengers if I was in the right line. After all you don’t want to wait in a huge long line only to find out you are in the wrong one! But the local passengers said it didn’t matter what line you were in. And I saw that it didn’t, because when you finally got close enough to read the signs and found yourself in the wrong line no need to go to the end of another line. You just slither over and sort of insert yourself into the next line.

The immigration officers were madly stamping passports, even so it took over an hour to finally get to the front of a line. I have a rather strange visa and so sometimes immigration officials don’t know what to do with it especially because I don’t have an “e-card”. I had a special letter I carry with me in case there is a problem, but the officer in my line didn’t even blink. She stamped my passport and card just like it was supposed to be. By then my luggage was on the carousel. Unfortunately, by then there were no more baggage carts and nary a baggage handler to be seen.

I was also sweating bullets because I had read the new customs form and it said that electronic devices had to be reported. That was a new requirement. I have a letter that explains that our contract gives us permission to import stuff needed for our work but I had forgotten to print it out. And I was carrying rather a lot of computer equipment, some mine, some for other people.

I couldn’t see any baggage handlers so I started asking people with badges about it. One guy turned out to be the airline agent and he said he would help take my suitcases outside to where I could get a cab. With a wink and a nod he sailed me thru customs and I didn’t have to explain anything after all!