Homeward We Go

I just had a typical ride home from visiting a local friend, so I thought I'd write about it.

My friend lives 6 1/2 miles from my apartment. When we left his house at 7:10, we started by walking 3/4 mile to the bus stop. Along the way we stopped several times to greet various friends, relatives, or important members of the community who were sitting outside their houses along the road.

When we got to the bus stop there were two empty buses and nobody waiting to get on. This is not an ideal situation because each bus holds somewhere between 60 and 80 passengers and it won't leave until it is full. We didn't really want to pay for a taxi though, so we climbed on and waited.

Fortunately it was only about 15 minutes before the bus was full and wheezed to life. We started rolling out of the bus stop. Then we stopped. The bus driver got out and examined the back wheel right below my seat, while scooters zipped around him and the cars behind us on the road honked furiously. He climbed back in, drove another 100 yards, and stopped again. Then he got out and called to two other guys, who came running with a hand-operated tire pump. They worked on the tire for a couple of minutes, he paid them, and then we were on our way. 

We drove about half a mile and then pulled into a gas station. I said a quick anti-spark prayer as the attendant plunged the gas hose into the still-running bus. I'm told that diesel is less explosive than gasoline, which always gives me comfort in these situations- unless I'm in a taxi. Anyway, we put in 6 liters of diesel and then chugged back onto the road. 

Traffic was amazingly light today, the result of a major holiday that sent most people out of the city, so we made it to our destination unusually quickly. Even so, by the time I got off the bus it was dark. When we left my friend's house 5 1/2 miles away the sun had still been well above the horizon.

I then had to catch a smaller public transport van to get from that part of town to my neighborhood. We only had to wait a minute before two appeared, but both were full so they didn't stop. We walked up to the bus stop nearby, thinking I might need to catch the bus instead. But because the buses don't have any fixed schedule it was impossible to know when the next one would be. So we went back to the place where the transport vans stop, and got there just as one was pulling in. I hopped on, and away we went. I looked around and noticed that half of the passengers were young children. Across from me sat two boys. On looked like he was 12 and the other about 6. Next to them sat a girl who looked like she was 10. In the next seats over sat a couple of older women and three small children who were obviously with the 10 year old girl because she kept talking to them.

 I was trying to figure out which of the woman was the mother of which children, when the 10 year old announced that she wanted to get off. There aren't any buttons like in a European or American bus, so you just yell when it's your stop. To my surprise, the 10 year old girl and the three little children all got off together. None of the women were the mother; that little girl was in charge!  I then eyed up the boys across from me. The 12-year-old had the fare money (a coin) in his mouth. Were they on their own also? It turns out they were, because at one point all of the women got off and left the boys behind.

As for me, it was a pretty simple ride. I hopped off where I wanted to, made my way towards our apartment building, greeted a few neighbors as I went past, and soon I was home sweet home. 

Journey time: just over 1 1/2 hours

Average speed: 4.4 miles per hour

And that's totally fine, because it's not about speed or efficiency, it's about spending time with friends!

Snail Mail

If you want to send us a Christmas card, make sure you send it  before Thanksgiving. Mail from back home often takes nearly a month to get here. Sometimes it's fun to get things a couple of weeks after an event or holiday. It makes the festive seasons longer! 

On the other hand, sometimes it creates a major headache. Today I received a letter from the IRS saying that I owed them some money. The due date to pay it was today. 

I also received some insurance information today that I needed to receive a week and a half ago in order to avoid paying a double insurance premium for the month of August.

I can't wait until I get my time machine built.

Volleyball!

Everyone was very excited to see us at church today. Well, not everyone. Just the ones who remembered us, which was a fair number. But the church is largely students from other countries, so a lot of people I hung out with are gone now.

This afternoon was a sports day so we were reunited with the volleyball team. I'm pretty rusty but it was a load of fun whacking the ball around again.

Pizza For the Go

I have experienced many pizzas in my life. Sausage, Pepperoni, Supreme, "The Works." British variations on the theme including broccoli and other vegetables. French variations made with moldy cheese. All kinds of things. But this week I experienced something new.

Our friend lives right above a pizza place. He has all of the normal French-ish pizzas, most of which focus on olives and really good cheese. He has an AMAZING pizza featuring ground hamburger and a white sauce. And then he has the monstrosity that we ordered only because I knew that you would want to know about it. Well, that and I have a quirky sense of adventure.

The pizza starts normal enough; a medium-thickness crust, basic tomato sauce, and standard French cheese blend.

Then, all of the sudden, it takes on a 4th-grade-snack-time theme. Half-buried under the cheese are large, plump prunes. Complete with pits, as I found out the "hard" way.  Over the top of the cheese is a generous sprinkling of almonds.

But do not fear, the obligatory black olives still feature prominently at regular intervals around the circumference.

Biting into this pizza could best be described as potluckicious. It reminded me of what happens when your plate is knocked halfway off your lap and the plumb-carrot blend becomes one with your triple-cheese lasagna. It's not a disagreeable flavor as long as you know it's coming.

Fluid Dynamics

It hasn't rained here yet this year.

My wife and I have visited two very wet countries in a row. The first one had the wettest winter most folks could remember (I counted 2 days without rain in a 6 week period). The second had the wettest June on record. And now we are in a place that hasn't seen rain since last October. I guess they had a heavy dew twice last month, but no real rain.

It's a bit strange. It's also hot. Not that the temperature is especially miserable but the humidity is high. Most days it feels as if there is no point in showering because you'll just be sweaty again within half an hour -- or sooner if you do anything besides sit down.

So I'm trying to find ways to maximize the fans in our apartment. Air movement is still somewhat of a mystery to me. I understand the general concepts of high pressure and low pressure, but the quirks in an odd-shaped space like our apartment baffle me. When I was a freshman engineering student, the upper class students liked to moan and groan about a class called "Fluid Dynamics." I wish I had stayed in the engineering program long enough to take that class. Unlike most of them, I could apply it to my real life!

And please pray that rain will come. The crops need it badly!

The Fun Continues

After the great bookshelf adventure we ate lunch and then began unpacking a whole new pile of stuff that had arrived along with the bookshelf. We had no idea that we possessed so much wonderful junk. I was relieved to find a collection of T-shirts because I only brought one from back home. Unfortunately they, and all of the rest of the clothes that we had packed, smelled a bit musty. So I decided to wash them. We don't have a washing machine here so I got two big tubs, filled them in the shower, and squished and squarshed by hand. Then my lovely assistant took them up to the roof so they could bask in the mildew-killing ultraviolet rays.

After that we took public transportation across town. You'd have to live here to understand that experience. The most noteworthy event was a dispute with the fare-taker guy because he charged us twice the normal rate and insisted it was correct. Our friend refused to get off until she received the proper change, which got the entire vanload of people in an uproar. Normally I would get involved in such things but I was feeling a bit overwhelmed and I couldn't remember all of the necessary vocabulary in the local language, so I just stood and watched it all with some amusement.

After our abrupt exit from the public transportation we arrived at our destination; a farewell party for my former flatmate. There were loads of people there and all of them wanted to say hello to us. It was great to see everyone again and catch up. Also somewhat exhausting catching up with all of them in the course of an hour or less.

After the party we drove home the long way so we could see the ocean. Ate supper, took an hour or so to convert my budget worksheets to the local currency, and went to bed at 11:30.

That's about it.

A Shelf For Books

What did day 1 in our new place consist of?

As I said, we woke up at 10 AM. We ate breakfast, and then I suddenly felt sleepy again. I laid down. When I woke up it was 12:30 and my friend needed help moving a bookshelf up the stairs. My wife looked at my dopey just-woke-up expression and suggested that I wait before helping with the bookshelf because "it is going to require some brains." But I was sort of awake so stumbled down to help.

This was a doozy of a bookshelf; seven feet high and four feet wide. And the stairwell in our apartment is a doozy of a stairwell. I'm pretty sure the builders didn't have a blueprint. They just built the first story, then built another on top of that, then built half a story on top of that, then built another half slight higher, then another story on top of that, then a little room on the roof. When you walk up the inside, you could easily imagine the outside looking like something drawn by Dr. Seuss. Every turn of the stairwell is a different size, shape, and dimension. The stairs themselves vary in height, from 7 inches to nearly 13. The ceiling above the stairs wiggles and waggles, some places 10 feet high and then in one place only 6 (a real head-banger!). Only one thing is consistent the whole height of the stairwell: it is only about 4 feet wide.

You can understand, then, how daunting of a task it was to get this bookshelf up the five flights of stairs to the apartment. The maneuvers could be described thus:

- flip the shelf on it's side
- hip-check the door
- rotate the bookshelf 45˚ on the z axis between two doorways while standing in a shower (why do we have a shower at the bottom of our stairwell, anyway?)
- wiggle the bookshelf back out of the shower and around the corner
- grunt and groan around the y axis while ascending a 46 degree incline
- lower the bookshelf onto it's face while slowly rotating it around a corner
- ease it back onto its side while continuing rotation
- lift bookshelf above heads to clear neighbor's table sitting in the middle of the stairway.
- rotate bookshelf 90 degrees while flipping it onto its face and lowering it to a horizontal elevation
- wedge it hopelessly into a corner
- After consultation with the females, we decide to lower the bookshelf to a vertical position (or as close as we can get it) and try to lift it straight up the middle of the stairwell, as if it were some kind of elevator shaft.
- Wife voices concern about the paint getting scraped off of the wall.
- I do my best impression of Hercules while my friend lets go of the bottom of the shelf and scrambles to the steps above me.
- We take off some more paint
- At last we are able to lift the bookshelf out of the abyss, flip it on it's back, rotate it 90˚, flip it onto it's side, hip check another door, rotate it 45˚ to diagonal, wiggle it through a doorway in minute increments, turn it another 90˚, slide it around the corner, trip over the pile of books that will eventually go on the shelf, and VIOLA! All done. Nothing to it.

That was the start of the day… part 2 to follow

We're Here!

After 29 hours of travel, we arrived safely "chez nous." It was a very boring trip on the whole, which is exactly how we like it. Here is a brief overview:

8:00 shuttle to the airport
8:30 Got our tickets from a rather helter-skelter agent at the airport and watched our bags being dumped on the conveyor to baggageland.
8:45 Stopped in security because my wife was trying to sneak out of the country with one of those gel-filled wrist support things in her hand luggage. For shame!
9:00 Found our gate, then went to find my cousin's fiancée. She works in one of the vendor booths at the airport. It was a slow morning so we managed to monopolize most of an hour.
12:00 boarded the plane to stop #1
2:40 Landed at stop #1
3:00 found our next gate, then walked from one end of the terminal to the other and back again in search of a sandwich that cost less than $7. Finally found Subway, which was faithfully selling $5 Footlongs. Hurray!
4:40 Just settling into our seats on the next flight when we heard an announcement that something on the plane broke and they were calling mechanics to fix it.
6:30ish finally underway.
1:15 AM 2 movies and a couple hours of restless sleep later, we landed at stop #2
1:30 got through security more quickly because this time my wife put her deadly and volatile wrist support in a separate tray
6:00 after a slight delay, we boarded our last flight
11:00 Landed at our destination
11:30 got through security
12:30 finally completed the visa process and retrieved our luggage
12:45 colleague drove us to our apartment
And so, after 29 hours of travel, we arrived. We had supper, unpacked most of our bags, sent a quick email, and finally went to bed at about 5:00 (10 PM local time).

When we woke up, the fun began...