Last night I read that Dr. Jordan Peterson, a Canadian psychiatrist, believes that getting up at a regular time can help us deal with stress. As I've said many times, I love my bed, but I am trying to get up at the regular time of 6.30am. It's early but I have to get my morning walk done before the heat arrives. I don't know what's wrong this year. October is the start of the dry season yet it was still raining last week. We are also supposed to be in the cooler time of year, so why is it still 34C and more?
Canadians keep posting photographs of that lovely white stuff but it hasn't lured me back. I love the idea of walking out of this place and feeling cement under my feet. I'm sure most of the back problems in Canada come from people tensing up when they walk on the slippery ice and snow. When the school year started in the Arctic we could have snow, rain and sleet in the same day and the ice was still on the ocean when the school year ended; I think I've done my fair share of winter.
I have definitely had a long term relationship with a bucket of water and a mop. In the old days in England we never had a vacuum cleaner and in Africa it was the mop - in India too. Here I have a lovely bucket with a holder for the mop head. I pump the mop handle and it removes the water from the mop head; all very high tech. Yesterday I nearly went flying as I slipped on the wet floor with my bare feet. I must have looked a bit like Popeye's Olive Oil, with my arms flying all over the place as I tried to grab something firm.
Every day I deal with dust. It was even worse in Africa. Here my furniture is beautifully polished, smooth wood whereas in Africa the wood was mostly plywood and it wrecked all my dusters. If I picked anything up in Kano I could see exactly where to put it back. The young students looked like premature old men with the Sahara dust coating their hair and moustaches. Nigerians are like Indians - they think a man looks more manly with a moustache. In India I was even asked why I didn't grow one. In the West we often take the attitude of "mind your own business", and so we don't ask questions but in other parts of the world there's no holds barred. In India I was often asked if I had a family and I would say I did; I would explain that my parents were dead but I had brothers and sisters. "No, no! Do you have children?", they would ask. They never asked if I had a wife. Finally, I got it right when I was with a young taxi driver. "No I don't", I said. He looked at me very seriously and said, "So what's your problem?" I'm still trying to figure that one out.
Back to dust. When I took over this apartment I was given three large bouquets of plastic flowers. It's dismal going around a Canadian cemetery and seeing them everywhere looking bleached and folorn. Earlier on though, they were lovely things. When I got my own room at the ripe old age of 24 I bought some plastic flowers as I couldn't afford real ones. To make them 'real' I sprayed them regularly with room freshener. Nowadays, I have given up on the spray but I quite like my plastic flowers.
I went shopping today and I bought some salad cream. Normally, I buy Heinz or Crosse and Blackwell, good old "British" brands although possibly owned nowadays by someone else. Today I came away with something made in the Netherlands. It tastes all right but it's not 'my' salad dressing. It's the same with so many things - a bar of chocolate in Asia is not the same as a Western bar. It's funny how we get attached to a taste. Shopping in Cambodia provides so many tastes of the same item because food comes from so many different parts of the world. Today my juice came from Cyprus, peas from Greece, tea from Bulgaria.
Samnang had me worried today when he was cooking. He wanted to do chicken using fish oil and sugar. I think fish oil has a ghastly smell but I was amazed how nice it tasted. He was quite proud of himself because I kept complaining about the stink. The phone ran at 6.15pm. He jumped up; "I'm going!" He knew it was his mother reminding him about Chinese class. She calls herself the "tiger mother" - and the boys know it. The 3 year old daughter is a different kettle of fish - she's called "the princess" and she plays it for all it's worth.
