Darn it, I forgot to say "White Rabbits" three times, and turn around. I'll have to wait another month before my luck changes.
Why is it so difficult to keep the dates of a diary in order? I'm constantly getting muddled up. Maybe the readers take no notice anyway and, in the big scheme of things, what's one day versus another? Anyway, today's the 1st so I should get that right.
I had an interesting breakfast this morning - two ripening avocados and a bowl of porridge. I suppose it was healthy. Ratha arrived with a bag of avocados and passion fruit from his organic farm and I'm always given more than I can handle. I often give things to my neighbours rather than letting them go rotten. Last week I bought a kilo of sweet tamarind, which was an impulse buy as it's far too much for me to eat. I passed it on to them and they were happy. I enjoy eating at their roadside restaurant when I've got visitors. Every year a small group of students from the University of Alberta use my apartment and they are always warned by the UofA staff to avoid street food. It's not until they've been here three months, and are almost ready to go home, when they realise street food is really very tasty and cheap.
I listened to the news today and some of the temperatures in the USA really are nippy. I don't understand why people are being told to stay indoors. Why can't they go out for a walk to the end of the block? Hasn't anyone heard of wrapping up well? When I visited schools in India I'd look around and saw the students wearing shirt, trousers and sports shoes. "How long does it take you to get dressed in the morning?" I'd ask. It was always just a few minutes. I then asked them if they got dressed and undressed during the day, which they thought was a whacky question. I then told them that I'd calculated that I spent a total of 1 1/2 hours a day getting dressed and undressed and that was just to go to a school only 5 minutes walk from my home. I remember one day not being able to get out of the house because the entire place had shifted - our homes were on stilts because of the shifting of the permafrost. I managed to get out after attacking the space between the door and the door jamb with a screwdriver. A friend of mine lived in a home that was exactly where the road to the school bumped into his street - it was a 'T' junction. One day he set off in a blizzard but ended up turning around and going home. He tried three times to walk the 5 minutes or so but never did get to school. Normally, he'd have followed the telephone wires but on this day he couldn't see them. Our snow was very strange; it was not the nice and fluffy kind of the south but more like bits of sand that were really painful if they hit you in the face. It was also super heavy to shovel. One day I opened my door and there was a complete white door - a replica of the wooden one in snow, complete with window and door knob. It was in the Arctic where I learned to bend my knees and always turn my body when shovelling - no twisting allowed. So my advice to the Americans is get outside, wrap up well and enjoy the peace and quiet as you walk down the street.
I had to laugh when I took Oudom and Ponleu to their evening Chinese class, which they hate. I keep telling them it's their own fault because they'd come home from school and head straight to the downstairs office to play on the computers. Their parents sent them to school to get them out of the house. They are very much into earning money. Ponleu (9) loves drawing and he gets paid if he draws something plus a bit more if it's coloured. Oudom earns money washing the house floors. Oudom said he'd wash mine twice for $5 and Ponleu said he'd wash my sink for $3; I pride myself on a permanently clean sing so heaven only knows what he's seeing. Oudom's keen to finish reading a book as he'll get $20. I asked what kind of book it was and he said it had to be something about finance and running a business; he's 12!
I've just received the statistics for the dental programme and so, for those who are interested in teeth, you might like to know that we saw 493 patients, cleaned almost 400 sets of teeth, filled 300 teeth and yanked out 800.
There was an excellent discussion on the BBC about the Arctic and all that's happening with the Arctic Vortex. Actually, it's not the vortex that's causing the trouble in the USA, it's the fact that the vortex wobbles every year or so and some winds move off in another direction - they are the ones causing the problems. So don't blame the vortex! I was up in Cambridge Bay when a cruise ship arrived; it was escorted by an ice breaker as it couldn't get through the ice on its own. People came ashore in Zodiac boats, all wearing yellow waterproofs and red wellies - they looked like a version of Paddington Bear. Nowadays the cruise ships come through unaided although a friend was on one a couple of years ago that had to turn back because of the ice conditions. Naturally, some of the passengers complained that they'd paid money to go from A to B and wanted their money back. I won't tell you where they came from.
