no sweat

The cyclone is 100km off the east coast of Oman.  Thin clouds 300km away may or may not be a part of this system.  It would be deliciously wonderful to see some of that rain come here, we are bone dry as usual. 

Twenty eight nights to go.  Will it all work out, ya gotta hope as usual.  Nothing is clear and it takes a steely resolve to not let uncertainty make you crazy. 

The air conditioners are on full blast which makes it ok to drink coffee without sweating.  I scanned about two dozen photos and the rest I decided to toss.  Going on the road requires lightening the load.  I mean, really, I’ve been carrying at least two pounds of photos for years, with a scan, they are safe, I hope, on the laptop and the external hard drive.  Sure I could lose these, so should I post everything on the blog or facebook, who knows what’ll happen to these sites.  Oblivion is only a transaction away.

Afghanistan is a mix of tribal, ethnic, and linguistic peoples and has been for two millennia.  Aside from today there has been only one attempt of a centralized government.  Law and order is exacted by the dude with the most people behind him.  And if the dude does something stupid, the people behind him look for someone else to stand behind.  Does this mean then that people cross tribal, ethnic, and linguistic lines.  Loyalty, from what I’ve read so far in ‘Return of a King’ remains true in the family.  So, it’s family, tribe, ethnicity, and the language.  Religion hasn’t been discussed too much yet except for the presence of the Sikhs in the Punjab and a few days ago there was a story on the continued persecution of these people in the country.  So, this evening I walked to McDonalds for a chicken burger, fries and a diet coke.

Am I excited about Ramadan coming in less than a week?  I remember when it fell in November, that was a good time to have it. The private sector’s working hours were announced by the government, 9-2, which means I need to stay up later so I can wake up later.  A five thirty wake up means I’m sitting around the house for three hours plus which means I have to use my air conditioner.  Not eating or drinking at school doesn’t bother me too much though I may steal swigs of water under my desk.  At the pigeon palace I’ll have to blow smoke through a tiny crack in the window so no one sees me out on the street or in the building next door.  The folks will be fasting for almost 14 hours a day this time around.  God help them.

I like listening to some kind of ambient music when I’m surfing but some of the stuff on youtube is so lame I’m reaching for rock and roll.  “I just wanna get back to my city by the bay…” what in the world do I need to do to retire in San Francisco aside from winning the lottery.  I have no business looking at houses in the ‘look at what you get for 2.4 million dollars’. I can’t imagine it.  Desiring such things doesn’t do me any good, especially on the eve of going somewhere where there isn’t even a fast food restaurant unless I can get onto that base for sour cream doughnuts and good coffee once in a while.