Saturday, May 21, 2016

get yer special apricot pancakes



A refrigerator was filled with food for a visiting board of trustee who hasn’t arrived yet so I was curious and opened the brown paper box from the French Bakery.  Cecil says his pie is excellent and my cinnamon roll heated up with butter is still a disappointment.  Maybe it was good a week ago, it’s Nepalese baking, long life, trekking worthy that doesn’t go moldy so, I won’t complain.  The tea is good.

The president of the university lives right across the street and tonight is the board of trustees reception, I received an invitation but I didn’t RSVP. I RSVP’ed to the Christmas party but I never made it.  No matter says the HK’er.  If anything I’d get a good meal of something.  I just returned from the Zoom with a loaf of bread, four eggs, shaving gel, two milks a camel blue, gum and I don’t know what I want to eat. 

I can only imagine what a beautiful place this place has to be somewhere if we didn’t live behind a lot of walls.  The sunsets I know have been good one after another for a week.  Right now an orange and purple sky would have made a lovely image if it weren’t for the house in front of me,  hey, how about the roof, you gave up even trying before you ever asked? 

I completed some work this morning and I wished I could have finished a little more but I had to take a nap.  Tomorrow the still new class meets and another test has to be written.  Working at home is so preferable sometimes.  It must be the Herati kilm under my feet.  It inspires.

An annoying tooth is not getting better, hard foods are a menace, let’s not eat hard food then like cinnamon rolls, dip it in tea first.  Heat it up again and slab it with butter and jam and eat with green tea because otherwise it is just dry plaster.  Time for another tea at seven in the evening on this Friday, the 20th, tomorrow’ full moon means I’ll see one more after this before the carpet baggers are packed.

I will not throw this terrible roll away it is virtually un eat able but the birds ought to be able to do something with it , I’d like to see a bird close up tomorrow morning.  Shall we make a plan early with the crumbled cake and spread it around the brick pile.  Maybe a kingfisher will come.

It is nine thirty in the evening and the bed is waiting for me

5.21.16

a dove landed on the corrugated sheet below my window, shit, sorry, I threw that nasty roll away, sorry mate.

The French Bakery box also has a pie in it.  I thought it was a fruit pie, I made a nice cup of milk tea and heated the pie up.  It’s a spicy meat pie.  My stomach can’t handle a spicy meat pie in the morning.  Will it be ok to eat after it has sat for an hour?  Can I reheat a meat pie without getting sick?  I have to get on a bus in three hours. 

Not yet noon and the air conditioner may be needed.  It does get warm in Kabul.  It’s one of those days where I look at work that I have to do and wonder how much time do I need to do what I need to do?  It’s the difference between an hour more or less in the office as opposed to being in the carpeted grotto with a kitchen nearby.

Lapis lazuli, a semi-precious stone.  A deep blue it is:

The intense blue color is due to the presence of the trisulfur (S3) radical anion in the crystal.[11] An electronic excitation of one electron from the highest doubly filled molecular orbital (No. 24) into the lowest singly occupied orbital (No. 25)[12] results in a very intense absorption line at λmax ~617 nm.

I have no idea what this means but it does make me wonder if holding and carrying around this polished pendant produced with electronic excitation of one electron from the highest doubly molecular orbital will give me some electronic excitation? 

I don’t know but almost sounds like this stone is organic, what with all the orbitals flying around once a long time ago, like 6,000 years ago, the orbital stopped when it no longer produced this mysterious blue?

I like blue, most of my clothes have blue in it but this blue reminds me of Scandinavian warlords and I don’t know why. 

I’m sure someone could take this description of the process of lapis turning blue and turn it into a video.  Surely there must be something on youtube.  Shall we take a look?  Maybe later.

Great Uncle George where did you perform?


I got a list.  I could be in Dublin for two weeks and never find a clue there’s too many joints.

I don’t even know what day I am leaving here and already we’re planning, I guess that’s what one does when they are certain, I hope I am certain.  If I cannot leave before mid July I can’t go to Ireland.  I really do think I’m rushing to a decision that hasn’t been made though the numbers are still in my favor and they know it.  This week you will know, relax.  Go take a shower.  What a country, though, eh?  Lovers of the drink.  It makes you talk.

“Travelers, tramps and tourists are common the wide world over, but the so-called ” Bona Fide Traveler ” is peculiar to Ireland. Under the curious laws which govern or misgovern Ireland, it has been decreed that when any person “travels” three miles to a “public-house” on a Sunday he is entitled to all the drink he can buy, even though the Sunday closing law is in full force there. Thus a man living in the town of Kilronan can not legally enter a public-house to secure a drink, but let him walk or ride to Knooknagow, three miles away, and he can have all the drink he wants…”

The meat pie was really good.  Thank you so much to the board of trustee who hasn’t come yet.  Go take a shower.

Helen Macdonald channeled the love she lost with the passing of her father towards the training of a hawk.  I’ve looked at a hawk’s eye, Guy had a variety of birds when we worked together in the gulf.  They reveal absolutely nothing and it made me think this bird has such acute intuitive skills she hides better than me.  Majestic, historic, the mysterious ancient animal who’s been around as long as humans.  Ya think sometimes they know more than we do but animals haven’t been permitted to tell us anything since Eve.  Go take a damn shower already.

2:30pm—Should I wear a tie to sort of make casual dress Saturday a little more professional looking?  I’d like to wear sandals too but maybe when Ramadan begins.  Jeans are nice if they’re clean, boss.

We’re moving too much aren’t we?  What kind of place would I find myself so content I wouldn’t need to keep updating my resume?  I’d like to find that place before the woodpile with my name on it says hello.

7:10pm—In class a system blew in angry dark rain clouds and there they sat, still dark, threatening clouds, and three hours later it finally rains and thunders.  Going in for three hours on a Saturday isn’t a great routine to look forward to for the next four or five weeks.  It just simply feels too much like a weekend to be teaching a full class with questions I don’t understand but I was lucky and had a real life thank you card from Aunt Eileen I brought as a prop, to show there was once a day not long ago when people wrote thank you cards.  No one in the class had ever seen one.  “And look at this penmanship, it’s beautiful, right?  And the two girls sitting in front said yes and the form of a real thank you letter inspired them to right one for their in class assignment.

The other question I forgot.

The wind blows in gusts, it wants to rain more.  I received a nice gift which I could have used as another prop, a jar of apricot jam.  My seat just shook.  A big jet is flying above. 

Danke Shoen, Lydia, or is it Shane?  Another shake.  I don’t have a good feeling about my immediate superiors agreeing to my june 27 departure, in my boss’s boss’ room my departure date posted on the wall is still july 5.  that’s not attractive at all.  It isn’t, knowing especially I have 29 holidays. 

Are they waiting for me to write a letter to the President before they decide or do they want me to remind them I haven’t heard anything about what I wrote last week. 

The one thing Afghans do that Arabs also do is they want you to sweat it out a little.  calm down, no rash decisions, your case will be taken care in the order it becomes necessary which means, remind us again when it is necessary.  And remain calm.  Can I send my letter of resignation to the president and cc: people?  Is that even kosher?

Ali said I should cc: him.  The two bosses, three bosses, I don’t know which way the chain of complaint swings here.  Please, gentlemen, give me peace or I’ll start making apricot Xanax pancakes. 

Pancakes, it’s time to eat.    

post report the pancakes were ridiculously delicious and probably really bad for me all that butter and apricot jam and honey.

hey cuz, 


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