Mindanao Musings

I was wondering what you were up to! Glad to see that you pulled through the situation OK. I'm told that all astronauts have their gall bladder removed...just in case.
I agree with your comment about the hospital gowns. They would look a lot better on Kyle Minogue.

A poor bit of writing on my part, I guess. I would compare the bangle to the Christian practice to wear a cross, or the Jewish a Star of David. As to string - the Hindus wear a thin cord around the midsection.

Thanks for the tip, Steve. I too am a dog-lover. I guess I could expand that to an animal lover. We keep dogs, goats, cows, and protect and feed native birds that live here with us. Since we got the goats and cow, our maintenance cost of keeping grass cut has gone down noticeably. No kidding!
A good post.

It's really unfortunate that the President of the US is elected in a process that does not allow us to fully express our own personal preference. Instead we turn our vote over to a proxy organization that are all political types. I understand why the electoral system was established. Now, though, with information flowing so quickly and wide spread, allowing individual voters to become well informed, why don't we abolish the electoral college and go to a popular vote? As an absentee voter, I do not have much confidence that my vote will even be counted. Mindanao is a long way from Seattle, where I am registered to vote.

I will just switch to Philippine TV channels, and BBC, and ignore all the hoopla going on in the "land of the big PX". There are some advantages to being on the other side of the world.

Very clever! I wish I'd thought of lines like that.

Hang in there, buddy. I don't have the answer. It will come to you. Never fear.

Will we never tire of this bullshit?

I think that dreams, which as you describe can be random fragments of thought or experiences (of stuff we have never experienced) are somewhat comparable to what happens when we defragment the hard disk on our PC. You get all these file fragments flying about in every direction, in perfect chaos. Fortunately, this only happens during sleep.

I saw that movie, and agree that scene is a classic.

I worked for the Federal government for 35 years, but was never a desk jockey. I was overseas all that time, and the people I came in contact with were citizens of foreign countries. So that baloney about "it is policy", or "that's the way we always do it" simply is never appropriate. Interestingly, the only time I had difficulty was when I had to deal with Americans. I guess I must have had the best damn job in the history of the US Foreign service. They don't give purple hearts to civilians, though.

I'm a little curious about what the "later event" was, aren't you?

In 1982-87 I lived in the Ivory Coast, and among other places, traveled to the African ones in the list above. Gabon, Malawi, Berundi, Togo and Lesotho.

A touching write-up. Who was it that said, "People are no damned good"? We see uncaring, inconsiderate behavior every day, don't we? God bless you.

Steve, I didn't know you could draw.