Another year has passed

Yes, New Year is all over; banks, shops, offices and schools are back open and it is safe to go out without fear of being drenched.  On balance even this grumpy old man has to admit to having quite enjoyed it.

I do not enjoy having a drunken falang  yob (or yobette) throw a bucket of cold water in my face,  but a cheerful or graceful Lao person wishing you a Happy New Year while pouring water down your neck does have some strange charm.  The town goes crazy for 4 or 5 days with water fights everywhere and nobody too important or too grand to escape. As 'the only falang in the village' the little kids made sure that I was well and truly blessed with water whenever I went out.There are formal events, like the parades and the processions with the Par Bang (Buddha figure), but really it is down to people having fun. Lao people are usually reserved and graceful so it is quite something to see everyone letting down their (beautiful) hair and having a great time.  This photo of our Charity Homeland Director, above gives just a little idea of what I mean.

New Year and the prospective purchase of land for our charity have taken up much of the last 7 days and it seems that the latter has probably been achieved, subject to final signatures and approvals. We hope to have our English school open in September 2012, so anyone wanting to escape from the Olympic Games will be welcome to come and help us to put finishing touches to the project. As anticipated, buying land has proved instructive. The rabbit that emerged from the hat at the last moment that the ‘owner’ of the land was not the owner at all!  I had a couple of other prospective sellers who were not the owners but hoping to arrange a sale in return, I suppose for a commission, but on this occasion we had no idea that we were not dealing with the owner. Happily the owner was fine with the deal we had agreed. It seems that I have learned that you should not assume that someone is the owner of land just because he says he is and has a copy of the title. This informal arrangement by chancers I suppose replaces the more formal system of chancers which we in the UK call Estate Agents. At least here the Village headman system ensures that no impersonation can lead to a false sale.  Amongst other land that I looked at there was some being sold by members of the former royal family. Having seen their estate I can only say that maybe the royals didn't all do so badly out of the revolution. The land was idyllic; there were even 2 horses grazing in a paddock...something very rare here. But royal land does not come cheap, and he wanted 5 times what we are paying elsewhere. So, our school will not be 'by royal appointment'.

I watched some curious commerce yesterday morning as the Vietnamese ladies who might be described as scrap dealers visited the building site next to me.   After scouring the site for maybe 10 minutes they and the (Vietnamese) builders located about 8 broken plastic buckets and one or 2  plastic containers. The former were scraped clean of the cement that they had been used for mixing. This was a vital element of the transaction as all the items were then weighed on a little machine that the ladies carry in their cart.  The pile of items kept toppling over, as they tried to weigh them in one go, but eventually it was achieved, money was paid over and the goods put in the handcart. I am very well aware of the terrible waste that we westerners create, and any form of recycling has to be worthwhile. But financially, it is difficult to image the net value of these items to the ladies after they have paid for them. Sadly they have seem to have no interest in some horrible bits of jagged and rusting corrugated iron, that was someone’s roof until the storms, of say 9 months ago maybe? As you will see, the house in question(above) is going to be a pretty big affair once it is completed, so more damaged buckets may be traded in the weeks and months to come. However, rather amusingly, later in the day the ladies called at my house and offered to buy up the contents. Since they are scrap dealers it puts into some kind of perspective the value that the locals place upon my goods and chattels.

After last week’s blog someone was kind enough to write and say how much they enjoyed it and loved to read about my vegetables!  I think that it was a compliment, but it made me realise how dull the rest must be if vegetable news is the highlight. And worse, I have so little vegetable matter to report this week. There are some chillies just about ready to be picked. But they might benefit from another week’s sunshine. The tomatoes are being eaten and the peppers are in flower so we can hope for some exciting news from that quarter in the weeks to come. The lemon still needs all your prayers.

On a par with vegetables when it comes to excitement I guess, are tea spoons. Is the loss of teaspoons a global problem or is it confined to Laos? A few months or so back I must have had a 12 or 15...yes, far too many. But I am now down to 4. Where can they have gone? They will not have been stolen by night time teaspoon raiders since many of them were from Tesco at 6 for 99pence. In a land where spirits come down for cigarettes, I am unlikely to find a rational explanation, but maybe the ladies with the handcart know something?

Another recent comment was that sometimes my blog has an excessively complaining tone.....oh surely not! Apart from about the falangs, the police, the government, the water company, the weather, the dogs, the insects, tuk tuk drivers, the state of the roads, Lao timekeeping, excessively loud music and the bank I do not think I complain at all, do I? But might I just have a quick moan about the dogs keeping me awake at night? After a period of relative peace they have started up again. They are objectionable but not wholly stupid. If you are in reach of them and bend down to pick a stone they are off like a shot. But one wretched creature is protected by a high fence and exploits his safety shamelessly by barking and howling all night. I have a big birthday coming up soon; I guess I might have a party and serve dog...but local, fresh dog; curs that were howling only the night before.

The Mekong rose a significant amount last week but is forecast to fall again this week. Although it remained dry for New Year we had had a fair amount of rain, usually in the evenings. We have also have more than the usual amount of power cuts, not to mention the total absence of water in the pipes, which can easily be explained by the amount or water being drawn off to throw around at New Year. Indeed as I was writing this we had quite a lengthy power cut, which led to my losing some of what I had written. What I lost was all the amusing, witty and interesting bits which, having disappeared int the ether, explains why I am padding this out with boring stuff about teaspoons and vegetables.
Someone heading for the ether on Saturday is the Hmong Granny, who as things stand will finally make her journey into the skies. The event is scheduled to last all day, but I fear that I might not last the course, especially given the Hmong reluctance to make Beerlao freely available.

I mentioned last week that I had a lot more music on a usb. While in UK I also bought a lot of those small CDs that newspapers give away. Some of them are very good. I bought one splendid one called “British Anthems’, which contains more patriotic music than you  can ever want or need to hear. Amusingly, the Daily Mail (for who else would produce such a item ?) has included Adagio for Strings, by Samuel Barber, presumably because they think that someone with a name like that must be British. I wonder that they didn’t also include The Barber of Seville, bar, bar, bar bar Barbara Anne, not to mention Barbar the Elephant. Gustav Holst was predictably excluded on the grounds that he sounds German

Watermelon remain the most popular fruit right now, but some mangosteens are starting to make an appearance; I am still not convinced that the pineapple are local and fully ripe, but maybe next week I might try one.

I think that is all for the present; more about vegetables next week, I promise.
Alan