yummy food, scary storm

Just had lunch over at the UN canteen.  Very good as always.  It's mixed bag, a couple of dishes available each day, perhaps on a rotating schedule.  The cook is very nice, and it's funny, nobody really talks to me much but they're very nice just the same. 

Today on the menu we had a kind of blorgy looking chicken boiled with the skin on and cut up, which I passed on, and then an awesome looking stir fry of fish, veggies, and pineapple.  Then on the side were little wee packets wrapped up in banana leaves - I thought they might end up being scary (ie uncooked / intestines), but they were those great steamy packets.  These ones were pork with vermicelli, wood ear mushrooms, some dill curiously enough, and then as usual held together by egg mix.  Not quite as good as the fish packets, but still salty and good.

This morning during the Lao lessons I learned that the word for room is not the same as the part of the word for school - I always thought that room was 'hong' and school was 'hong hien' with the hongs pronounced the same way - but was I ever wrong!  Also learned today that 'cake' does not mean 'rice and milk'.  I always thought milk ('nom') was part of the word for cake 'ka nom', but again I was mistaken.  Silly me, I thought I was so smart to have figured out the rice milk thing.  I mean it makes sense; those fabulous sticky banana and rice packets seem sort of milky, well coconut milky.  Now all my illusions are shattered.

Last night here there was a murderously immense house smashing storm of epic proportions.  I couldn't figure out why I'd suddenly gotten so hot and sticky doing my homework in bed, and then all of a sudden the rain just came banging down in massive whales of water - the calm before the storm, I think, was why it'd gotten so humid.  I decided to turn in, and so I turned off the light and got under the net, but the storm just crashed and blew and kept me awake.  It made me a wee bit frightened.  I started thinking, you know, if I was a bad guy, I'd do all my bad deeds during storms, because no one would be able to hear my victim crying out for help.  I I coughed, and I couldn't even hear myself cough!  And then with the wind careening around and just the weight of the rain when it comes down so hard - ooooh!

In the middle of the rain, these frogs came out and hopped around outside my window, creaking and calling to each other.  One started out from the north end of the house, and then hopped along to the south end, calling out the whole time, sounding like a stepped-on piece of creaky rubber - "CREEK! CREEK CREEK!  CREEK CREEK CREEK!".  Hop, creeek, hop, creeek creek.  Once it got to the far end of the house, another frog in a neighbouring yard picked up the conversation, and they started going back and forth in their ribbiting, and hopping towards each other.  Then away.  Then back together. Finally, they must have met up and decided to go check out another house, because I could only hear them in the distance.

This morning things were remarkably not muddy. I rode to work on my super FLAMINGO bicycle, and took a wrong turn and ended up on the rice-fields road that lead out to the bridge over to Thailand. Had to turn, go past That Luang, and then come down the hill to UNV. [Laos-1-August-2000]