Tuesday 16. Aug 2005

September 12 , 2004

Well, no new photos right now, but by the time I'm ready to upload this page there may be some of the house. Construction was going at a crawl, and it appeared that the house would never be finished. We've been living in the hotel for a year now which is considerably longer than I expected. So I played the final ugly foreigner card and went ballistic at the construction site last week and then went over to the construction office and went ballistic there as well. To put it briefly, I said no house, no money. Once they understood that I wouldn't pay anymore on what I owe them until I moved into the house. Since then there has been a flurry of activity at the house. The new plan is to have two bedrooms and the two bathrooms finished by the end of the month along with running water and electricity. We'll move in then and have the workers finish construction around us. The good point about this is that Su will be at the house all the time and be able to monitor the workers to make sure that they are doing something other than sitting around playing cards which is what we found last week when I blew up.

The kids were over at the house yesterday playing around amidst all the ladders, scaffolding, and other construction materials just like I did when I was a kid in Berwyn decades ago. They had a great time and tried to get Su and me and let them sleep there. There's a hotel next door to our property and Meredith has a bunch of classmates that live there so she has plenty of friends next door. Sam also has a classmate who lives there, and Mercedes and Rebecca have all their friends living close by in the village. In fact the kids can walk to school from the new house. I'm thrilled with the idea of having some space of my own where I can work at home and have a desk that everyone in the house doesn't use, not to mention a kitchen that measures 102 square meters which equals the total dimensions of the container that we've been living in.

I just took a look at the guestbook for the first time in months and found Amanda's comments. Just why does your mother think that my photographs are lame? The movies are hard to see because my digital camera is really a still camera which can also take 15 second movies. The camera was an excellent one when I bought it three years ago, but it is somewhat out of date now. I'm hoping to buy a new one next March when I'm next scheduled to leave the country for a conference in Vietnam. I should have a few days in Bangkok to shop on the way over and back. Apple, the dog, has been with us since June, 2003. When we bought him, he was 3 months old. He's really gotten big since then as you can tell when you compare photographs of him from those two periods. I bought him as a guard dog. He's pretty good at that because Indonesians tend to be afraid of dogs and Apple's size makes him even more frightening.

I'm watching the Cardinals play the Dodgers on ESPN. I've figured out who the players are on the Cardinals now. It's been a great game, but the Cards just gave up three runs to tghe Dodgers in the 7th. It's great to be able to watch baseball again. More in a few weeks when I go on my two week break.

I put a little guestbook here so you can leave a message here for us if you are having trouble reaching us by email. Thanks for the messages in the guestbook. I like hearing from you all.