ironbark

It is Boun Bang Fai time again and the Laos like to set off their unguided missiles.

Things are going to get interesting next week. I'm off to Singapore to help take a 65 foot schooner back to Thailand .... 

I think I need an endorphin hit. ..... except it is so late I would go out for a pizza

Another big storm is approaching, I wonder how much of my roof will leak this time ..... grrrrrr!!!!

Aaaahh!! ... All the popstars of my age and generation are dying.  It makes me feel so vulnerable.

Workmen adding an extension to the building next door have been walking all over my roof for the past week. The roof is made of fibre cement sheets which already leaks when there is a really big storms. I think water blows under the sheets because they have not allowed enough overlap.

(There goes something else falling on my roof)

Yesterday they dropped a brick through the roof. They tried to cover it up, but I caught them and they looked very sheepish. 

They left the hole partly covered but still quite big. Now I have to trying and get my landlord/neighbour to fix it up properly.

One of the good things about living in a developing country is labour is so cheap. In Australia only the rich can afford domestic staff. Even on my modest income I can afford a "houseboy" to do tasks around the house. 

Young Mr P. was a waiter who used to work at my favourite riverfront waterhole. He is a village boy at heart, coming from a remote area of a NW Province. It takes two days to get to his village.

He came to Vientiane six years ago by himself at the age of 14 to seek his fortune. I don't know how he supported himself but he says at first he lived mostly on the street. Most village kids rarely go beyond basic education although it is compulsory until 12 because it costs too much, even in govt schools. Young P. however, seemed to earn enough to put himself through high school and then go on to the National University of Laos. 

As a waiter he worked 7 days for up to 12 hours in a split shift. He would clean and do morning customers until midday. Then go to University getting back about 5.00 pm and work again until closing around 11 pm. He used to sleep at the restaurant and get free food but his pay was a lousy 20 000 kip (about $2.50). From this he would have to pay his school and Uni fees.

Last New Year I gave the fare home to see his family, the first time since he had left. When he came back I offered him a job as houseboy/gofer. He works for me from 8-12 then goes to Uni. His first job of the day is to make me a cup of coffee and do the washing up. Then he does some other housekeeping. We may go out shopping then. At the moment I am doing some painting and he is quite good. I  If we have time we will do an hour or so of English/Laos language. Then he goes to Uni for the rest of the day.

He has to find his own accomodation and food so I pay him 50 000 kip (about $6) a day. Which is actually quite a good wage for for even a full time job.

When I first came to Laos it was quite common for poorer students to hang around the tourist areas to find a soft hearted farang that would "help" them with their studies. I always avoided that trap. I don't believe in a handout mentality. I don't mind helping a deserving person but I got the impression that it was a bit of a status symbol to have a farang as a benefactor. If I am going to mentor someone I believe they have to have some sort of return obligation, even if it is a modest one. 

He addresses me as "Uncle" which is a formal term of respect from a younger man to an older. He has to promise however to keep up his study and pass his exams.   

Because I travel a lot and work in different locations I like the concept of cloud computing. 

I've been using "Spideroak" and "Dropbox" and the latter just about ticks all the boxes. It's simple to operate, all you have to remember is keep the files you want to backup and synchronise in a special folder called "My dropbox".

It works seamlessly in the background and once setup doesn't require anymore maintenance. It is also quick with files synchronising within in seconds of finding an internet connection. Most important a copy of the file is kept on my working computer so I can work offline and everything is synced the next time I go online.

In the 12 months I have been using it I have only had one conflict message between different version from different machines. 

The only downside I have found so far is the cost. I am just about to exceed the 2G free version and while $10 a month for another 10G doesn't sound much, when you add that to a couple of other online services, each at $10 a month plus an internet provider that charges for upload/download amounts it all starts to add up and become quite expensive.

I thought SpiderOak would be a better option and took out a one year subscription of 100G for $100 only to discover that it really slowed things down when it was syncing and while being able to nominate which folders/files to sync whereever they were in the file structure sounded like a good idea it quickly became unmanageable and tedious to keep track of what was included and what was not. 

Yesterday, I downloaded Googles new dropbox like service called Google drive. With a free 5G it looked like a good deal but so far it is no living up to the hype. Files dont get uploaded/synced for several minutes after they are worked on and there is incomplete syncing between different machines. After 48 hours there are whole folders missing from different machines. 

Is anyone else using Google drive and finding the same problem? 

For some time now I have been aware of neglecting LJ. It has been an effort to even keep up with reading my favourite friends let alone make postings. 

I blame facebook. I have for a long time tried to run the two social network sites but I don't really like fb, I find it does not have the interesting postings or friends I have on lj. Postings seem to be about the trivia and tedium of peoples daily activities.  It is full of badly composed happy snaps of babies, BBQs and birthday parties or who got smashed on the trip to the beach. The fb format does not really encourage creative journaling.

 Initially I kept it just as a small private blog as the main way to keep in contact with my immediate family back in Australia.  However the rot really started about 12 months ago after a trip home. Suddenly I was hit with requests to "friend" more and more distant relatives. It was nice they wanted to keep in touch but harder to write appropriate postings because frankly I dont want them snooping into my life. 

Then I made an even bigger mistake by accepting friend requests from my Laos friends and acquaintances. I even accepted an invitation to join a Laos photography group because I wanted to meet some local professionals and go on some photography activities with them. 

It seemed like overnight my nice little sleepy family fb page grew to dozens of daily listings most of which I had little interest in or were in Laos language which I cannot read. I enjoy some of the local photography but the vast majority is very amateurish. It became a nightmare writing different things for different groups of friends and still compose something for lj. 

I have had enough, I am going to make a private group for my immediate family and perhaps a few close Laos friends and go back to lj as my main journal.