I hope I haven't frustrated those who have been checking this blog to see if I've posted again, and I certainly had expected to post again before now. Problem is....I'm in the slow lane....
I first noticed the phenomenon with waitresses, who are attentive enough, it's just that they glide through space without appearing too rushed. To the observant, this extends out to include most people who are going from one place to another, but generally without undue haste. This does not include the cadre of ex-pats who are out getting exercise by walking on the road in the morning, North American style, or the bus drivers who drive like bats out of hell. There are other drivers who also drive too fast, although once in the village, the combination of speed bumps, bicyclists and pedestrians in the road keeps everyone quite slow. I heard the other day that only one in six Belizians has a car, which does not surprise me, many who don't have cars have bikes.
At any rate, I find that I rarely exceed 40 MPH on my drive into town, although the newly paved road would allow it. I'm walking more slowly as well, and enjoying the more leisurely pace. With all the things I plan to do here, well, some of those are progressing slowly, if at all. I plan to start painting again after a hiatus of 43 years, and b(r)ought everything I needed, but haven't gotten to it yet. I certainly went to a lot of trouble getting the boat here, but am just getting started on the work I have to do to finish preparing it to put in the water. I've done a little on the keyboard with my lesson program, and am probably more driven to get going on that than the others because I've been listening to my entire CD collection for the first time in 6 or 7 years, and really enjoying it. At this moment I'm listening to Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain album. The bottom line is that I am enjoying myself, so why feel I need to pursue all my interests at the same time?
Work is going well - although I am finding I have to accept, or at least learn to work with, the local rather casual way of handling money. I was thinking tonight that it is a subtle culture of casual fraud, in a way. The top government officials get caught in major shenanigans every now and then. We're dealing with a local (Ricky) in setting up a new bus service between Placencia and Dangriga, and although I've designed an easy-to-use trip reporting form to track riders and cash flow, he hasn't used it fully. In this case we have an outside investor who has put $40K into the business, so tomorrow morning we'll have a sit down with Ricky to have him do what he says he is going to do. He seems to be like the Mexicans in that respect, he'll agree wholeheartedly to do whatever you want, and then neglect that agreement and do what he wants to do. Some (new) friends bought a restaurant (actually they bought the rights to operate a new restaurant in a space where there had not been one before) from head of a local bookkeeping service, and part of the deal was that she was going to set up their books and train them to use it. It's done in QuickBooks, and what I saw does not allow them to produce the critical reports necessary in running a business, like P&Ls and Balance Sheets. I'm sure I'll be talking about all this in the future, so now I'll let go of it and talk about....
clouds!
When I first got here it was the dry season, which lasts from November through May, or so. Hot, sunny days, hardly a cloud in the sky. We are now on the cusp, clouds rolling through, with occasional cloudbursts - and that is a fitting word for it. What is really wonderful is the clouds, big cumulus clouds - all kinds of clouds - I'm going to have to take a refresher on cloud identification. Being able to go to the roof of the house, and to see horizon to horizon, gives a great opportunity to see them, and to photograph them. So I'm developing a folder of cloud/sunset photos, and end this post with some of them. Yes, I've used filters, camera settings and software to enhance the colors. Many of this group were taken today to illustrate this posting. Enjoy!
Carl
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