Ability

Hi,

We had a cloudy-looks-like-rain day.  The temperatures have come down and it’s not as uncomfortable as last week.  

The ‘Easy Monday’ tune was “Saturday In The Park” by Chicago.  That leaves me with no choice but to give you a new ‘Zany Day’ song.  “She comes on like a rose, and everybody knows.  She’ll get you in dutch, you can look but you better not touch.  __ __, __ __, late at night when you’re sleeping __ __ comes a-creepin’ all around.”  Clue: We’re talkin’ about something that could be a person or another form of life.

This morning, as we prepared to get in the van for a trip to Big C, I smelled an odd smokey smell.  When I walked out into the front yard I heard a crackling sound, looked up and saw part of one of our palm trees sparking.  Blue and I had seen this before.  When a palm tree starts a new frond it appears as a spike going straight up into the air.  This one was touching a power line and it caught on fire.  There was nothing to do but observe until the new frond burned through and fell off, and then the fire went out.  What troubles us is the fact that it must be a bare wire for this to have happened.  We will alert the yard crew to always check the height of the trees and make sure they trim anything near the wires.  In the meantime, we will continue to wonder who one calls to check on bare wires.

You may have heard that the price of gold has dropped dramatically.  Here in Thailand, there is no shortage of gold shops.  At Big C we were curious to see if there might be large crowds around the two shops upstairs.  At first they had no customers, but when we were about to leave we saw several people checking out the counters.  These shops are almost always a counter of glass cases, you don’t actually go into a shop.  We looked at one section of the counter, checking out prices, but without knowing what they were before the crash it was pointless.  I saw some beautiful work that wasn’t that expensive.  Hmm.  Gold here looks very different than the gold one buys in America.  It has a more orangish tone to it because it is more pure, but if you buy gold here and try to sell it in the States it is not valued as high.  

Natcha and Gong were invited to her brother’s house this evening to eat Akha food.  They were very excited about going to a gathering of family and eating traditional food.  As we finished our dinner a young man came walking toward the pool with his guitar.  My guess is that he was a cousin/nephew and was also going to the dinner.  He sat alone and strummed.

Tomorrow, the Women’s National Takraw team will play at Cat’s school.  She’s excited about this.  This is the sport that is like volleyball, but played with the feet.  It will be a nice break from all of the testing and homework this week.  

Have a Happy Tuesday.

                 Peace,

                           Danny

“Ability will never catch up with

the demand for it.”

~Confucius