Happy Holidays

Number 2 Son arrived this morning, a long long trip from Ottawa and tomorrow we go to Viet Nam for the holidays. 8 days or so in Hoi An, in central Viet Nam, and then up to Hanoi for three days over New Years where I will be collecting a very special art piece I had commissioned when I was there in October. Stay tuned.

 Back in the new year - Happy Holidays my friends.

Sand sculpture in Puri, India.

Back Up, Back Up, Back Up

Well what a 24 hours this has been!

Last night I installed, or tried to install, a so-called security update for my computer. Everything froze, couldn't reboot, or boot or safe boot or whatever.

Well well well. Don't we know this WILL happen? Eventually? For sure! No doubt! And what do WE do to plan for such a thing? Like...not enough?

So there I was, on the other computer looking up what to do. Climbing up on a ladder to find the box with the install disk. Turning the thing on. Turning it on pressing  "C". Pressing "Shift". Pressing every fucking thing.

Nada. Rien. Nothing. Forget it.

Last night was awful. I think I had about three hours sleep total. Got out of bed at one point, back to the desk for a couple of hours to look up more potential fixes. Lay in bed asking myself in this darkness ..."So when did I last back up???? BIG question, What about my address book? What about all those confirmation emails for this that or the other things? What about the sensitive stuff, the VISA pdf's, the passport and id stuff? Who haven't I written back? Who has changed their email address?  How will I find them? What is going to happen when I LOSE MY LIFE?????"

Well, that's what happens at 2:30 a.m. That deep, insomniac hour.

I know - we ALL know - that it WILL and DOES happen. Your computer WILL crash. What is my backup strategy? Uhhh...STRATEGY?

It was a nightmare. But on another level, one thing I do know is that "the darkest hour is just before dawn" (although unfortunately I don't always remember that while it is going on). I also know (although also don't absorb this while it is going on) that whatever your worst fear is, it NEVER manifests as bad as you think it will.

I learned this a long time ago.

When I was a girl in Montreal, my friends and I used to, shall we say, experiment with things. One of these experiments had to do with raiding my parent's liquor cabinet and getting into, of all things, the sweet vermouth. We had our little tipple and then replaced it with 7-Up or some darned thing. Oh they will never notice!!!

Or will they?

One evening my mother was entertaining her girlfriend. They were sitting on the back porch and I checked in to say hello. Mom was asking her friend "Would you like a glass of vermouth?". "Well, Patty yes indeed I would!" Which was my cue to get the hell out of there. Oh my God, they will know what I have done! I took off down the back lane at a hellish pace in search of my friends, to console me in my hour of need.

"I'm caught. I'm IN TROUBLE@!!!"

I hung out as long as I could before I knew I had to head back. They were going to taste that rot gut and realize it was coloured 7-Up. I'm IN TROUBLE!!!! I was in agony, sweating it, oh oh oh, I'm IN TROUBLE. It was a nightmare - I was dead, killed, eliminated - in TROUBLE!

I dragged myself down the back lane, through the back gate, through the back yard and up the stairs to the back porch where my Mom's friend was sitting. Mom, who was cooking something in the kitchen through the porch door, called out, just as I was dragging ass up the stairs, "Oh, Mabel, would you like another vermouth?" "Oh, no thanks, Patty, I'm really feeling this first one!"

What??!!!! "Feeling it?" ("Feeling what????") SAFE!!!!!!!! Whew, dodged that one!!!

The punishment was all about the anticipation of the punishment. It always is. The mind builds it up and builds it up until it almost explodes. However bad you think it will be is never as bad as it is.

So back to my laptop problems.

After this last  horrendous night I packed up my computer and this morning, headed out to the Apple store, expecting who knows what. TROUBLE!! But young Paul, technical support, (love him madly) was behind the desk, playing a computer game on the marvelous Apple big screen, yacking on line to friends, while solving my problems. No big deal, from his perspective - a huge big deal from mine. Paul, my Hero! I love you! It booted!!! All is fixed, back in action. For awhile at least, this is, after all, a 4 year old computer.

So... am I finally going to learn from this and make a plan to back up properly? Well I hope so. But on the other hand I have long maintained that it sometimes (often) feels like that not only am I not getting older and wiser, but in fact, with the "older" often comes the "stupider".

What next?!

As if the Philippines hasn't had enough of disasters this year... The Mayon volcano, located about 310 miles south of Manila, has been spewing ash and lava and looks like it is set to erupt. 50,000 people are being evacuated from their homes.

Photo Reuters

A View from Below

Last week I was at my desk in front of my window at my 30th floor perch, when I noticed out in the distance a heavy smoke rising from somewhere in downtown Manila.

This is always a heart-stopper as these fires, not at all infrequent,  are usually in really poor, congested squatter neighborhoods and result in hundreds of families losing what little they have. As I watched the thick black smoke out in the distance I could tell this was a bad one. It went on for hours and hours.

Today I saw this shocking picture on the front page of the International Herald Tribune (the story warranted a small paragraph in the Manila paper). Apparently two toddlers (age 1 and 3) who had been left alone at home died as well as a firefighter battling the blaze. 15,000 people have been left homeless. The fire, as is usually the case, just swept right through these flimsy, flammable, shanties - illegally constructed in a neighborhood with only one hydrant. The roads and walkways between the houses are often not big enough for fire engines to get through.

This is squatter life in metro Manila.

This photo was taken by Francis Malasig, European Press Photo Agency

They're Baaack

Not that they ever went away.

80 year old Imelda Marcos is running for Congress in Ilocos Norte, the Marcos province, in the May 2010 elections.

Her daughter, Imee, is running for Governor, a position that her brother, Bong Bong had before he became a Congressman. Bong Bong is now running for the Senate. Imee used to be a Congresswoman. She is now running against her cousin. Following all that? The usual political dynasty musical chairs.

Meanwhile, President Gloria, who's term is ending, is now going to run for Congress. Some say that she's doing this to avoid prosecution for her crimes while in office. No doubt she'll win in her riding (although generally she is hugely unpopular elsewhere, thought to be completely corrupt) as she has travelled to her riding many many times in the past year dispensing cash, scholarships and public works projects to her constituents.

Another former President, Joseph "Erap" Estrada, who was forced out of office in the early part of this decade for graft and corruption, was convicted and spent 7 years under house arrest before being pardoned by the current President, is also once again running for the Presidency.

In a lesser office, a former mayor of a town in Aklan, Fred Arsenio is running again, trying to regain the office he had held in 2004 but failed to finish the term. The reason he failed to finish it is he apparently murdered a local journalist, a radio broadcaster and went into hiding for a year and a half after the arrest warrant was issued. He surrendered last year and has been in custody ever since. He is far from the only politician in Philippine election history to have conducted his campaign from jail.

President Gloria by http://caricaturesbynadz.wordpress.com/

Poster Girl

A never-before seen home movie made in the late '50's of Marilyn Monroe smoking pot is going on sale this week on eBay. The current owner of the film bought it for $275,000 and says:

"This is the late '50s so she is already very famous, but this is a personal side of her we've never seen before.  People have never seen her in such a relaxed pose."

I'll bet. This was 50 years ago. I still can't believe that, 40-odd years after my first puff, this stuff is STILL illegal.

Guns Goons and Gold

Well 'tis the season, and there is no fa la la la la to this story.

The election season is upon us and the first reported election violence has hit the nation in a big way. Last week 57 civilians, many of them women, including more than 30 journalists, were massacred in southern Philippines. Apparently this is the deadliest single slaughter of journalists ever reported in any country in the world.

There is a saying  in the Philippines that politics here is characterized by "Guns, Goons and Gold".  Gold being the money to bribe the voters, guns the alternative method of persuading those voters and goons being the thugs who wield their guns. Guns are also a means of dissuading political rivals from running, which was the scenario last week. Another way to describe it is, simply, fraud and terrorism.

The sitting governor of this southern province is being challenged for the position in the coming elections by another "warlord" as some call them. This challenger had been warned about proceeding with his plans so he put together a plan which would enable him to file his election papers without getting blown away. He sent his wife, and other female family members and supporters as well as a bunch of journalists in a convoy to do the paperwork, in the belief, mistaken as it turned out, that women would not be targeted and the journalists were there as witnesses. Paperwork.

He also asked for convoy protection from the local police, which was denied. Local police are clearly in the pockets of the sitting governor and are themselves implicated in the massacre.

The convoy set out, was stopped on the main road by about 100 armed men, and diverted down a sideroad to a site where a backhoe sat. This backhoe had been taken to this remote site 4 days previously and had dug the holes where the bodies and vehicles were to be buried. Premeditation? Oh, and the backhoe was government property and just happened to have the name of the sitting governor's clan on it.

All the people were murdered and dumped in the mass grave.

The stakes are high in local politics. Political office is a way to amass huge wealth, through bribes, favours, kickbacks. Private armies are common. Buying votes likewise. Family political dynasties are the way things work. Once Dad has completed a term limit, Mom takes over, or the son or daughter and this continues through the generations. Other family members hold other local political posts. Local political challengers are often threatened or shot.

But apparently this latest massacre goes way above and beyond in recent history. President Gloria is - as usual - being criticized for not moving very quickly to bring the perpetrators to account.  Apparently Bad Guy Sitting Governor is her political ally and in the last election delivered the votes in his province for her election. Delivered them so well, in fact, that in many ridings there were zero votes counted for her opposition candidates. Zero. Job well done Mr. Governor. As of now, his son who is a mayor in the province has been charged and is in custody. He has been identified as having been at the massacre directing operations. Government prosecutors and judges as well as the Justice Secretary are now receiving death threats, being told to "go easy" on the members of the clan.

Reports in this morning's paper are that the demand for custom fitting of bullet-resistant vehicles has doubled as the 2010 elections approach.