Watch the Walk

When I think about wedding problems in the US, there are a couple of platitudes that come to mind, "at the end of the day, at least you'll be married." And the second encouraging phrase you often hear is "Nobody will notice. And if they do, they'll forget soon enough anyway." Here on Clove Island it's not so simple. For a lot of people, they're actually already married before the wedding. The big parties and fanfare really is just that-- for some weddings, the bride and groom have been married for several years already. And do people forget what goes wrong? Nope. Everything involved with weddings is recorded: what you donate towards the wedding is written down so they can reciprocate with your wedding. If you come cook at a wedding, then they'll come cook at your family's wedding. But heaven forbid that you should not have enough food at your wedding for all the people who come to help cook it. Or should you fail to... ... give a special gues...

Waiting for the race Sometimes I wonder what percentage of my time here on Clove Island has been spent waiting. Since most times mentioned for events are not exact, I'm often caught waiting. Like the other day when I went to watch a friend run in a relay race. We were told that the race would be a 9 AM. At 8:00 we were told that it was for sure starting soon, maybe even before 9. So I hurried down to the starting point to watch. Well, it didn't start before 9. Soon we found out that our friend was running the first part of the race, so we moved a little ways away to wait, excited to cheer her on at the relay point. Waiting for skits to start Two hours later, we were still waiting and finally they closed the road for the race. Cheers heard, they've started! We waited for the runners but our friend wasn't in the group. No! Her relay point was even earlier than we'd thought and we completely missed watching her run. Two hours of waiting, and then not even seeing what w...

This is my cat, Jack. Jack is a handy name because it's so versatile. Islanders are familiar with Jack Bauer, but there are other famous Jacks in pop culture and history-- Jack the Ripper (appropriate kitten name), Jack Sprat (not so appropriate, my kitty loves eating fat), Jack Sparrow, Captain Jack, etc and so forth. Jack came into my life as a baby kitten. I found him on the street, being shielded from the sun by a banana leaf lovingly placed there by a toddler. After questioning the toddler and other kids who soon arrived about his origins I determined that he'd been dumped intentionally in a graveyard. I also determined that he was not going to survive unless he had a mama. His eyes weren't even fully open and he wasn't very good at walking. How would he survive in the big, bad world? "sleeping in" So I took him home and adopted him. He drank powdered milk from an eye dropper, then a syringe, then eventually he learned to lap up milk and eat eggs. An ador...