Thursday, September 02, 2004

Water You Talking About

I have completed my initial training, now it's on to Lungtan. Lungtan is a quaint little town with plenty of small businesses lining the streets. I suspect it's much like US towns used to be before WalMart (hereafter referred to as "the antichrist") and similar stores started polluting our communities. It can be a bit frustrating, however, to find the store that carries a given item. Today's purchase was an oscillating fan. Aparrently, "oscillating" is not a common word. I did find one, however, and I will lug it back to my apartment this evening.

Even less convenient than the sporadic shopping success is the total lack of water in Lungtan. Since the last typhoon, Lungtan has not had water. The pools and puddles have been drained one bucket at a time. The fire department has started rationing buckets of the coveted liquid to the different neighborhoods. If water doesn't arrive soon, I can imagine people biting, clawing and stampeding to get to the fire trucks. Well, it probably won't be that bad, but it's funny to imagine. I can just imagine people guarding their buckets of water -- growling and attacking anyone who dares approach.

Until then, this stinky teacher will be continue to apply a fresh layer of perfume and antiperspirent, hoping it's enough.