A Good Sign ?

I was reading the Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidene, when a photo caught my eye.
It was taken during the riots in Copenhagen over the demise of a squatter house where scads of young people used to hang out, and whose owners finally decided to clean it out and tear it down.
Funny enough, when the police booked some 300 persons they had arrested, it turned out that two thirds were foreigners, called in to swell the ranks of the protesters.
Anyway......the sign that caught my eye said:

POLITISSEMÆND
GÅ SÅ HJEM

And I thought, well now, they can be tough and throw cobblestones at the police, but in essence they are still kids.....let me explain to those who do not speak Danish

The first word is a combination of POLITI ( POLICE ) and TISSEMAND ( PENIS ) but the thing is, this is the kind of word it is perfectly all right to use in polite society, in fact mothers oftentimes refer to the penis of their male off springs that way. It is a nice word. Unlike others one could think of.
The second line is the obligatory GO HOME
So my point is, screaming and throwing rocks are for grown-ups and according to the sign these rioters made, they are still kids who prefer the nice word for penis to the million of nastier and much more vulgar ones they could have chosen.
A good sign ?
Anyway, it had me smiling.

Doing my bit

Like the ladies of yore who gathered to roll bandages for the troops in war, I too am doing my bit to fight the war, only this war is the war against dengue fever, a nasty mosquito born disease that seems to be prevalent here in sunny PV.
My bit?
I drained my pool.
Now mind you, the pool had turned a nasty shade of green and I jokingly suggested that this was my experiment to see if life really did start by some amoeba crawling out of the sludge, the sludge being my pool.
No matter.
The folks from the health department had also muttered something about fines and...well.. it was time to do it anyway, only I'd like to make it sound as if this was my big donation to the fight against dengue.
So there it is, the pool, all empty and sad looking with mysterious green stuff on the tiles.
But I have done my part and I feel righteous. Not that I used the pool that much anyway, but that is not the point. The point is that I did my bit.
I do wonder if rolling bandages would have been more useful.
Ah well.

Yet another broom

The other day as I was shopping for food at the supermarket, I saw a sale of brooms. A whole bin full. Nice blue and red brooms. And cheap too. A mere twelve pesos for a nice red or blue broom. I knew I had to have one.
My argument for the additional broom to myself was what if all the brooms in the house broke and I had to run back to the store to purchase a new broom, I might discover that they were all gone, because they were nice red or blue brooms and ever so cheap.
So I bought the broom, and it is now hanging with all the other brooms. But just in case.......one never knows, do one.

This morning another bird did a kamikaze flight into one of my windows. This bird was an exquisite woodpecker with a black and white mottled body and yellow/orange head with black beak and yellow eyes. It ended up, stunned, on the terrace and I did not touch it as I could see that it was still breathing and lo and behold, after some thirty minutes the bird took off and flew to the nearest tree. They are truly beautiful creatures. But Will it learn a lesson ? Doubtful. Asta, the Scottie, never figured out that trying to bite the nasty, ugly and poisonous toads we have in the rainy season, would result in some very unpleasant times with muscle spasms and rigidity of the neck and mouth. She still did not like them and never seemed to connect the discomfort with the chasing of the toads.
We humans are really not all that different, are we.

view through front door

Love thy Neighbor

This had to happen, I know, but still it gave me a jolt.
The mutts had been even more restless than usual and got me up earlier than usual and I was in the kitchen getting ready for the first pot of coffee of the day when I first heard the mutts bark and then a lot of angry sounding human noises followed by the sound of BB gun shots.
next things were the mutts running home, well, at least some of them, and then more shot and shouts and the last mutts running for dear life with a big, black, macho truck in hot pursuit
The truck stopped in front of my house and out of the truck stepped a man who started to yell at me and the dogs and were using more F. words than a two bit hooker. And loudly. Complaining about being awakened so early Sunday morn and, news to me, about garbage being spread on the street and, even more news to me, about the other neighbors ( who incidentally do not live in their house but ocasionally ) complaining about the barking too.
Oh so loudly and obscenely this neighbor yelled, and I had not a chance to compete with that so this person kept quiet and listened, which made the irate neighbor throw his hands in the air and scream

He fucking well doesn't speak English. What is he ? French or Dutch or something ?

And this gave me my first chance to say something. And I said that I spoke and understood English quite well, thanks all the same.
Eventually he wound down and reached a normal level of voice and even allowed me to get a word in edgewise. And I apologized for the barking, and I told him I was sorry that the mutts had such bad habits, but what can one do ?
In the end he promised to lend me a book on doggie training, because he has, he told me, five small dogs in the house who are never allowed to leave the house and who are the best behaved dogs in the world, ( more likely scared to death of him )
It was, at any rate, quite a beginning of the day.
May there not be to many like this.