4G 2023 03 25

 After I wrote to you last week we had a fantastic hail storm. Stones of ice half a centimeter or more in size. So many falling, so quickly, that when I walked out around the roads in the early darkness the piles looked like snow drifts. At the edges of roads, in the corners of buildings. Dusk light with ghostly piles of white.

How has your week been?

Over the weekend, after I wrote to you, I made some food for the week. A soya meat dish (you have to try these things once!) and a chicken with papaya dish whose recipe I got from my friend in Oman. I made a big tub of nutty, lentil rice too.

There I was, all set for my working week, but on Sunday night someone nearby left an alarm running, set for every hour on the half hour. It first woke me at two thirty in the morning, then three thirty, then four thirty, then . . . no I had already got up and was making breakfast when it went off next.

Your mom is getting used to Teddy doing similar to her, for me it made a strange start to the week. I feel as though I have spent all of the time catching up. On Friday when I was fully back to myself I found that somehow I had missed an important announcement about the weekend.

On Thursday I was up in Shiro Meda and you can see that I found another coffee place high up in a building. The green and white building is where the sling for Teddy is being made. In the view of the buses and buildings you can see the main area. Almost everything you see is either a place of making, or a shop for selling, or both, traditional clothes.

Now it is Saturday and I am cooking the last part of my chicken with papaya. I have made some other things for next week but I deserve to enjoy this. Outside the rain has been heavy and the thunder loud.

I think it could be movie night, night :-)

4G 2023 03 19

 The roast dinner!

How has your week been? Cold? Snowy?

Here it has been wet with thunder and lightning on and off through the week.

One of my jobs has been to see a lady about making a carry sling for Teddy. The first day I was going it rained very hard and I got as far as the bus stop.

I sat at a street coffee shop and waited with an excellent coffee but a leaky umbrella.

When the right bus came I decided not to get any colder and returned to my place. I was soaked through all of my clothes and needed a hot shower.

Next day was much better and I met Sebele.

She works as a seamstress on what is the first floor of a four storey building, one building among many in this area. Generally the ground floor levels have shops and above are the workrooms.

On a global scale someone might say this was a "sweatshop" and it is true that many people work here and they work hard for very little money.

But, they are not mistreated and in this area it is good employment. Mostly they sell to the shopkeepers of the area. You will notice the fashion aficianado wearing the Burberry leggings who is camera shy!

Sebele is a friend of someone at work and is happy to give me a good price while earning more money than she would making the same thing for the shopkeeper.

It is always interesting when trying to arrange such a thing. I speak no Amharic and she speaks almost no English.

This coming week I will go back to see her and find out if anything was "lost in translation"!

The picture here is taken from a rooftop of another workshop and shop building across the road from where Sebele works and is a view that was hidden from me when I made the video panorama a couple of weeks ago.

The grounds immediately near are those of the Spanish Embassy and behind you can see the city stretching out to the mountains away to the south and west.

Yesterday I got wet again, not heavy rain, not windy, quite warm while I walked back in the night from the Embassy. Time difference means my rugby finishes much later than yours.

Today is a work, chores, and chill day. For you it is wish your mom a Happy Mother's Day day!

Enjoy, be good :-)

4G 2023 03 12

 Cooking a roast dinner after being out.

I walked to the Indian Embassy to celebrate Holi, the festival of colour.

I took the picture in the grounds before it all got started.

If you ever get the privilege of being invited to celebrate Holi you will find out that to have the most fun you should put away cameras and phones!

Afterwards I walked down to the nearest metro station having decided that the answer to yesterday's low feeling was to have a day of exploring not working.

The station I got on at was the one marked on the picture in red, St Urael. At least I am guessing that the writing says in Amharic, "You are here" :-)

There were lots of people on the train and I had to push inside the doors before they closed. At the next station people getting off pushed me out and I had to get back on again!

We were near the end of the line (the last station is at Ayat) and I could tell because I had room to breathe with people getting off. I could even shuffle my feet!

Then, just by a road – what we used to call a level-crossing – junction the train stopped and only a few judders later the doors opened and everyone laughed and got off.

I understand this is not a new thing so most people knew what I learned a little later. The power on the railway had failed.

I am sure you can work out where I was on the map. No trains expected because I walked up to the next station (which I could see ahead) and asked at the ticket office.

By the way, if you turn the screen around the route looks like a heart-shaped balloon on a string :-)

I knew I should head back and was thinking of a minibus taxi when one of the larger buses called out "Megenagna" (I am sure you know that it was the ticket man hanging out of the bus doorway who called, not the bus itself?) which was a name I knew.

Firstly, the train route goes through there and secondly, more important, I know my way by road and which buses to get from there.

Needless to say I jumped onto the step as he passed. That is literally not figuratively, accuracy not literary. Ooohh you are going to need a dictionary momma :-)

Anyway, got back, did a little shopping, and now have the vegetables roasting as part of my dinner.

Fun times.

The end . . . for today.

4G 2023 03 11

Pumpkin soup on the terrace, outside but not outside,

Rain in the air.

This is the start, where I get to find

What the next few months will be like.

Firstly, the weather. It is different

From the blue skies and sun,

Now it is grey and damp.

Noisy with thunder.

The temperatute does not change much with the

Sunlight or not light, that is real.

It does not alter though

What you feel.

When the outside is grey and the inside needs to be turned on

As a person I feel my inside is grey.

Do you ever feel like that?

There is no reason to be sad.

You do not feel exactly sad but

You find it hard to be happy.

It happens to us all sometimes.

Pumpkin soup warms the parts that sunlight has not been here to reach.

Now all is better and we move on with our day.

Soon it will end with a brush of the teeth

And a tug on the duvet.

Good day, good night, sleep safe.

4G 2023 03 09

 Prepare? For what? Who? Why?

A walk from Shiro Meda across to Hamer Nohe,

As you can see they enjoy their church here.

I am not sure what Hamer Nohe means. I thought,

From listening that it was something like

"In hope of Mercy" which seemed a very church-like

Name, but Google can only find "hammer foot"

Which might be what the monks had when they found the place and stopped for a rest.

When I looked back the way I had come along the road

I could see a light in the distance and I fancy

That it was the cafe where I took the video I showed you a couple of weeks ago.

I got a bus back because dark was coming, it was red.

It is easier to find a way home when you know

Streets and places around you.

One should always watch out though,

you may be surprised by a polite greeting, or a full moon rising.

Fabulous to see and lost this evening in

The storm clouds and rain. Plenty

Of dark when there is no power,

A full moon would have been useful.

Hooooooowwwwwllllllllll :-)

4G 2023 03 02

 Tally ho! Up and over folks.

Settling into the routine of normalcy.

Wait! Isn't normalcy implied by routine?

Error! Circular reference detected.

Now how do we explain the change in tenor from the philosophy of yesterday to what is happening to us today?

Telling of the normal makes it real.

If this is your dream or someone else's dream,

It is real enough to describe and that is good enough for me.

Each day contains enough of what I need.

Interesting work, nutritious (it feeds the body and keeps it working) food.

I get paid enough to meet my bills.

I have a beautiful, growing family.

I wake with the sun each day, eat, prepare.

4G 2023 03 01

 You will find this question asked,

In many forms,

By learnéd men and women.

By people who pretend

And teens who are growing.

"How do I know that I am real?"

Well? How do you?

Can you tell me something,

Anything, to prove that we are not

Somebody else's dreams?

Is Mark Dale still dreaming

Of the conscious society?

Conscious means both alive and thinking.

Why would I ask you a big question like this?

(I can tell your mom is very worried at this point)

In your next few years technology

(things that we do to change the real world

from something that gives us problems

to something that we believe will make us happy)

Will give you toys and tell you

"this is alive", "this is real".

You will be in charge of helping

Old people like me and other people

Who can not think so clearly.

You will help them to see if mankind

Really has made a new life. A toy that lives.

Ask your toys if they are alive?

Crazy GK, I know.

We are all the luckiest people because we breathe.

Some of us are happy, some of us are sad.

Some of us have problems,

Some of us make our own problems.

The difference? Ask Atlas, not Jeeves,

When you find your fulcrum (what you balance your spoon on to flick food across the dinner table at mommy)

You will move the earth.