No phantom voters

I apologize for the delay in posting. Over the weekend I celebrated my birthday (23!) and the Chinese New Year (4705!) by living it up in Cherating. It was great to get out of Matang, which can be kind of isolating, and our apartment, which can be kind of boring and ant-infested. The latter seems to be fixed now, as we laid down a fair amount of ant killer before taking off for the weekend. The package said "is really a good ant killer," which I found to be endearing, like here was an insectide that just wanted to be liked. Upon return there were no ants, but also no ant bodies, which I found troubling to say the least. I'm hoping they just died back at the nest, but I'm afraid they died on the kitchen floor and were simply eaten by something bigger which has now become immunized against insectide. Actually I was kinda broken up about killing them all... which is not to say I don't always celebrate my birthday by destroying something, it's just usually a cake-a-roach, cake beetle, or a common house cake.

Cherating was great and Sarah and I met up with 4 of our fellow ETAs for swimming, merriment, and general indulgence of all things Haram. Cherating is a sleepy/touristy beach town that seems relatively well-accustomed to Westerners and all that come with them. I say relatively, because Sarah, sporting her bikini on the beach still attracted a crowd of a dozen or so men with cameras. She was on the phone at the time and two of them tried to pull the old "stand in from of someone so your friend can act like he's taking a picture of you but really take a picture of a stranger," which I now realize is totally obvious. I was coming in from the water at the time, and by the time I reached Sarah, she's still on the phone and this whole group of guys is around her while one takes a photo. Then he goes back into the group another one runs out and snaps a shot with a camera phone. They keep saying "one more, one more." We were trying to be cool with it and not think it was too weird or creepy, helped a bit by the fact they invited me to be in the photos too. So yeah, apparently they've not quite used to a two-piece.


On the front page of the New Sunday Times there was an interview with the Election Commission secretary. Here are my favorite parts:

Q: Have there been instances of "dead people" voting?
A: So far, I have not seen zombies coming to vote.

I can speak for myself when I say that this comes as a great relief. If there are any zombies taking part in the political process, rest assured that they are either absentee voters, or invisible.

Q: How do you convince people these are genuine voters, and not phantom voters?
A: THERE ARE NO PHANTOM VOTERS
This was just a well handled question. Whenever I see an sentence in all-caps and 72 point font I just know it's true. That's why I read so much of my spam email. Caps don't lie. The same thing is repeated in the main body of the interview and it's in lower case again. I just wasn't nearly as convinced.

Later on the secretary says:
"It's a lot of fun working for the Election Commission because we get a lot of pahala kering (free merit points particularly when people badmouth you without justification). You are free to say anything about the EC and me. As long as we don't do anything wrong, I'll collect the arrears in the Hereafter."

I love the idea that this could be a perk of a job. Listed right after dental, "People will talk trash about you. If you don't do anything wrong, you get pahala kering."

And lastly it's time for:
Kids express the darndest things in English when it is their second language and they're still learning.

I did my best to teach one of my classes Haikus. I told them they could be 17 syllables or less with three lines and I was really impressed with the results.

Fly bird fly,
Fly to me,
But don't peck me.

I have a cat.
I never give it food.
He dead.

I have a friend
She is kind
Sometimes she's naughty.

I see
my friend bathe at waterfall
fresh and cool water
(For the record, I think this one's pretty innocent, but the ambiguity is why I like it.)

The clock is fast
The time is gold
We must fast as clock

I have a friend
My friend fart very loud
But I don't care.

Such good life lessons: to accept your friends no matter what, to feed your pets, and to appreciate the precious time that we have. I'll leave you with one of mine:

And phantom voters?
I will convince you, there are
no phantom voters.