Almost All Furniture Sold

Almost all of my friend's furniture has sold in just 3 days. The remaining items are:

1) The dining room table and chairs
2) The gas grill & canister
3) One small dresser with 4 drawers

E-mail me ASAP if you're interested! Let's hope when we go to sell our furniture in June it will go this quickly.

My landlady purchased many of the large items, and she is very excited about the side-by-side no frost fridge. People got some good deals as the items were like new and for a fraction of their market prices.

Lost Photos Found!

Apparently my Snapfish Account was deleted after I did not order any prints from there after a certain period of time. I had hundreds of photos on there from 2003 and 2004, when I studied abroad in Morocco and traveled in Europe. I was so bummed that I lost all those pictures, as the old laptop they were on just no longer has the will to live.

Today, my friend and travel companion Jenna told me that she still had access to all my items on her Snapfish account! I was able to sign in and get all the photos. They are not the Hi-Res photos, but hey my camera back then was only like 2.0 megapixels in the first place.

Made me remember how different Moroccan traditional dress is to Pakistani dress. The top photo is me getting henna done, and the second is Moroccan flags in the southern city of Taroudant.

When will next month's bill come?

Today the maid showed up two hours early, apparently because her niece is going into labor and she needs to be at the hospital.

After I was interrupted by her unexpected coming, the "cablewala" came. He's the guy who collects the money for the cable internet. We never know when he is going to come, but he just shows up at my landlady's door on his motorbike with the bill. He expects the money right then.

This can be quite stressful, as many times I just don't keep cash in the house or I'm not home and the landlady pays for us. Today I decided to have a talk with the cablewala and ask him when he would usually come. When I asked him, he sad, "In the first days of the month, between the 1st and 10th."

So, that means if I want to pay the bill, I need to stay home during daylight and early evening hours for 10 days? I mean, I do have a schedule, a job, and other things to do besides wait for the cablewala! The best part is, if he comes later than the due date, I have to pay a late fee!

I gave the cablewala my number and asked him to please give me one day's warning so that I could at least give money to the landlady in advance, who is at home most of the time during the day.

The walas and I are not doing well this month, as our paniwala from Nestle has not come for two weeks and we've run out of water. We're supposed to get Nestle water jugs delivered every Tuesday. I try not to go out or do errands so that I don't miss him, because he could come at anytime in the afternoon.

I'm starting to see why people keep servants to just be at the house all the time and take care of all these things.

The Maid's Punctuality Progress Chart

Months ago I gave up trying to use negative reinforcement on the maid. I told her that if she arrived late, I’d cut her salary. She was still late so much, that I couldn’t bear to cut her salary by the amount she’d merited, or more accurately de-merited. I would cut it by a little and she’d make such a big deal out it I just lost my resolve. For the past 9 months, she has been asking me for a raise, and my response is always that when she starts coming on time, she can have a raise. Well it’s been a year now and she just has not been able to come at a consistent time. Now I’m trying something new.

I have a chart on the wall with a calendar of December. If she comes within 10 minutes of the set time, she gets 10 extra rupees. So, if her target time is 3:00, and she comes between 2:50 and 3:10, she gets a bonus. If she does that everyday for a week, with 6 working days, she gets 60 extra rupees. If she comes on time every working day, she basically gets a 10% raise.

There’s now a big calendar on the door opening to the terrace where she does the laundry. She can’t read numbers, so I’ve color-coded it. If she comes “on time”, she gets a +10 in green. If she comes late, she gets a big red “X.” At the end of the month I’ll total up her bonus rupees and add them to her salary.

When I explained this to her she was looking at me as if I was from the moon. She seemed to think it was quite funny that she would have a little punctuality progress chart in our house, but she’s happy that she’s already earned 30 extra rupees by being on time three days this week. Let’s see if she continues or just gives up! I think if she manages to actually come on time all the days in a month, I’ll add a bonus on top of the bonus, although I may be too shocked to believe it.

Ghostlike Photos from Summer 2008

I've finally gotten around to editing some photos from my summer LIP class at Ali Institute. 

From Summer 2008 at AIE

From Summer 2008 at AIE

It was a great group that I taught English to for three weeks this summer. The class generally preferred to be gender segregated, at the end of the course I got two separate cards, one from "the ladies" and one from "the guys." We had a wonderful going away party and they treated me to a lovely gift as well.