Luang Prabang, Luzon, Martin Jacques, India Suicides

Luang Prabang

Breakfast at Satri House, Prince Souphanouvong's villa

crackled green ceramic plates
lizards sunning by the pool
$85, next day move to Soutikone $7
............................
Bagong Silang Luzon
duty free Jose Cuervo Especial gone in a night
Big Frog keeps the bathroom ipis free

light green racing stripes
waddles into kitchen
like a grumpy grandfather
wont leave through the drain hole,
I'm prodding but he pushes back
feels not pleasant like a snake muscles
but a squishy sack of guts.
no warts or secretions,
hes a big frog
but if hes not poisonous
snakes may come after him
into our bathroom
.......................
to Robinson, hardware for the house
Shakey Shaolin prancing
on the ride, gets a shock when I drop a peso
and the ride vibrates.

concrete path
vinyl, bed table & chairs
- now thats a cultural lift from the floor
hopefully helpful for homework
5 or 6 children now live in my house.

............................
Bus to Sta Cruz
Laguna del bay
there is a map
a fine flat place to bicycle
rich & poor, all have yards
even the rich use their yard for fighting cocks
..........................
up the hill to the perched hydro lake
riding scooters down in the sunset
the gold gleam on 50km of Laguna del Bay
cumulus anvils frame the sun
suddenly Luzon is as magic as Aotearoa
but we cant stop, the lead scooter knows the way home.
......................

night swimming in Sun City
every family member is in the hot pool
huge pot of spaghetti

...............................
Batangas ferry to Sabang

Snorkeling over slowly dying coral in shallow water
the day after Steve Irwins weird death
stingray barb to the heart
tiny invisible jellyfish sting my melancholy flesh
3 urchins per square metre are required for reef health
or so they say, I hate them, but maybe we need more.
no cleaner station this year,
no crown of thorns - saw one last year
cant judge
......................................
back in Bagong Silang



Ann

M phonecam

M

M
4:30 Louisa & Annette get up for school
most days
6:30 the neighbours pigs squeal
as they get the remnants of spaghetti
from the Olongapo trip


another expensive jeepney
ferris wheel, gambling,
everyone in the water
back at 4:30 am
..........................
8Sep06
Karapatan said Victor Olayvar was the 748th leftist killed by death squads since GMA in 2001
in Danao Bohol
..a provincial leader of the left-leaning Alyansang Makabayan
...............
LA cafe, the last free bar in Asia, threatened with closure? As we passed I saw a door guard, maybe its still open.
The desperate incessant chatter with his solitude begins again immediately the plane doors close.

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Martin Jacques Monday August 14, 2006
guardian
OK I've just landed back from a no-newspaper zone, so
Martin J's piece on the Leb war may not be news anymore, but it appealed to me,
[RP TV barely mentions the outside world]

it is regarded as an honorary member of the west in the same way that Australia still is, or apartheid South Africa used to be...
..
Israelis aspire to be treated on a par with westerners - that is, of course, white westerners; by the same token they have contempt for Arabs, including those who are citizens of Israel, whom they look down on as less civilised than themselves. Israel behaves in the manner of a settler colony whose people do not believe they are of the region but who none the less think they have every right to be there.

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nytimes
India
17,107 farmers committed suicide in 2003, the most recent year for which government figures are available. Anecdotal reports suggest that the high rates are continuing.
Monsanto, ..genetically modified seeds that Mr. Shende planted..can cost nearly twice as much as ordinary ones..
Virtually every cotton farmer in these parts, for instance, needs the assistance of someone like Chandrakant Agarwal, a veteran moneylender who charges 5 percent interest a month.
..
Business has boomed with the arrival of high-cost seeds and pesticides. “Many moneylenders have made a whole lot of money,” Mr. Agarwal said. “Farmers, many of them, are ruined.”

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is Landline the best program on TV in Australia?

400 tons fish oil imported from Norway - I had thought it was Southern Ocean clean
Most eucalyptus oil mostly imported from China...

Prabang Luzon Jacques Suicides