Puja

When I was in India one of the Canadian girls I lived/worked with had a problem with ants. The Centre's Indian staff decided that what was needed was a puja, a Hindu ritual. The puja was sure to rid the room of ants. The only trouble was that the puja involved leaving an offering in the room for a certain amount of time, an offering of part of a coconut and sugar.

The ants in India could find their way into a sealed plastic container. In the staff room the sugar for our tea was kept in a metal container in the freezer. A pile of sugar on the floor in the middle of the room? The ants found it in no time. And they called their friends, and their friends' friends, and their friends' friends' friends. The room was crawling with more ants than it ever had been.

Judicious use of anti-ant spray and much clean-up later, the room was ant free. It even stayed that way for a significant amount of time - meaning that the Indian staff INSISTED on the efficacy of the puja. Afterall the puja had been performed and now there were no ants, right?

Well I'm wishing I could have them perform a puja in my room. Not an anti-ant puja, mind you, but an anti-roach one. Just about every time I go to the toilet I find an itty bitty roach baby scuttling about (fairly easy to squish and flush but still I'd rather not have to do so every time I need to pee!) and I'm finding the odd bigger (but still not all that big really) one elsewhere - running across the kitchen wall, or scuttling into the shoe rack, or escaping into the folds of the curtain.

Roaches where a problem before I moved in, but besides the odd one last summer, they haven't been a problem since. But this year it seems they've decided to invade. I've laid traps and roach killer all over, and have spray at the ready, but it doesn't seem to be doing any good. Definately time for some divine intervention. I just need to dig out my diyaa and find a fresh coconut...

Thursday already?!

Seriously, its Thursday already? wow. Its been a busy week for me. After attending a Girl Scout meeting most of Saturday and helping out with a museum studies conference all day Sunday, my work week started again and I worked a regular Monday and Tuesday, before meeting my advisor and the first international guest for his upcoming international symposium for a dinner meeting on Tuesday and then playing tour guide allllll day on Wednesday. Today I was back at the museum again and tomorrow I am tour guiding again before the symposium starts and I spend the entire weekend with that.

So this Thursday, while I'm loving being helpful and useful (my advisor and all the guests have been very appreciative to have a native English speaker/translator/local guide) I'm tired and looking forward to having a couple of days off - next weekend, when U has promised me a soak in an onsen (after I go car shopping with him - his old car started making worrying noises and will cost way more than it is worth to fix).

So plenty to look forward to!

Oh, and one more thing I'm loving this Thursday - dish soap! It turns out that pouring dish soap on a cockroach found in your sink will work just as well to immobilize and kill it as the leading roach-be-dead spray, with a lot less nasty chemicals all over your sink and dirty dishes!

How George ruined my lunch

I was making fried rice for my bento last night when I realized George's grand kids are back, trying to assert their squatter's rights to my apartment.

There was Phoebe, as bold as can be sauntering across the stove hood. I couldn't use my usual method of attack - the paralyzing spray as I was worried about immobilizing myself by spraying my lunch. I looked for something to scoop up Phoebe so as to escort her to a watery grave, but when I looked back Phoebe was gone. Assuming she had escaped through a crack to regale her siblings and cousins with her daring deed of revenge against me. Little did I know she had sacrificed herself for an even greater case of revenge.

I'm sure you can see where this is going even if I didn't see anything till went to take my second bite of fried rice and saw Phoebe - antennas waving defiantly even in death.

Needless to say I went to the conbini for a new lunch and stopped on my way home for reinforcements. Last year I put out lots of cockroach traps last year and they seemed to work. I'm not going to take Phoebe's suicide attack lightly - this is war!

(I went to put a trap under the sink and discovered I had inadvertently squashed Phoebe's big brother, Gentle Jim, a sweet-natured but rather slow guy. He had gotten sandwiched in between the bottom of the cupboard door and the cupboard... FLUSH! Two down... however million left to go...

Obituary for Louise

I spotted her as I stumbled blearily to the bathroom this morning.

It was hard to miss her, she was dead afterall! Lying on her back, multiple legs in the air.

No more scuttling off into hidden cracks for her. She had the consideration to die right beside her grave - all I had to do was turn on the tap and down the drain she went. A few minutes later she was buried in coffee grounds and I sipped my morning latte and thought about her hard life.

For despite the fact that I had found her belly up, Louise had been a fighter. She had to be. Her husband George had been brutally taken from her, leaving her to parent their 214 children all on her own. Despite the daunting task, she persevered. She worked tirelessly but still had to face the heartbreak of loosing a number of her children. Periodically she would come across one of them, lying stricken and flattened on the cement walkway in front of the apartment building. She had a hard life, but she is at peace now, reunited with the love of her life and the children she lost.

At the risk of sounding irreverent, here's to hoping the rest of her children - and their children too - join her soon!

Roommate

I signed (or rather "stamped") the contract for my new place today. Very exciting!

While I probably won't move until next weekend, since I got my keys today, I figured I should go and see my new digs. It was dinner time so I picked myself up some dinner and headed "home."

I found the place without difficulty and let myself in. As I was looking around, however, I discovered that a squatter had moved in. I sat down to dinner and had a chat with George. I kindly offered George a few days to pack up his things but my landlord, who showed up a few minutes later, was not willing to let George live rent free for even a few days. So poor George was treated to a couple of shots of roach-be-gone and then squashed with a wad of toilet paper.

I'm hoping George doesn't have too many family members - I am looking forward to living on my own again!