Thank You Tracy

Posted by Matthew McEwen |0 comments

A hearty thanks to Tracy Hill's (a wonderful friend and 5th grade teacher at AISD) and her incredible shopping appetite! Tracy and I went shopping the day I left Dhaka, as she wanted to help me get things for the nursery ... and shop a little for herself. Thank goodness for that. She overspent, I loaned, and she paid me back in USD. I then forgot my wallet in Dhaka (all access to money) but had her cash as a life saver. If my bags had been overweight for the domestic flight I would of been OK. With a little shuffling I came out ok and the money helped to buy sustenance and pseudo-literate reading materials. Thanks Tracy!!!

Forgotten in Dhaka

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Wallet (with drivers license, credit cards, insurance cards)
Sunglasses
Guitar sheet music
Headphones
Expectant Father book (now I have to make it up)
Weeds (we were going to finish the season in the hospital)

Last summer was a packing nightmare with Godzilla 3 being rendered and burned up until the time we left. I consider this year's departure a roaring success.

Come on ...

Posted by Matthew McEwen |0 comments

In business class they give you noise canceling headphones which makes it very difficult to hear the lady asking if you want more chocolate pettifores.

Schism in the Building

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The lightning rod incident has led to huge changes in the building for the hired help. The gardener (as not officially employed staff he is not eligible for a garage room (cubicle)) has to move out of the building, the family that was in the storage room has to move back to the cubicles, and they are switching out the three guards. I guess Mr Z (our Bangli staff director) was over the drama. Krista and Vinnie (our crazy apartment dog) are leaving the building for greener pastures. I'm leaving so I'll have to update you on the situation when I return.

Lightning Rods

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This is the second time they have stole the copper lightning rods off the roof this school year. The two thoughts are that 1. it's an inside job or 2. someone is jumping over from the next building's roof. With the inside job theory there is some thought that there exists a battle between the three guards and the family living in the garage. Some strange power play soap opera. I''m just glad they left the satellite dish.

Ahhhh ... LSOH opening night!

Posted by Matthew McEwen |0 comments

Someone sent me beautiful white roses to flowers to wish meeez luck on Little Shop's opening night!

Gardener Issues

Posted by Matthew McEwen |0 comments

When we moved to Dhaka, we settled in a 5-story building with an apartment on each floor. It's the only all-teacher building at our school and it came with 3 guards that work around the clock and a "gardener". The guards make about 3000Tk (about 45USD) and the gardener makes 6750 (about 100USD) but we were new and really did not know any better. The "garden" is a few enormous barrels on the roof with who-knows-what in them and a bunch of house plants in the garage. Apparently, you can buy plants from him at marked up prices, he'll water them, and eventually kill them while you are away on vacation. The problem is that over the year and during the beginning of this school year, I realized that we are throwing 20USD at this guy a month to do what? Oh ... I forgot to mention the fact that he also cleans the stairs, roof, and garage. This guy is so ridiculously overpaid and underused that the building had a meeting at the beginning of the school year to come up with more jobs for him. I was shut up on moral and ethical grounds by trying to suggest that he should try to secure employment or additional income elsewhere. Most apartments pay a couple bucks a month for this service but this guy has been sitting on this job so long that he's literally over compensated himself. He feels he is obligated to the job. The problem is that no one would pay even a tenth of his salary to do a job he sucks at. He's on a grace period.