Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Our planet’s surface, as we are all taught, is made up predominantly of water which goes for our bodies too, of course. The planet idea is naturally quite a generalization because people, for example from the Kalahari Desert might see it differently, as would those from anywhere suffering from any kind of drought. However one of the many advantages of living in paradise is the readily available supply of water. Under normal conditions it rains here just about the right amount and with the right frequency (and by the way, very often conveniently at night) to make everything grow about the right amount, leaving plenty for we humans in store for when we need it.
The company responsible for the storage and getting the water to we humans in Boca Chica and Santo Domingo generally is the public utility CAASD (for the Spanish students among you that stands for Corporación de Acueductos y Alcantarillados de Santo Domingo) . Here in Boca Chica it would seem they do a reasonable job. Clean-looking water flows through our pipes the vast majority of the time. There are the odd days when, we hear, for repair work on the system they shut the water off. The additional inconvenience when they do this is that there is no such thing as an announcement. Just an abrupt cessation of supply and no knowing how many hours it will remain that way.
Some months ago after a spate of interruptions to service we enquired what was going on and we were told that they were working on increasing the pressure and sure enough when they had finished there was a notable and very welcome improvement.
Lamentably in this country, of one step forward any number or size of step backwards, these last few days has seen a complete reversal of this improvement. The reason, unfortunately, is embedded in an all-too-common psyche here that says “help yourself to anything that you fancy even if it is nailed down”. Thieves have absconded with pumping equipment and cabling from the Boca Chica pumping stations to the tune of 6 million pesos! According to the CAASD official we spoke to this means that Boca Chica is currently being supplied to about 40% of capacity and at the time of writing here at Playa Vista 48 hours and counting without even a drop squeezing itself through the normally reliable pipes. Rumors talk of several days more. Well, at least it gives people around the Playa Vista bar something to grumble about in paradise!
Posted by Playa Vista @ 09:01 PM CST
Saturday, June 9, 2007
In this bountiful land of natural expression 'Honey' - Playa Vista's pet cat of now more than a year's standing and presumably known to those of you who read our blogs of July 11th last year and March 1st this year - very soon picked up on the most natural Caribbean habit of all and was frequently courted by old 'Big Head' - an itinerant, very noisy, largely-tabby cat with a notably much bigger head than that of Honey herself who has rather petite features. The courting must definitely have become very intense at some point because Honey became with kitten!
The big question was when would the kittens be due? One of the especially interested Playa Vista guests 'googled' the subject and shouted from the computer in the corner of the bar, "Gestation period: 63 days!" Thinking that he had cracked the puzzle he continued with, "So when does that make it due?" Although we have a very personal relationship with Honey she never tells intimate details about what she really gets up to in the dark of the night though... so of course we would have needed more than a Google search to give the right answer. Honey's good natured affinity with human beings leads her to physically follow us around quite a lot of the time... when she is not cat-napping that is. Anyway, one obviously pregnant day some time later she not only followed us round but kept up a constant low key 'miaaaooooing'. Though we were unfamiliar with pregnancy routines of cats, or any other animal for that matter, this alerted us to the fact that change was imminent.
We prepared a cardboard box and some bedding for the coming night thinking that almost for certain kittens would flow between then and dawn. The next morning the still very pregnant Honey jumped out of her still empty box and walked slowly in some obvious discomfort towards the furthest corner of the Playa Vista enclave and hid herself behind one of our old, currently redundant, Coca-Cola umbrellas. There she languished a short while and then very forlornly, with her normally nearly always whisking-of-the-air bushy tail now very sadly and moistly drooping to the ground, trooped back to the kitchen. Within a very short time, whilst we were going about our morning Playa Vista chores, we felt some tentative licking at the ankles that drew our attention to what was going on, ever so quietly on the floor below. Honey had given birth - in her usual quiet non-fussy way she had delivered three bundled black packages straight on to the kitchen floor.
There are a number of unfortunates popping their heads into the story at this point and the first is that one of the kittens was very obviously still born. Honey sat and watched the other two tiny kittens stretching and kicking for a while then even started back to her previous habit of following us around again. Maybe she was one of those very rare mothers who disown their own children? Oh no, not a bit of it! In her natural relaxed Caribbean way she was just pacing herself... and extremely well we would say, from our non-expert point of view of course. Within a couple of hours she had both kittens and herself spick and span and the two new arrivals were being well and truly mothered as if Honey had been doing it all her life.
Regrettably the second and third of the mentioned unfortunates were merely waiting round a very short corner because the more eager and larger of the two newcomers suddenly stopped breathing and gave up his eerily Big Head look-a-like little body, followed just a few hours later when the smaller of the two suddenly went the same inexplicable way. Poor Honey... she was naturally extremely distraught, displayed in large part by her sticking to us even more closely than before. However, being the robust survivor she is, just a couple of days later she had apparently recovered both her composure and her trade-mark tail-whisking that leads us to presume that good old Mother Nature's cycle soon will take its course again... not least because of the return of the howling of Big Head and his rivals (currently at the forefront is Mr. Somewhat-Shy-Largely-Black) which can now be heard again reaching through the warm Caribbean nights very close by!
Posted by Playa Vista @ 09:47 AM CST
