Thursday, July 27, 2006
Those of you who have been on the Playa Vista terraza of late may have noticed the energetically darting figure of our newest family member namely the largely tabby kitten we talked about in our blog entry earlier this month. No sooner was the ink dry from that story, than she suddenly and sadly disappeared. All the familiar speculations and sentiments went with the loss... perhaps she had been stolen… hope she is being looked after wherever she got to… how sad that after getting so used to her following us so loyally around the place there is now just an empty space where her fragile little body used to appear… etc. etc.
About 48 hours later we found her no further than 5 meters away clinging to the top of the corrugated zinc fence surrounding the vacant lot immediately next door bleating her heart out. It was an easy job to rescue her down, but she definitely had been in the wars out there in the big world. It would seem that all this time she had been entangled in what for a little kitten must have been the vastness of an overgrown jungle… namely the vacant property next door. Our miniature tiger did come back with a couple of nasty scars on her belly as proof of her personal fight for survival in the wild jungle. She seemed to have regressed to the extreme hesitancy of the first day she appeared at Playa Vista, but the good ending to the story is that after we smeared some non-astringent vitamin ointment on her wounded area - not to mention another serving or two of German sausages - she swiftly recovered her familiarity and she is now well and truly back in her self-chosen role as the newest and tiniest member of the international Playa Vista Family.
Posted by Playa Vista @ 11:55 AM CST
Saturday, July 22, 2006
For sure there is a Dominican postal system though be it quite low profile run by the Instituto Postal Dominicano - presenting itself with the not so abbreviated abbreviation of ‘INPOSDOM’. It is a national public organization with a very large office in the center of Santo Domingo. Boca Chica has its own office though understandably far smaller and appears to employ one counter assistant, one post mistress and one or two delivery men. It is not entirely clear what the post office’s range of services is because, in the Boca Chica office at the least, there are absolutely no leaflets or signs indicating what services they might offer. However you would be right in assuming they sell stamps for parcels and letters and their postmen do deliver mail. Perhaps that is indeed the full range of services, who knows?
Our own experiences regarding the receipt of standard mail from Europe, for example, are extremely varied. The letter can take any number of weeks from a very reasonable one to a very unreasonable twenty… or simply never turn up at all. Outgoing mail can suffer the same degree of irregularity, by the way, and it seems to make no difference if you opt for the express service - a little more expensive - over the regular service.
Here we would merely like to pass on some information regarding the delivery of packets that caused a little confusion and surprise in our midst recently.
One of the postmen from the Boca Chica office turned up the other day with an A4 sheet of paper indicating that a package was available for delivery to Playa Vista, but that the package itself was in Santo Domingo at the aforementioned large central offices. He said we could go and pick the package up ourselves and it would cost us 100 pesos to retrieve it… or he himself could go and fetch it and boldly “suggested” a pick up charge, significantly higher, of 1000 pesos. Presented with these two, to us, non-regular options for a package already fully paid for at the other end by the dispatcher for complete delivery, we went along to the local post office to ask for clarification and for your information here it is:
If the package is ‘large’ - not clear what constitutes large but seemed to approximate to the outstretched arms of the postmistress - the local post office receives written notification which is presented by the postman at the receiving address… and as the postman correctly stated you can take this presented paper to Santo Domingo along with 100 pesos and a copy of your identification in exchange for your package OR, not quite so correctly stated by the postman, you can request the postman to act on your behalf… but he has got to get permission from the postmistress to go to the pick-up place in Santo Domingo and he should also inform you that the obligatory cost is 100 pesos plus the transport costs which the post mistress specifically spelled out to be 120 pesos!
We are not entirely sure of the relevance, but it was a bit strange that the day after asking for this clarification by the postmistress, the previously very conversational postman frantically did his best to ignore us as we passed within a hair’s breadth of him the following morning… Strange, eh?
Posted by Playa Vista @ 10:53 AM CST
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
We have on more than one occasion referred to the procession of types that pass through and by our Playa Vista enclave… both invited and uninvited. For example some of you will remember that persistent green woodpecker (see archives Sept. 29, 2004 or Feb. 19, 2005), who incidentally has not entirely given up his visits but is very much less aggressive in attacking the structure of our buildings than in the past…. Maybe he has learned the art of Caribbean easygoingness or maybe he’s worn out or… perhaps both?
Anyway… towards the end of a quiet Caribbean day recently a very small scrawny largely tabby kitten appeared in our courtyard, and once that first bowl of milk was provided she stayed all night right next to the empty bowl. Within a whisker of a time she fitted right in to the pattern of the constantly moving lifestyle that Playa Vista presents. A few more bowls of milk and a couple of German sausages later her scrawniness had gone even if her smallness hadn’t.
We have now had time to thoroughly associate ourselves with her and perhaps more importantly her with us, and by all observations her personality seems to be exactly ideal. She is extremely affectionate but not over-doting, curious beyond the norm, adaptable, forgiving, and definitely agile as proven by her attempts to trip up the Italian football players on Playa Vista’s giant screen in the World Cup semi-final. By all accounts she has already used up a good part of her nine lives. Before arriving at Playa Vista she was witnessed by a neighbor who claimed that some very heartless individual decided to toss her far out in to the ocean after she made her first venture on to the beach. After being rescued by another, this time valiant, passer-by she then had to be hooked from underneath the noses of the feral dogs loping around on the beach and placed behind the safety of the Playa Vista gate.
She does seem extremely happy to be here, definitely she is thriving and for now she is very welcome. We just don’t have a name for her yet. She is called anything from Kitty through Mis Mis to Katzen-Jammer. If she stays on we probably have to come up with a proper one.
Posted by Playa Vista @ 08:35 AM CST
