Sylvia's Journal

I woke up one minute before my alarm went off at 4:30 which means that my internal clock has been reset. It took 9 days.

I woke up from a dream in which I was relying on accounting information from a certain Mr. Rambutan and had a very quick immersion into project management accounting that I should have had about 20 years ago. All these years I pretended I knew. I actually don’t know a Mr. Rambutan but I got to know a delicious fruit by that name during my last trip in Cambodia. In the dream I was about to be discovered as an accounting fraud and had a great deal of anxiety about that.

The dream was triggered by a telephone board meeting that lasted 2 hours and that was, for a good chunk, about how to present financial data, a conversation that went entirely over my head. I listened in silence to people who teach accounting and financial management to business school students for a living, and yawned a lot in between feeling totally inadequate. Luckily it was a phone meeting and the yawning was not visible to my fellow board members (and I was not the only one silent). There was much else I did not get and I felt like a cheat since I have been on the board for three years and am about to go off it in June, hopefully before they find me out. My particular job, which does not require accounting knowledge, is to get ourselves renewed each year and follow proper elections procedures; this year that includes getting someone elected to replace myself.

Yesterday morning I saw Tessa and Steve off to work, leaving Axel, myself and Chicha behind to do the work of running the household, bringing in the bacon and chasing squirrels. Halfway through the day we took Chicha into town, leashed of course, saying ‘heel’ a hundred times while doling out treats if she complied (it’s all about the treats says Joe who knows a thing or two about dog, and human, nature).

Walking by the mass of ducks was particularly exciting but the leash restrained her. The ducks are in withdrawal after a stern local newspaper article berated townspeople about their feeding behavior and how bad that was for the town, the entire ecosystem of ducks and of course the ducks themselves. The ducks ignored us and stared at the cold water, some of them standing on ice floats. I am glad I am not a duck.

I did more cooking in the afternoon, semi-Indonesian, and alternated it with writing a book chapter assigned to me that has due a date in late April. I have written half of the required pages and I am making good progress. This is a good thing because planned departures are firmed up: to Ethiopia next week, and late in March I will probably make a quick visit to Ghana before dashing off to Zambia, the latter not so firm right now.