Updates from Up here

I am well behind the eight-ball this month as life gets busier and more demanding so the following will be a general post of many tidbits...

How is, you ask...

The Job Front...Was distressingly slow but now have pinned down my bosses and we are meeting on Friday to sort out the nitty gritty of my visa and start dates etc. . Meanwhile, I am chockers with private students---not strictly legal with my visa---which is giving me valuable insights into the challenges I will face when regular classes start.
One thing I have learned is that I love teaching and another is that Lao students are very rewarding to teach, right up until I realised they will do and say anything to please me, even if they are learning nothing. I have learned to surprise them with questions that are not on the lesson sheet and I have also developed an ability to read their faces and see when they don't actually understand, but aren't admitting it. In the end, as long as they develop some confidence in their abilities and don't say fuck when they mean fork, I will have achieved something.
And as I have learned from Molls and Marion---you get days when you feel as if you are talking to a brick wall, and others when the brick wall answers you and pronounces ''çontinental breakfast' faultlessly. Ah!
I avoid the legal ramifications by not accepting money; instead I am paid in kind---a glorious painting I have long desired from an artist whose students I will teach, lovely temple paintings from my Thai friend A who has a shop, (No, that's his name) and so on. Last night I had several glasses of wine at my friendly wine bar for free since I taught the staff there a few lessons. And so on.

My Visa ....at present is maintained by leaving the country once a month and this time I went to Chiang mai in Thailand and took my son Sommay, who is thrilled to bits to have become an international traveller. Chiang Mai, you can have, as far as I'm concerned. Yes, nice mountains, wonderful temples, great markets, nice people, but dirty and crowded and full of traffic and pollution, not least of which is made up of dissolute fat farang travellers who have lost their way, their razors, and their self-respect, as far as I can tell and do the place very little good except for the call girls and drug dealers.
We did some shopping for various necessities for the house that are much cheaper there and came back a day early, mainly because we had a very exciting pieces of news...the boys were both given places at university!

The Boys.....This was welcome news because they've both been hanging out since August when they took the exams and then waiting to hear as various lists went up and their names were not on them yet. I thought this was odd, knowing how bright Sommay is, but then I discovered
the grim truth, which is that it's not only the bright ones who get in but the ones who are able to pay large bribes to teachers and administrators. There are only 600 places for 2500 applicants and Sommay was loath to tell me that we'd have to pay; instead he spent a lot of time visiting his teacher, doing odd jobs for him, painting a fence, and hoping. In the end we still had to pay, but only after the fact, not in anticipation, which sometimes does not get rewarded or returned.
The teachers, to be fair, are very badly paid, and tuition fees are quite low by comparison to the 'gifts'' one gives, but often the university teachers are merely last year's graduates and still rather wet behind the ears themselves.
Then we had a flurry of haircuts and new shoes and shirts as they need to be neatly groomed to go to uni here, unlike the instant slobdom that our kids adopt.
And Joy needed a motorbike, so that was another loan/gift. But lately he's been a paragon of dutiful employee standards getting up at dawn to climb down to the river bank for bags of soil for my pots and much more.
Overall, they are fine and happy and a delight to live with, as ever.

My Social Life...continues to improve, with invitations to all the right parties and gallery openings. The last one was a magnificent photographic exhibition at the posh hotel, where the air-kissing was frenzied---- both cheeks, as we are part-French here----followed by a wonderful dinner for a select 40 or so people at the magnificent riverside home of the artist, my friend Mimi, catered by her friend and mine, the redoubtable Vonnie. She is the daughter of a general and is a hotelier here. She speaks Chinese, Lao, French and pure San Diego American and is a real treat.
Before that was the White Party at the Pack Luck Wine Bar where we all wore white and celebrated the birthday of big Laurent, who works for the Heritage commission and drives a huge Lee-Enfield motorbike. He lives with the very bright and witty Wei Wei, who is from China and she and I share a love of plants.
And before that was the glittering do at Satri Lao House, the home of Ivan and Lamphone, who are the duke and duchess of Luang Prabang. He has the Apsara (listed in Hip Hotels of the World) and employs me to tutor his staff and she has a posh shop and loves to party. Most attendees at her soirees end up in the pool sooner or later, so one has learned to wear swimmers under one's clothes or at least something that won't be ruined by repeated dousings.
And I finally staged a small event of my own on my little verandah, a mini homage to our legendary Alexandra St. Dos serving , yep, smoked salmon and cream cheese with capers, nuts and crudites all in the glow of a huge number of tea lights. Huge success! I had Vonnie and Mim and the new guys, Chris and Anthony whose shop has just opened and Nith, the artist who is actually a royal and lives partly here and partly in New York and Paris. He's a lovely little man and is also employing me.

My Good Works....Reports from the village I have adopted have been few as they are flat out with the rice harvest and are waiting for the track to dry out after the rains, so we will go up there early inthe new year and see how things are going. My scholarship plans have received a set-back with the death of the dear man who was going to help set it up for me. He was visiting a village upcountry and fell ill, but was too far from medical help to be saved. He was a lovely guy, very gracious and dignified.
I have been busy using my connections to find jobs for various kids, which is very rewarding, and am embarking on a project to trace Sommay's eldest sister who disappeared two years ago, basically taken by a Thai woman as a domestic servant and never heard from since. She had suffered a degree of intellectual impairment after a bout of japanese Encephalitis B so she is a bit helpless. Her husband and children are left feeling totally bewildered and Sommay's mother wept about her missing daughter until the day she died. We think we can trace her if we do some work, and I really feel I must, for the sake of the family.
Meanwhile I am putting together a list of stuff you can provide for those in need here with a smal donation and willpost that soon, rather like the Care Australia Give a Goat for Christmas idea.
And my landlord has been most uncooperative about taking my concerns for the doggies to the village head, but I have been talking it up and my friend Vonnie has agreed to go with me, since she has considerable clout and lives in the same neighbourhood.

My health is fine, I can hear with BOTH ears now, I exist on local food and am having clothes taken in and now that Joy has a motorbike I have taken back the bicycle and am hoping for trimmer calves before too long.

The Garden....is, of course, my real joy and now that we have cleared the rubble out back and the boys have built nice concrete beds, I have a burgeoning crop of veggies that would make even Melinda green---the soil here is fantastic and as long as I control the mealy bugs and the weeds, it's an easy place to garden. My tiny bougainvilleas are now well up over the six foot fence and I've found a village over the river that makes pots and have ten arriving tomorrow---They are literally dirt cheap that way, as long as you don't mind waiting for delivery.

OK, now to post this before the internet signal drops out againand I lose the whole shebang again, then it's cocktail hour here on the misty banks of the Mekong. Sabaidee.