The exhortation of the dawn
Happy Monday morning folks. It’s 5:30am here, I’m saluting the dawn as I have almost every day for the past four months, by feeding a little one. So in honour of early morning wakings here are some beautiful words from the Quran to kick off a fresh new week: Listen to the exhortation of the dawn. Look to this day, for it is life, the very life of life. In its brief course lie all the verities and realities of your existence, the glory of action – the bliss of growth the splendour of beauty. For yesterday is but a dream, and tomorrow is only a vision, but today, well...
Read MoreBest of Year One in Laos
It’s been just over a year, and 132 blog posts, since we moved to Laos. To celebrate that milestone, today I’ve drawn together some of the best of this last year’s blog posts. Unless you’re independently wealthy and have way too much time on your hands (or you’re bedridden and desperate for entertainment) I doubt you’ll want to read all of them, so I’ve put them in categories for easier browsing. I’ve also marked a couple of my favorite funny posts with a double asterisk like this ** for those just looking for a laugh. Thank you all for tracking...
Read MoreThree ways to increase your happiness (The pursuit of happiness, Part 2)
Last Thursday I started a short series on the pursuit of happiness. That night, Mike and I walked down to the Khan River to try a new restaurant. It’s been storming nearly every day here for the past two weeks (something I’m very grateful for on a personal level as it cools everything down, but worried about on a broader level – these rains have started about two months too early). Everything is bursting green and both rivers – brown and increasingly turbulent – are rising every day. Over purple sticky rice, stir-fried chicken with basil, and river fish sautéed with ginger, we...
Read MoreThe pursuit of happiness (Part 1)
Yesterday I was dragged away from my work by a positive storm of barking. Zulu might only be two dogs long and one dog high, but when he puts his mind to it he has the bark of a German Shepherd on steroids. Yesterday he was clearly very unhappy about something. “What’s going on?” I asked, as I reached the front of our house and found my neighbor, Barbara, already there. “Oh,” she said, laughing. “It’s a big, scary, toad. He’s not the world’s bravest dog, is he?” She was right about the big part – the toad was enormous; it could barely heave its bulk along the pavement....
Read MoreHappiness and the Mango Tree Rains
It rained last night and today – a brief, wet, respite right in the middle of the dry season. Locals have told us that these rains generally come every year, sometimes just for a day, sometimes for two. “They water the mango trees,” they say, nodding, as if these clouds have arrived specifically to provide the mango trees with the boost to get them through until the monsoon. So Mike and I are calling them the mango tree rains. The mango tree rains are making more than just the mango trees happy – they have dropped the temperature at least fifteen degrees and that’s always cause for...
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